Chapter 769 - 769: 0769 The Changes

Alastor Moody, Placed on Probation!

The news broke the moment the Easter holidays ended, and it swept through the entire school in no time.

Because Mad-Eye Moody was nothing like Karkaroff, Hagrid, or Trelawney before him.

Beyond his post as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, he was also a High Inquisitor appointed by the Ministry alongside Umbridge. Last term, Umbridge had made her first bid for power, eager to make her mark and Mad-Eye had ground her straight into the dirt in a single stroke. She hadn't recovered since.

This term, Umbridge had started out keeping a low profile. But no one had expected her to open low and close high like this in a stunning reversal.

When she and Mad-Eye Moody were first appointed High Inquisitors together, almost everyone had assumed she was the afterthought, the one worth watching being Mad-Eye.

No one had imagined she would come out of the gate with one bold move after another. And strangely enough, unlike her mindless overreach last year, these moves actually won her the approval of no small number of students and parents.

Never mind that Karkaroff, with his prior record, drew near-unanimous condemnation from staff and students alike.

Even Hagrid's friend Ron, and Trelawney's devoted followers Parvati and Lavender—all of them had, sometime after those two professors were placed on probation, come around to thinking Umbridge had handled this one well.

Of course, even so, Mad-Eye held his own—searching Umbridge's office in full public view, without a shred of hesitation.

No one had ever imagined that a man who'd seemed to be riding high not long ago could fall so suddenly and so far.

But once people learned the full story, the school fell silent all over again.

First, Mad-Eye Moody's record was obvious for everyone.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it was dazzling.

His reputation as the greatest Auror of his generation was well earned—more than half the inmates in Azkaban owed their sentences to him.

But at this particular moment, what drew far more attention was his conduct after retirement.

Paranoia, seeing Dark wizards in every face, convinced day after day that Death Eaters were about to ambush him…

And remember—at that point in time, the one whose name could not be spoken hadn't even returned yet!

Of course, once Voldemort made his forceful comeback, Moody's performance turned "eye-catching" enough in its own right.

On the night of the Triwizard Tournament, he'd distinguished himself thoroughly, striking down two Death Eaters without mercy.

That incident had stirred up its share of controversy in the wizarding world, but it wasn't the crux of the matter.

After all, the ones who'd appeared alongside Voldemort that night were genuine Death Eaters—the two sides stood naturally opposed, so killing one or two of them was, in its way, understandable.

But some of what he'd done since arriving at Hogwarts as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was harder to swallow.

It began, naturally, with the incident at Hogsmeade—though since that had little to do with Hogwarts itself, the ones who'd suffered were simply the poor souls mistaken for Death Eaters.

That matter had stirred up some controversy at first, but the Ministry had eventually smoothed it over.

No one had expected a new complication to rise recently.

Among the wizards Moody had once handled, one of them, by the look of it, wasn't quite right anymore. The man's family took it as lingering damage from that earlier incident and brought their complaint to the Ministry.

As it happened, this particular family had a bit of standing in the wizarding world, so this time the matter couldn't simply be buried.

On top of that, when Moody had gone on casting the Imperius Curse on students himself, as he always had, so they could practice resisting it, something had gone wrong—several students, even after class had ended, remained stuck in a kind of dazed, mindless state.

Blank and unresponsive, they would do whatever anyone told them, no matter what was said.

At first, everyone had simply found it amusing.

But when someone joked that a student should jump off one of Hogwarts's towers—and the student actually went and did it without hesitation—everyone was badly shaken. In the end nothing had come of it, but there was no question the incident itself was serious.

Given all that, not even the Ministry could hold the line any longer.

Mad-Eye Moody was stripped of his post as High Inquisitor, and, like Karkaroff, Hagrid, and Trelawney before him, placed on probation.

In fact, his situation turned out to be even worse than theirs. Because he wasn't even allowed to remain at Hogwarts.

"Link by link, move by careful move—this is absolutely not something Umbridge is capable of pulling off," Sherlock said firmly. "She doesn't have the mind for it, and she certainly doesn't have the execution."

