The collected family was only grazing through the brunch dishes while sitting at the table an hour later when there was a knock on the door. Getting up and opening it, Harry met Madam Bones and two other aurors waiting. "Mister Potter," she smiled.
"Madam Bones," said Harry. "Please, come in."
She walked in to see the whole family, less the Grangers, sitting at table. "I hope I haven't interrupted your meal?"
"No, Ma'am," he replied. "We'd finished; but, we just kept talking."
"Dobby," called Daphne.
The little elf popped in. "Mistress?" he asked.
"You can clear the table; thank you, Dobby," she instructed him. "But, please reset the tea service for us. Oh, and add coffee to the service too, please."
"Yes, Mistress," he replied. With a snap of his fingers the now messy table was cleared away and replaced with a new tea service and a carafe of coffee with mugs.
The others moved away from the table for a few moments and stretched it to accommodate three more chairs; adding the three chairs as they went.
"Please," gestured Hermione to Madam Bones. "Join us."
With a sigh, Madam Bones took a seat as the others all sat down again. However, the two aurors took up station along the wall either side of the door instead of sitting down.
After she fixed herself a cup of coffee, Madam Bones began, "Well, to bring you up to date with what's been happening since last night... this morning." She hesitated a moment and said, "The Minister is like an ostrich with his head stuck in the sand. He refuses to believe Riddle is back. Even after I displayed Mister Potter's memory of the event, he's still in denial."
"If he doesn't change his tune by tonight, I'll use the Potter alliance to force the Chief Warlock to call an emergency session of the Wizengamot, and toss the fool out on his ear," said Harry. "There's too much that needs to be done, quickly, before Riddle is able to rebuild his forces."
"Agreed," she said, taking a sip from her coffee. "I demanded of him emergency funding to boost the auror forces. He denied me. And my forces are too small to fight a war." With a sigh, Harry asked, "Alright. He self-performs a rectal-cranioectomy or he's gone. What else has been happening?"
While Madam Bones almost spit the mouthful of coffee she'd just supped out of her mouth in shock at Harry's remark, Sirius barked with laughter while the Greengrasses and his wives snickered or chuckled.
"There are things I cannot tell you, at the moment," she replied. "However, I can tell you I sent my aurors to the Little Hangleton graveyard, this morning, and they found evidence of the ritual performed. They also found the Tri-Wizard Cup, and I've had that brought in for you. It's yours, seeing as you were the first to it, last night. You won. Plus, I've got your one thousand Galleons prize money."
She reached into her robes and dropped a Gringotts money pouch on the table in front of Harry. "I know it's nothing compared to the Potter fortune, but you did win it. The Minister was supposed to give it to you, last night, on the stage. However, when you launched your patronus at his two dementor guards, driving them away, and then screamed and kicked the man, he obviously forgot about it."
"Huh!" snorted Harry. "He's damned lucky he curled up the way he did. What I really wanted to do was kick him hard enough up between his legs to give him a pair of testicle-shaped earrings."
That earned him another few snickers while Hermione just reached out and slapped him on the arm. That she was blushing so much was probably the only reason she didn't berate him for it. Or, it might have been Daphne's 'lessons' were beginning to sink in. "The man brought dementors into a school with defenceless children," growled Harry. "He deserves far worse than what I did to him."
"Well, you got a lot of people thinking about what you said... or, rather, screamed at him," smiled Madam Bones. "A lot of people happen to agree with you. As such, I don't think you need to worry about whether or not you need to assemble the Potter alliance to get rid of him. I think that's now going to happen, anyway. It's more a matter of 'when', rather than 'if'."
"Then the man has a choice, doesn't he?" asked Harry. "Grow a bloody backbone or get shoved out of the way."
Thinking a bit, he asked, "I know I hit a couple of arriving Death Eaters, last night," he said. "I think I may have also killed at least one of them; possibly two. Were there any bodies left behind?"
Taking a sip of her coffee, Madam Bones shook her head. "No. But they might have been removed before my aurors arrived."
Hermione glanced at her watch and said, "We'd better go visit the Headmaster or he's going to come looking for us. And I, for one, do not want to allow him access in here again."
"Oh?" asked Madam Bones. "And why is that?"
"He placed monitoring charms in here and in our bedrooms," she replied. "He used a listening charm affixed to the wall of the alcove outside to find out what the password was, and used it while we were away for the Christmas break to get in here to place them."
"How did you find out about them? And how do you know it was him?" asked the Head of the DMLE, all business.
"Well, he clearly instructed Professor Whittaker, our door guardian, not to tell anyone he had come in," explained Hermione. "However, he did not instruct the Professor not to tell us who hadn't been in. Then it was just a matter of excluding the likely suspects and confirming by asking if the Headmaster had not been in."
Madam Bones gave a very unladylike snort.
"Once inside, we then scanned the room and found a number of listening charms," said Daphne. "Instead of just removing them, with the help of the Weasley twins we then set up things to drive the Headmaster to utter distraction with what he heard."
"Oh?" asked Bones.
"The one in the alcove was overlaid with a charm to switch everything it heard with swear words," replied Hermione. "The one in here on the coffee table was overlaid with a charm to switch everything it heard with the appearance that, whoever was in here at the time, was plotting the murder of various members of staff."
As various adults began to scoff and snicker, Hermione continued, "The one in my room was overlaid with the sound of me singing a very annoying ditty called 'Hennery the Eighth'. It's a muggle ditty that goes on and on and on. And the melody gets into your head and just won't quit. And, over that was placed a silencing field so nothing else would be heard."
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