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Power Plays Chapter 9
🕑 Added 2023-01-10 16:59:01 +0000 UTC“Are you sure you want to come with?” Harry asked Susan as they walked through the halls of Level 2 of the Ministry of Magic, having just left Director Amelia Bones’s office.
“Absolutely,” Susan grinned. “You think I’m gonna miss a chance to watch Dawlish bust a gasket at you leaving his command for a month?”
Harry rolled his eyes playfully at her enthusiasm, but, truthfully, he was looking forward to it too. The man had been a thorn in his side for too long, and after Amelia’s subtle hint that Dawlish was disparaging Harry to other Ministry officials, it would be good to strike back for once. Outside of Dawlish’s purview, he’d be able to show others within the Ministry what he was capable of. It might be enough to ensure that Harry was a front-runner in the contest to replace Dawlish once Harry found a way to oust him.
The Auror Department was a flurry of activity as it tended to be on a busy afternoon like today. Nodding to a few fellow Aurors and familiar support staff as he went, Harry led Susan back through the Department towards the private offices and meeting rooms.
As luck would have it, Dawlish wasn’t in his office. Instead, he and a dozen of the Senior Aurors were in the middle of wrapping up a department meeting. Harry couldn’t help but grin at his luck; Dawlish wouldn’t be expecting Harry to be here today since this was his day off. If he timed this right, he could get in and announce that he was working on another case directly for Director Bones with the other Senior Aurors in earshot. All they needed to do was see Dawlish blow up at that and then the story would be all through the department by tomorrow.
So, Harry waited just outside of the room as Dawlish rambled on behind the podium at the front of the meeting room. The Senior Aurors were all sat down in their usual seats at the long conference table, undoubtedly bored and wanting to get back to their more interesting work.
The second Harry spotted them start to roll up their parchment and grab their bags, he opened the door and stepped inside. All eyes turned to him at his sudden appearance, and then they flickered over to Susan as she stepped just through the threshold and leaned back against the wall beside the doorway.
“Potter.” Dawlish’s voice was rarely ever warm when he spoke to the other Aurors, but his tone with Harry was filled with distaste. He’d tolerated Harry for years thanks to his impressive arrest record; apparently, all it took to end up out of his good graces was to show him up on a mission and inadvertently reveal to everyone just how ineffective his leadership was. Though, it wasn’t like Harry was the first to do that.
“Dawlish,” Harry nodded, reaching inside of his robes for the piece of parchment Amelia had given him earlier. He pulled out the bound scroll and stuck it out towards Dawlish.
“What is this?” Dawlish asked, hesitating a moment before accepting it.
“Director Bones has temporarily reassigned me to a inter-departmental case,” Harry explained, trying his best to mask the smug tone of his voice. Still, he couldn’t hide it completely. “Until the case is done, all of my regular duties in the Auror Department will have to be reassigned.”
Dawlish’s face grew redder and redder as Harry spoke, signaling just how furious he was at this. Harry knew that it would get to him; Dawlish hated having anyone challenge his authority.
“We do not have the necessary staff to take over your many important duties,” Dawlish snapped back dismissively, trying to maintain control over his anger. He tried to hand the scroll back to Harry. “Unfortunately, your request to join this case is denied.”
Harry paused for a second, eyeing the room. Quite a few of the Senior Aurors were looking on with undisguised interest in the confrontation between Dawlish and Harry. The others tried to look busy but were still obviously listening in. Good, that was exactly how Harry wanted it.
“It wasn’t a request,” Harry stated clearly. He made sure his tone wasn’t too confrontational so as to ostracize himself from the potentially sympathetic Aurors in the room. The hardest part about being famous was that everyone constantly assumed that he was an arrogant braggart, even after Harry had worked with them for nearly five years now. “Director Bones assigned me to this case; there is no choice in the matter for either of us.”
Dawlish’s eyes narrowed and he looked like he was grinding something in between his teeth as he took a deep breath. “Fine then. You can go work for her for now, but I have a right to know what the case is.”
Evidently he’d read the part in the note that stated that Harry was being reassigned to a classified assignment. It was cute that Dawlish still thought that he had control here even though everyone knew that he didn’t. He couldn’t supersede Director Bones’s authority, even if he went to the Minister; her role in the government and its independence was protected by some of the earliest laws of the modern government of Magical Britain. The Directorship was always an assigned post by the Minister, but even they couldn’t stop the Director from acting in the interest of the state without receiving a two-thirds majority support from the Wizengamot. There was no way that Dawlish would be able to convince Kingsley to do that, especially not with how popular Amelia was with the Wizengamot and the public. Regardless, Harry wasn’t going to challenge Dawlish on his self-deluded sense of control over the situation; it was much easier to maneuver around someone who thought that they had the upper hand since it made them so easy to predict.