"Sherlock, do you mean—"

Having listened to Sherlock's analysis, Hermione and Harry both looked at him, tense.

What had happened to Moody left them with a nagging feeling that something was truly wrong.

"Remember what I told you before—that there's a deeply concealed criminal force at work."

Harry and Hermione both nodded.

"This is almost certainly his handiwork. That unknown enemy."

Sherlock said, coldly: "It's plain enough. He knows exactly that I exist—this is him showing me what he's capable of."

"If my deduction holds, this is only the beginning."

"Umbridge is nothing more than a piece he's pushed out onto the stage."

"There will be more moves to come."

"Sherlock, is he… really that formidable?"

"Very formidable," Sherlock said, his gaze heavy, though something like excitement flickered beneath it. "But he makes me feel rather glad, honestly—at last, an opponent worthy of the name."

And exactly as Sherlock had predicted—events suddenly seemed to lurch forward, as if someone had pressed fast-forward.

With Moody gone, Umbridge seemed to have lost her natural predator, and her presence swelled at once.

A set of regulations called the Hogwarts Code of Conduct began appearing, posted up in the common rooms of every House.

The Code of Conduct itself seemed harmless enough on the surface—merely a refinement of Hogwarts's existing rules and discipline.

But a few additional clauses, tacked on almost as an afterthought, were rather telling.

Beyond the existing system of Head Boy and Girl and prefects, a new Inquisitorial Squad was established, its members to be appointed directly by Umbridge in her capacity as High Inquisitor.

They held powers equal to those of the prefects, if not greater—docking points, handing out detentions, confiscating any contraband they liked. More significantly still, they could even dock points from the Head Boy, the Head Girl, and the prefects themselves.

And prefects, mind you, were forbidden from docking points from one another.

The Inquisitorial Squad had been established chiefly to enforce the Hogwarts Code of Conduct.

As everyone knows, enforcing any set of rules inevitably runs into the question of degree.

The very same infraction, handled a little harder or a little softer, amounts to two entirely different things.

And the members of the Inquisitorial Squad held precisely that kind of discretion.

Under these circumstances, a certain portion of the student body began swiftly gravitating toward Umbridge.

Slytherins made up the overwhelming majority of them.

At the same time, unsurprisingly, not a single Gryffindor—not one little lion—sat among the Inquisitorial Squad's ranks.

Before long, the jewels in Gryffindor's House point counter began plummeting at speed.

Under these conditions, the students naturally split into factions.

"Turn the masses against each other…"

When Harry and Ron had gone off to their final practice before the match, leaving only Sherlock and Hermione in the common room, he offered this assessment of the current state of affairs.

"It's always been an effective tactic. But even so, it's not something the old Umbridge could ever have managed."

"I don't think it fits her either… but does that mean there's truly nothing we can do right now?"

"There is. Harry can throw himself into winning the Quidditch Cup—that alone would claw back a good many House points and check this slide we're seeing."

"But—"

"And if he has energy to spare, he might also try reading Voldemort's mind."

"Sherlock, isn't that a bit too dangerous?"

"My dear Hermione, have some faith in Harry. Even Snape has agreed Harry no longer needs to keep taking Occlumency lessons."

"I always assumed that was because Harry wouldn't wear his mask, and that's why Snape stopped letting him come to class!"

"Well, that's part of it too, I won't deny it—but I'd suggest you take a look at this first."

As he spoke, Sherlock handed Hermione a copy of the Daily Prophet.

"Hm, this looks strange somehow—the layout's so plain… and wait, this date—why does it say tomorrow's date?"

Hermione stared at Sherlock in astonishment. Had time itself been crossed?

"Hermione, you've spotted the blind spot," Sherlock said, nodding with satisfaction. "This is a copy that hasn't officially gone to print yet. I obtained it early, naturally, through certain small methods of my own."

Sherlock's explanation made everything click into place for Hermione at once.

Improbable as the whole thing sounded, the moment she remembered it was Sherlock who'd pulled it off, it stopped sounding improbable at all.

But when she took in what the newspaper actually said, Hermione couldn't help a low gasp of shock.

