Work Text:
"But how did you break free?" Dumbledore blurted as Lord Black-Potter tapped his foot on the floor of the Headmaster's Office, waiting for Snape to show up already. "I had so many agents!"
Lord Black-Potter rolled his eyes. "Dumbledore, when you've built your entire career off of backstabbing, you should watch your own back from time to time." He checked his multi-faced watch and scowled. It was all very well and good that it cost the average Ministry worker's salary for a year, but what did that matter when he could hardly even read the bloody thing?
"What of Weasley and Granger? I bribed them from the start –"
"Weasley? You mean Ron?" Lord Black-Potter coughed nastily. "Dumbledore, when you select a boy specifically for his backstabbing potential, really consider putting him under a geas. Ron's been making up a load of rot and submitting it as his 'reports' since first year. He told me to thank you for giving him practice for Divination homework." He paused and raised an eyebrow. "Tell me – did you actually intend to ever pay him his 'salary', or did you intend for him to die a tragic but heroic death soon after the 'savior'?"
Dumbledore's scowling silence was answer enough. "Yes, Ron thought so. He finally got around to telling me about the whole mess once he clued in. Not the best bloke, Ron, but he does have a certain fondness for me – and an even greater fondness for his own hide."
"What about Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked with narrowed eyes. "I know she, at least, has proper respect for authority."
"She also has the social skills of an overripe tomato," snapped Lord Black-Potter. "I have it on good authority that she was desperately attempting to manipulate me all through our school years, but it flew straight over my head. Her idea of subtlety is to wait ten seconds before turning on the bossiness." He rolled his eyes. "At any rate, I bribed her with the Potter library. Doesn't hold a candle to the Black one, but, you know, I think the lunatic actually plans to read every single book in it. I expect to see her… somewhere around 2007."
Lord Black-Potter filed his fingernails. On second thought, Snape had alluded to moving Lily's grave so that he could dance the can-can on James Potter's grave without an ounce of remorse. The wise old greaseball might be a while. "What of Ginerva, by the way?" Dumbledore asked in an obviously-forced genial voice.
It took several minutes for him to stop laughing. "Dear Dumbledore: next time you pick a wife for me, don't grab the flaming lesbian," Lord Black-Potter said, wiping a tear away from his eye. "Honestly, you of all people don't have a gaydar? She went through several boyfriends, but once she grasped that it was less that none of the individual boys suited her than that boys in general didn't do it for her… Well, I hear she's somewhere in Switzerland with the Lovegoods these days. Pleasant enough girl once she loosened up, actually. She dumped a massive quantity of love potion into my lap, kissed me on the cheek, and then showed off truly impressive snogging abilities in front of her entire family. Not with me, obviously. I think Luna was a bit oxygen-deprived by the time she finished."
"And Molly did nothing about this?" Dumbledore asked through gritted teeth.
"Molly. Right. Let's see, Charlie moved to Eastern Europe to get away from her; Percy hasn't talked to anyone in his family for over a year; the Twins are sick and tired of her telling them that their own bloody company isn't a real job and they need to do something respectable; Ron formally dropped out of the entire Let's Control Harry program when he realized it wasn't even a safe sinecure; her precious daughter is one of those filthy dykes who's going to irretrievably ruin Wizarding society…" Lord Black-Potter rolled his eyes. "The 'Weasley matriarch' is on speaking terms on only one of her children. And it won't stay that way for long if she keeps making sneering comments about well, we all know how Frenchwomen are, don't we." He sighed. "Pity. She'd be a reasonable woman if she wasn't so damnably controlling. Rather like a certain Headmaster I know."
Dumbledore put on the face of The Imperious Headmaster Whom Even The Dark Lord feared. It was a rather impotent effort, considering that his wand had been taken, his phoenix had done a bunk, and the entire corridor outside his office was lined with Lord Black-Potter's supporters. "I am to believe that the Order has abandoned me?"
"You are to believe that the Order is a bunch of whoever you could scrape together and send off to their deaths for you, and you ought to know it," Lord Black-Potter snapped. "Some of them, like Kingsley, are genuinely competent, and have hassled my forces quite a lot. Others, such as Mundungus, have been placed in magical custody where they belong – not Azkaban, I'm not that brutal. And then there are cases like Mad-Eye Moody, who is finally receiving the treatment in St. Mungo's that he's needed for ages."