“Unfortunately, I am under orders from the Director to not divulge any information about the case until its completion,” Harry replied with as much modesty as he could muster. “Only she, the Minister, myself, and Hit Witch Susan Bones will have any knowledge about the nature of the case.”
As Harry said her name, Susan gave Dawlish a cheeky smile and a little wave. There was the briefest peep of laughter from further in the room, but the culprit masked the sound as a cough before Dawlish could hone in on them.
Dawlish glowered at Susan briefly before looking back at Harry. “Fine, have it your way, Potter,” he practically spat Harry’s name out. “But when you get back here, you’ll be making up for all the time you’ve cost the Department.”
Harry wisely chose not to respond to that as Dawlish brushed past him out of the room. The other Aurors stayed silent, unwilling to voice a single opinion on the matter. They all knew Harry, and they knew Dawlish just as well; they’d come to their own decisions in time. All that mattered to Harry was that word of this got out, especially if it focused on how angry Dawlish got.
With the rest of the work day ahead of them, the other Senior Aurors started shuffling out of the room one by one. They all briefly greeted Harry with either a nod or a verbal acknowledgment before leaving. All except for one.
“Quite the show, Potter.”
Harry looked over to the grizzled man who hobbled over to him. Proudfoot was one of the best Senior Aurors in the Department. He had survived through Voldemort’s reign by going into hiding and helping the citizens of Britain who were targeted by the Death Eaters and the Snatchers. He was a powerful duelist, incredibly talented in handling wards and surveillance operations, and was easily the best investigator the Department had. Harry deeply respected the man, but his genuine belief in the chain of command sometimes clashed with Harry’s more independent nature.
“Proudfoot,” Harry nodded to the man who came to a stop a few feet away. He was rubbing at his injured knee—a parting gift from a Death Eater just after the war ended. He still had the rest of his leg attached, but he forever walked with a limp due to the residual dark magic that lingered in his injury. “How’s the knee?”
Proudfoot shrugged. “Could be better. St Mungo’s has a new poultice they’re trying out on it. Won’t get rid of the dark magic or the pain, but it should help with the mobility.”
“Better than nothing,” Harry said.
“Exactly,” Proudfoot grinned, stretching the single scar that marred his face along his left cheek. “The pain will keep me sharp and, Merlin be good, I’ll be able to actually chase down a criminal or two for once.”
Proudfoot’s grin never left his lips as he shuffled his weight over to his good leg, his eyes never leaving Harry’s face once. It was . . . unnerving to say the least. Even Susan seemed mildly perturbed by the odd behaviour from the Senior Auror.
“Well-” Harry began to speak after a moment of silence, only to be immediately cut off by Proudfoot who seemed to have been waiting for Harry to make a sound.
“This tussle between you and Dawlish is really something,” Proudfoot said as he reached into his robes, fishing around for something inside of the inner breast pocket. “You’re not the first to have it out with him like this, but you’re the only one who handled it cleverly.”
“Excuse me?” Harry said, feeling a slight tingle down his spine at Proudfoot’s words.
“You circumvented his authority to get out from under his thumb because you knew he was badmouthing you to the other department heads,” Proudfoot coughed. He finally pulled out a cigarette—it appeared to be a cheap muggle brand to Harry’s eye—and stuffed it in between his lips before placing the tip of his wand to it and lighting it up with a small ball of flame. He took a long drag and coughed out the smoke. “It was a clever play, but it did put you on my radar so to speak. You know the job Dawlish assigned me, don’t you?”
Of course Harry knew; it had been on his mind for over a month now. Dawlish assigned Proudfoot to investigate who was sabotaging him. All of those little missteps in public, like him tripping and falling, having incorrect information during a conference, or otherwise appearing incompetent, were all Harry’s doing. He had done his best to make them appear accidental, but even Dawlish wasn’t so blind as to not notice the strange coincidental timing that all of these things happened when he was in the public’s eye. So, he had asked Proudfoot to investigate the matter. Harry hadn’t heard anything about the case since Dawlish first told him about it.
But now it seemed that Proudfoot had his eyes on Harry, and he seemed to be suggesting a possible motive for Harry’s fight against Dawlish.
Truthfully, Harry hadn’t known that Dawlish was badmouthing him to others. Amelia told him that Dawlish had painted him in a poor light, but he didn’t have confirmation that he was saying such things to anyone else, and he only learned about that from Amelia after she had reassigned him. So, even if Proudfoot was more aware of Harry now than before, at least he hadn’t made the connection between Harry’s recent activities with the earlier embarrassments that Dawlish had suffered.