There have been rumours of late that Minister Thickness and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, are at odds.

A representative for the Minister has confirmed that he met with Dumbledore recently, but declined to disclose the subject of their discussion.

Sources report that the High Inquisitor previously dispatched by the Ministry, Alastor Moody, has been relieved of his post for a range of reasons.

"He was simply unfit for the role. Keeping him in place any longer would have been irresponsible, both to the Ministry and to Hogwarts," said Undersecretary Umbridge—appointed to the post alongside Moody, and also Senior Deputy Minister—who added, "The Ministry intends going forward to press ahead with educational reform, and to deepen its exchange with Hogwarts still further."

Dumbledore has yet to offer any comment on the matter, though it's well known that since the moment the new Minister took office, the Ministry under Thickness has enjoyed something of a honeymoon with Hogwarts.

The Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter, was also seen visiting the Ministry on several occasions during the Christmas holidays; that, together with Thickness's markedly effective measures since taking office, has won him broad and enthusiastic support across the wizarding world.

Whether this meeting between Dumbledore and Thickness signals a coming rupture with Hogwarts—of the sort seen under former Minister Cornelius Fudge—remains to be seen.

When Hermione finished reading the passage under her breath, she looked up at Sherlock, her face plainly shocked.

"Dumbledore and Thickness, at odds with each other—Sherlock, is this real?"

"It's real," Sherlock said, nodding. "I wasn't there myself, but the matter has been confirmed. They genuinely came to a disagreement over something."

"How is that even possible? He only became Minister for Magic because Dumbledore threw his full support behind him!"

"It looks like a contradiction. It isn't necessarily one."

Next to Hermione's evident agitation, Sherlock seemed remarkably calm.

He held up three fingers:

"Taking this matter on its own, I can put forward three possible explanations.

"First: people change.

"Consider Cornelius Fudge, who only just left office.

"The way he came to be Minister for Magic mirrors, in more ways than one, how Thickness arrived at the same post.

"At the time, the first in line, Bartemius Crouch Sr., was disqualified once his son's identity as a Death Eater came out; the second in line, Albus Dumbledore, turned the post down; which left it to fall to Fudge, third in line.

"At the outset, Fudge genuinely had little confidence in his own abilities, and leaned entirely on Dumbledore's help to get by.

"But the longer he held the position, the more his confidence gradually grew.

"He still came to Dumbledore for guidance, but less and less often as time went on—which is only human nature, after all.

"The trouble is, he made one fatal mistake.

"His ability never actually grew to match the time he'd spent in office, yet he mistakenly came to believe that his competence was his own doing, rather than something the position itself had lent him.

"Or, to put it another way, he fell in love with the feeling of being Minister for Magic, and with everything that came with the post, and began favouring those so-called respectable families—the pure-bloods.

"And you've already seen how that turned out."

"You're saying Thickness might be the same way?" Hermione looked doubtful. "But it's barely been any time at all—Fudge took years before he—"

"Never try to test human nature, Hermione. Where human nature is concerned, time is never really the issue."

"All—all right, then. What's the second possibility?"

"He's under the Imperius Curse."

Under Hermione's startled gaze, Sherlock delivered his conclusion plainly, without dressing it up.

"In the wizarding world, that, ironically, is the easiest explanation of all to accept.

"The Ministry's recent changes have hardly come out of nowhere—there's a trail to follow, if you look for it.

"Do you remember what I told you last time?

"The Ministry has been infiltrated. No small number of people inside it have already fallen under the Imperius Curse, quietly funnelling information to Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

"The moment Thickness discovered it, he went straight to Dumbledore for help, and it took Dumbledore, Mad-Eye Moody, and Lupin—only just recovered himself—working together to put a stop to it.

"Is there any chance that Thickness himself was placed under the Imperius Curse right around that time?"

"There's absolutely a chance!"

Hermione nodded hard the moment she heard it—compared to the first possibility, this one was, if anything, easier to accept, though it was also considerably worse.

Just as she was turning that thought over, she saw Sherlock raise a third finger.

"But by comparison, the worst possibility of all is really the third one."

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