"Alastor well fulfills the adage of 'Even paranoids have enemies'," Dumbledore huffed. "He is not mad."
"He freaks out over trashbins he enchanted and managed to get captured by a starved, recently-Imperiused Azkaban-escapee," Lord Black-Potter said flatly. "The man isn't vigilant, he's miserably insane. Which you would perhaps know, if you weren't so unobservant that you were fooled for a year by said starved, recently-Imperiused Azkaban-escapee."
Dumbledore pressed his lips together. "Do I have no allies, then?"
"Let's see," Lord Black-Potter said, counting the options off on his fingers. "Your brother – turned forever against you by your godawful treatment of your desperately-ill baby sister, and I must say, you really deserved that broken nose. The love of your life – slowly dying of boredom in his own prison. Who put him there, again? Your students – left to shift for themselves against every ridiculous calamity that's befallen the school during your reign, and, let's be bloody frank, this place has begun to resemble Numengard during its active-experimentation-upon-prisoners phase more than a school. Your professors – sorely annoyed at the amount of psychological trauma, missed school days, and general bewilderment the students have incurred over the last few decades of your administration. Your Order–" He gave a bitter laugh. "The best of them died during the last war due to your incompetence, and I've covered the current roster. Your public following – soon to turn against you very thoroughly, aside from a few hardcore nuts, as soon as Rita Skeeter starts her magnum opus on your disastrous life. The Dursleys – about to face innumerable charges of child abuse and witch-hunting, and quite likely to spend the rest of their natural lives in Azkaban. Assuming that the Aurors can prevent them from being hexed to pieces by Concerned Citizens, that is. Dudley's already sprouted three tentacles of unknown origin, and I don't think it's something he ate."
"Aren't you forgetting someone?"
Lord Black-Potter paused, frowning. "Who?"
"Voldemort?"
Lord Black-Potter rolled his eyes and waved a hand. "Him? Not a hassle, Dumbledore. If you actually researched Death magic, rather than warbling about the wonders of The Next Great Adventure and actually hiding with your head under the covers because you can't stand the memories of how you and your ex-boyfriend used to bond over fairy tales, you'd know Magic has a disposal mechanism for those who try to outwit Death. Last I saw Voldemort, he was screaming hysterically as he fled from three great black dogs. After they'd already made a meal of his pet snake, of course. Another black dog was seen phasing through the door of the Lestrange vault, despite the best efforts of all goblins to halt its progress, a second paid a visit to the Black household, a third spooked a few Hogwarts students when it bolted down the hallway and took a hard left into the Room of Hidden Things, and a fourth was sighted by Muggles nearby a hut at the outskirts of Little Hangleton." He rubbed at the headband covering his forehead, wincing. "Oh, yes, before you ask? They got that one, too. That dog had the courtesy to bring me back after it was done chewing on my forehead, by the way. Did an amazing job, actually. Good as new. You couldn't even tell I used to have a scar." He sighed sentimentally. "I think it might have been Sirius," he said with a fond smile. "He woofed at me and licked my face before – going back to wherever Grims come from."
"You are not honestly telling me the whole matter was that simple," Dumbledore insisted through his teeth. Lord Black-Potter banged a fist on the desk.
"Yes, it was, you stupid ponce! We could also have used Fiendfyre, which would have annihilated Voldemort quite handily and his Horcruxes be damned, but I decided to do a thorough job of it!" He stood up, seething. "That had better be Severus," he muttered as a knock rang out against the door.
And, indeed, the Potions Master swept in a moment later. "Unless your… experiments at the cutting edge of fashion now include matching your face to your robes, Dumbledore," he said silkily, "I assume Mr. Potter has informed you of all that has transpired."
"Lord Black-Potter," the young wizard corrected. Snape smacked him on the back of the head.
"Don't let your titles go to your head. I don't care how many vaults you have, you will always be snotty young Mr. Potter for me." Harry grumbled. Snape pointed his wand at Dumbledore. "As for you – that seat is no longer yours. Kindly vacate it or be moved by force."
"Severus!" Dumbledore protested, forcing a final crocodile tear. "Even you?"
"Even me? After you used me for over a decade and intended to discard my reason for following you like a bin of moldy newt's eyes the moment he was no longer of use to you?" Snape made a sound of disgust. "Just be grateful that the secret ballot came down in favor of your standing trial, and not of simply hurling you off the Astronomy Tower and being done with it. I can assure you that my vote was something quite different."