Or, maybe he had.
Proudfoot was the department’s best investigator; surely he could put two and two together even if he lacked any tangible evidence. If he thought that Harry was clever in the way he handled Dawlish now, it wouldn’t be far-fetched for Proudfoot to start to suspect that, at the very least, it was possible for Harry to have played a role in Dawlish’s public embarrassments.
There were a few different ways Harry could play this, but he discarded most of them quickly. He couldn’t play dumb or pretend that he hadn’t understood the implication in Proudfoot’s words. If he did that, Proudfoot would immediately notice that something was amiss. So, he had to confront this now, but how to respond? With anger? Dismissal? Understanding? Reasoning? Any response would shape how Proudfoot perceived him, and there likely wasn’t anything he could say that would make him seem less suspect.
“I know,” Harry replied smoothly, keeping his tone even as he met Proudfoot’s amused gaze. “And, before you ask, I have no part in whatever is happening to Dawlish. I didn’t even know that he suspected someone was sabotaging him until he brought it up to me.”
Proudfoot simply nodded as though he had been expecting that answer. “Neither did I, but once I started looking back at his supposed public gaffs, I noticed a unmistakable pattern. Once I found that, I got to thinking about who was doing this to him. Most criminals wouldn’t play this so slowly over months; they’d just take Dawlish out in one fell swoop. That left only a few possible names, people like Augustus Rookwood, who’d be willing to do this, but I doubt he’d play it slow like this when he’s still on the run from us.” His eyes twinkled as a slight smirk landed on his lips. “That’s when I began to consider what the impact would be if these embarrassing incidents kept going.”
No sense in hiding it now. Harry was clever, and Proudfoot knew that. If he pretended not to know the obvious outcome, it’d only look suspicious. “Dawlish could be pressured to resign,” Harry said. “The Minister’s position with the Wizengamot and other factions within the Ministry is tedious; he can’t afford to have a Head Auror who appears foolish, incompetent, or clumsy.”
“Exactly,” Proudfoot clapped. “And if he is forced out, that leaves the Head Auror position open for the taking.”
“I can see what you’re getting at here, Proudfoot,” Harry said, eyeing the man carefully. “But I don’t want the Head Auror position. At least, not right now. Besides, if I really wanted a position of power within the Ministry, I’d just take up my family’s seat in the Wizengamot or I would have asked the Minister for something more important. Being the Vanquisher of Voldemort does have a few perks.”
“That’s what I came up with too,” Proudfoot said with a sigh, almost seeming a little disappointed. “You had and still have plenty of opportunities to capitalize on your stardom. It doesn’t make sense to go after Dawlish slowly like this unless you had a personal grudge against the man.”
Well, at this point, Harry definitely had one. The man was incompetent, a poor Head Auror, and deliberately slandering Harry over his own mistakes. It’d be hard not to have a grudge against the man. But that wasn’t the reason why he started this.
If he pushed too hard and too fast, he’d risk ostracizing those who were on the fence who might support him under other circumstances. Even five years after Voldemort’s death, Britain was still a divisive nation on countless topics. Even killing Voldemort wasn’t enough to undo the slander he’d suffered from the Ministry and the press for a few years during his time at Hogwarts. Some people still saw him as an arrogant braggart who they wanted to see fall.
Despite the fact that they were in a weak government that Harry believed wasn’t doing enough to deal with the continued practice of dark magic and those who held true to bigoted pureblood views, he didn’t want to completely overthrow the system and further divide the population. No, those who were in the wrong needed to be dealt with carefully over time. He didn’t want to give the fickle public a chance to stop genuine progress being made in society by making a grand spectacle of this. He needed to slowly work his way up in power within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in order to deliver justice to those who needed it. He needed people to see that he was being promoted on the merits of his ongoing work rather than his previous stardom.
“Oh well,” Proudfoot shrugged before taking another long drag on his cigarette. “I’m sure the real culprit will turn up sooner or later.” He let out a hacking chuckle as he started walking past Harry. “Take care of yourself, Potter.”
“You too,” Harry murmured to Proudfoot’s back as the man walked out of the meeting room.
Harry was so distracted by his encounter with Proudfoot that he nearly forgot about the other occupant in the room.
“What the hell was that?” Susan exclaimed once the door closed behind Proudfoot.
Her wide eye stare at Harry told him everything he needed to know.
She knew.
PAGE BREAK
For once, Harry was thankful that undercover work at a put meant that he was allowed to drink. It was usually a double-edged sword; alcohol could make you slow, and many of the newer Aurors under Harry’s command had a tendency to drink more than they could handle. Harry usually used a subtle switching spell to swap the booze in his glass with some soda or water he kept in a flask, but today he was more than happy to down the whiskey in his glass.
