She thought about that for a few long seconds before she adopted a glum expression and asked, "Is that why some, like Malfoy, treat me so horribly?"
"That's part of it, yes," he replied. "But, Malfoy would still hate you, anyway. They've been raised on stories of muggleborns having somehow figured out how to steal magic from purebloods. Losing their magic scares the Hell out of them, so they hate muggleborns."
"But, that's just stupid," she frowned. "Where's their evidence?"
"No one ever said it was logical," he shrugged. "People hate what they fear, Hermione. The only way to fight that is to prove that muggles can't steal magic."
"That's impossible," she firmly stated. "You can't prove a negative."
"I know," he smiled. "That's why the issue has never been resolved."
She thought about that for a few moments before she sighed, "But, still... I almost forced you to kill Dobby by accident."
"No, you didn't," he disagreed.
She frowned and said, "But, Harry; you just got through convincing me that, if you'd freed Dobby, it would have led to him dying. And I almost forced you to free him."
"Yes, to the first part; no to the second," he replied. "You would have tried to force me to free to Dobby. But, there's no way I'd have done that."
Turning more fully to her he continued, "I knew the truth, Hermione. You might have continued to try to force me to release him; however, you'd have not succeeded. Actually, the only thing you would have succeeded in doing is, by pushing too hard, leading me to decide our friendship wasn't worth it and immediately terminating it."
Hermione looked back in near heart-stricken shock, unable to verbally form a word in response.
More softly he added, "I know it's going to take you a little while to come to grips with the new reality of just who 'Harry Potter' is, Hermione. And, I'm prepared to give you that little while. However... once again... I am not the Harry Potter you thought me to be. The quicker you come to an understanding of that the less problems you're going to face coming to an acceptance of that."
It was while Fudge was ordering the last of the packing during the early hours of the morning he was alerted by ward alarm to the attempted unauthorised entry of one Walden MacNair. Knowing the man was both a 'reformed' Death Eater and also on the 'payroll' of one Lucius Malfoy, Fudge was fully aware of what the very likely reason was of MacNair attempting to enter his, for the moment, home; especially during the early hours of the morning.
Against DMLE orders to remain under house arrest he immediately grabbed his secret and illegal portkey to his bolt hole, and portkeyed away. He'd much rather be a wanted man than a dead man.
Once he was at his bolt-hole home he'd owl 'that blasted Bones woman' why he took what action he did and hoped by Merlin she'd not charge him any further for it. At least, if she accepted his excuse, he'd at least not get the 'Wanted' tag applied to his name. He knew his order to have any escaped prisoners of Azkaban 'Kissed on Sight' was still on the books and he didn't want it to apply to him.
Dumbledore had spent the night in the DMLE holding cells 'knowing' he'd lost everything. He was so depressed over the whole incident he hadn't even thought to call his 'friend', Fawkes, to rescue him. He also had no idea his 'resident' spy and potions master was in the cell two down from him and also bemoaning his fate.
From what the boy had caused to be made public, besides him losing everything, apparently the goblins had discovered the truth about the monies and artefacts he'd removed from the boy's vault and had already recovered it all. His 'retirement fund' would have been stripped bare, as he knew there was less in it than the total he'd taken from the boy. It took a lot of money to bribe members of the School Board and the Wizengamot to make sure he stayed on as Headmaster, Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump. Through Fudge, Malfoy had been trying to wrestle those positions out of his grasp since that man ascended to the Head of House Malfoy on the (very suspicious) death of his father.
Now, even if he still had the gold available to him, he knew he'd not be keeping those positions. He'd now be Mister Dumbledore, once more. He'd not been Mister Dumbledore since well before the war with Grindelwald. Since the late 1920s he'd been at least ProfessorDumbledore. And that was seventy years ago.
There was nothing he could do about that. Young Harry had well and truly fooled him these past few years and, as attested by the questions the Bones woman had asked him during his second interrogation, had provided her even more evidence of his illegal acts through those blasted memories of his. He'd used his best skills at dissembling interlocution and she'd fallen for none of it. Every time he tried to lead her away from the truth by leading her to make false assumptions, his usual method, she'd simply demanded he directly answer her question or be ready to be dosed with Veritaserum. She allowed him no 'wiggle' room, whatsoever.
He'd miscalculated when he'd demanded to be released or charged, because she did just that charged him. It was only a couple hours earlier when she'd informed him his trial was already being arranged and he would not be released until that trial and, even then, only if they somehow found him innocent of all charges. Even he knew the chances of that currently rated at 'highly unlikely'.
In order to try and get some level of control of 'the message', he needed out and to be in contact with the media. That, though, was not going to happen. While he was being held in isolation people, especially the media, were in control of the information and were acting both without his guidance and ability to get ahead of things. As such he could not offer rebuttal.
It was maddening!
Over at Riddle Manor, the current hiding place of the recently 'partially reborn' Dark Lord Voldemort, said Dark Lord was trying to use his very undersized and weak arms to read that morning's copy of the Daily Prophet.
He had seen what was reported about the Potter boy's 'play' of the first task and couldn't make heads or tails of why he did it. It confused him as to the boy's motives and that was a situation he was uncomfortable with.
From the articles, the way Potter went about it demonstrated a very cunning Slytherin mindset. He had a firmly captive audience and, apparently, no time limit. And then used both that captive audience and unlimited time to utterly destroy the reputations of the senior staff of Hogwarts - especially that of that muggle-loving fool, Dumbledore the Minister of Magic himself, plus two Directors of Ministry departments.
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