"What the hell is this supposed to be?" The moment Sirius appeared, he violently tore the Dementors apart with a Patronus Charm, then picked up the envelope floating in the air and took a look.
The message inside was very clear. Harry/Harley Potter had used magic outside of school, violating school regulations and the Statute of Secrecy, and now needed to await a summons from the Wizengamot.
"This is complete bullshit! A Dementor was right in her face—are young wizards not even allowed to use magic to protect themselves?" Sirius fumed as he tore the envelope to shreds.
"Please don't do that, Mr. Sirius Black. Your pointless rage right now has no meaning, because we can send as many letters like that as we want." With another loud pop, Umbridge appeared in the Dursleys' house.
At this point, the Dursley home was practically a public restroom—anyone could wander in and out.
"You are… oh, that pink toad! Didn't I hear Fudge exile you to Africa or somewhere like that?" Sirius said irritably.
Umbridge shot Sirius a glance. In her heart, she utterly despised this man who lived off his family's old money and had been stupid enough to send himself to Azkaban for over ten years.
How stupid did someone have to be to do something as absurd as throwing themselves into Azkaban over something that didn't even exist?
Umbridge immediately dropped any pretense of politeness. "Obviously, Minister Fudge has discovered my true potential, so I've been transferred back."
"Heh… what, to be some kind of power strip? No, I can't even imagine what kind of person would make you a power strip," Sirius said with a shudder.
Umbridge didn't feel the slightest ripple in her heart after hearing that kind of crude insult. She had never taken the trash talk of losers seriously. She merely cast a lofty glance at the two of them, then once again pulled a letter from her robes.
"Unfortunately… our… Miss Harley Potter still needs to wait for a summons from the Wizengamot." With that, she casually tossed the letter onto the floor and Disapparated.
"She's pretty annoying, isn't she?" Sirius said as he flicked his wand and restored the Dursleys' messy living room to normal.
He then looked at the Dursleys cowering in the corner, shrugged helplessly, and dragged Harley back to the place he'd bought next door, patting Harley on the shoulder to comfort her.
"What does she mean by saying I need to wait for a Wizengamot summons?" Harley asked, sitting on the sofa, her whole body feeling cold.
"You can think of it as the wizarding world's court. But don't worry—Dumbledore has a lot of political capital. Last time Kasenhis practically tore Fudge's entire arm off, and when it went to the Wizengamot, nothing happened to him. So in a way, you could even say that court is fairly fair," Sirius said reassuringly.
While things were like this on Harley's side, the headmaster's office at Hogwarts was a completely different scene.
Kasenhis was genuinely happy to see the travel-worn Snape return and gave him a big hug.
Dumbledore, meanwhile, listened as Snape explained how he had used Karkaroff's life to regain Voldemort's trust, while also looking through the thick stack of letters in his hand.
Some were from long-famous powerful wizards. Others were about the strange transfers in the Ministry that Barty Crouch and Scrimgeour had mentioned.
Fudge had suddenly used the excuse of resisting Voldemort to send these wizards out of England, telling each of them to go handle their own affairs elsewhere.
And all of those wizards shared one thing in common—they were either Wizengamot members close to Dumbledore, or the kind of stubborn, hard-nosed Wizengamot members who never bent.
"What is Fudge up to now…" Dumbledore frowned. Then he quickly realized something and looked at Kasenhis. "Go check on Harley. If it's not Harley, then go check on the other young wizards who are close to her."
Kasenhis nodded, and in the blink of an eye, he appeared on Privet Drive, at Harley's place.
...
"So this is their method? Ordering Dementors to attack Harley, then slapping her with a charge for using magic outside school? I really don't get this Umbridge. Honestly, what do they gain from doing this? With that kind of effort, they might as well control the Dementors to assassinate Barty Crouch and Scrimgeour in the middle of the night."
Sitting by the fireplace, Kasenhis listened as Sirius and Harley finished explaining the whole sequence of events, then spoke in utter disbelief.
"I don't know either. Could it be some kind of chained scheme?" Sirius asked.
"Heh. It's not that I look down on that bunch of trash at the Ministry, but pulling off something like summoning people to court and arresting them takes more than just getting us to show up—it also takes the ability to actually arrest people. What, are they hiding ten Voldemorts somewhere to ambush us?" Kasenhis said with a cold laugh.
"Then what about the trial afterward? You said yourself that most of Dumbledore's close allies have already been transferred away," Sirius continued.
"Unless you want Dumbledore to ignore the fight against Voldemort, call back all those Wizengamot members who went out to gather reinforcements, and have them come play courtroom games with us, then it's just going to be a case of soldiers coming—we block them; water coming—we build a dam," Kasenhis said with a shrug.
"The problem is how we block it. Right now, the Wizengamot is basically left with only Fudge's bunch of useless fools and spineless cowards," Sirius said.
Kasenhis raised an eyebrow. "Spineless? Fudge is the biggest spineless one of them all."
Sirius let out a breath, slumped into the sofa, and stopped talking.
And Harley was clearly still a little off. Sitting on the couch, her body looked stiff.
The next day…
The Wizengamot summons arrived right on time, and the three of them went to the Wizengamot.
Just like last time—except last time, Kasenhis had been sitting in the defendant's seat, with Dumbledore behind him, defending him.
This time, Harley sat in the defendant's seat, and Kasenhis sat behind her, just like Dumbledore once had, serving as her support.
The Wizengamot benches weren't full this time, and there were many unfamiliar faces Kasenhis hadn't seen before. One by one, they passed by Kasenhis and Harley, their eyes avoiding the two of them in unison.
Until Kasenhis, sitting in the back, caught a whiff of a sharp, overpowering perfume scent.
Then a plump pink figure appeared beside him and Harley.
Umbridge walked over and deliberately stopped there, lowering her voice so only the three of them could hear. "Enjoy this trial, my dear… ones."
"I'm enjoying it very much," Kasenhis murmured calmly.
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