“You’re going to get yourself into some serious shite, Harry,” Susan hissed at him from across the table. “Trying to circumvent Dawlish when he’s being an ass is one thing, but actually sabotaging the man’s career?”
Suffice it to say, she hadn’t taken his explanation well. Sure, she sympathized with his frustrations regarding Dawlish, but she was still a Ministry worker at heart. Her aunt had instilled a deep respect for the Ministry, even if some of the members that made it up were less than savoury.
“He doesn’t deserve his spot and you know it,” Harry muttered back under the din of the noisy crowd in this back-alley pub in Knockturn Alley. Thick, hazy smoke filled the air as dozens of suspicious-looking people drank the night away. It was the perfect place to spot something shady happening. “The only reason he made Head Auror was because he was the most senior one left who didn’t move elsewhere in the Ministry after the war or wasn’t so fucked up from dark magic that they weren’t physically or psychologically capable of leading the Auror Department.”
“That doesn’t justify you trying to get rid of him like this,” Susan insisted, the long hood of her cloak masking all of her features except for her mouth. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in pubs like these. “You could have gone to auntie or Kingsley and pled your case. It’s not like they don’t know Dawlish’s faults.”
“Exactly,” Harry snapped back. “They know his faults and they still do nothing. Dawlish has been the Head Auror for five years, and, in that time, he’s continually failed to uphold the promise we made to do better after the war. He doesn’t go after the families who still practice dark magic or trade dark artefacts openly in Knockturn. Instead, he focuses on dealing with petty criminals and stupid things like underage magic. We may have stopped Voldemort, but we hadn’t cleaned up the system that allowed him to rise to power in the first place.”
“If Kingsley isn’t making Dawlish change, maybe this is the best way forward then,” Susan countered, her voice raising a bit as she got more heated. “Who are you to be the sole arbiter to decide what’s right and what’s wrong?”
“Who am I to decide these things?” Harry narrowed his eyes. “I’m the one that’s been fighting against Voldemort for my whole life, I’m the one that killed him, I’m the one whose rounded up more Death Eaters than half of the Auror Department combined, I’m the one who gave his life to-”
Harry bit down on his lip and slumped back into his seat, not having realized that he was starting to stand up as he shouted at Susan. This wasn’t the place for it, even with the enchantment he had placed around their table that would make anyone listening in hear a completely different conversation entirely.
Susan took a sip of her ale as she stared down at the table. “Sorry, Harry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” Harry replied, forcing his anger and frustrations down. Susan was just worried for him, he knew that. And his anger was directed towards Dawlish, not her. Maybe Proudfoot had rattled him a little more than he had thought if he was able to snap at Susan so harshly.
“This is just a lot to take in,” Susan sighed. “I mean, back when we worked together, I know we talked a lot about what the Ministry was up to and how it didn’t feel like much had changed, but . . .”
“This isn’t something I’m doing without first having put a lot of thought into it,” Harry said. “I didn’t want to involve any of you. Even Ron and Hermione don’t know what I’m doing.”
Susan chuckled. “Well, that’s a first.”
“After all we’d been though, I know that they’d do anything to help me,” Harry grimaced. “Even if it meant risking themselves. But I don’t want that for them.”
“So noble,” Susan teased. “And stupid. You shouldn’t hide things from your friends like that.”
Harry cracked a smile at that. “I know,” he replied, “but you’ve seen how Proudfoot’s already sniffing around the case, trying to find me. The more people that know about it, the more likely the plan is to be found out.”
“So, are you going to lock me down in a dark dungeon to keep your secret safe?” Susan’s teasing tone was still there, but Harry knew perfectly well that she was asking a genuine question too.
“Are you going to tell anyone what I’m doing?” He asked back.
This really was the crucial question to the whole situation wasn’t it? How was she going to respond? Harry trusted Susan. She had fought alongside him at the Battle of Hogwarts, and she’d worked closely with him in the Auror Department. They’d become good friends, and a little bit closer on that one trip to Venice. She was good to him, and he was good in return. He knew that if she gave her word, she meant it.
He didn’t want to think about what he’d have to do if she was going to reveal him.
Susan thought on it for several moments before she downed her ale in a single chug. She slammed the mug down on the table and wiped her mouth clean with the back of her hand. “I trust you, Harry. And while I’m concerned about what you’re doing, I don’t think you’re wrong to do it.” The hood of her cloak pulled back just far enough for the light to catch her brown eyes. “I’ll keep it a secret.”
