Chapter 61 - Reactions

The following week after the revelations was busy one for Hogwarts and the magical world.

At Hogwarts, every day the great hall was bombarded with loud howlers from enraged parents to the professors for putting their children at risk when it was totally unnecessary. The professors mainly Dumbledore and McGonagall spent most of their time in the great hall burning these howlers.

The huge number of complaints from parents forced the governors of Hogwarts to act and they decided to agree to the punishments recommended by Madam Longbottom and Lord Malfoy.

Professor McGonagall had to step down from the Head of Gryffindor post and Professor Babbling, the Ancient Runes professor was given the role. McGonagall was also warned to make sure that she did her job properly from now onwards or else she will be fired from the Deputy Headmistress post. She was also told that she would also lose the chance to become the Headmistress of Hogwarts if anymore complaints against her were brought to the board.

Hagrid was distraught when he learned that the governors decided to ban him from ever taking up a professor post at Hogwarts. I thought that it was a fair decision since Hagrid was never suited for the post. In the canon the substitute COMC professor was far better than him. He should just leave Hogwarts and join the Dragon reserve Charlie works at. He would love that job. Currently his job at Hogwarts was to act as an errand boy for Dumbledore.

I learned that Hagrid helped in removing Fluffy from the castle when the Ministry promised him that they will take him to a magical beast reserve and not kill it. This was good since the loss of Fluffy along with the other things would have destroyed his spirit.

Due to there being a lot of Dumbledore supporters in the Hogwarts board of governors, Dumbledore was not punished by them. To appease the parents of the students they decided to give Dumbledore a warning and told him that if anything dangerous happens at Hogwarts again due to him neglecting his duties, he will be removed from the castle.

The Wizengamont also had a lot of Dumbledore sympathizers and people owing Dumbledore favours so he was not punished there too. They also gave him a similar warning and told him the next time they will be forced to act and his past reputation will not give him any favour when that happens.

The international community was the only one to act to punish Dumbledore. When the revelations in the Prophet spread to other parts of the world, the international magical community was horrified. They knew the true value of the philosopher stone and how many dark wizards had the dėsɨrė to own one to prolong their lives. They clearly knew the amount of danger Dumbledore had put the children at Hogwarts in by housing the stone there. Add to the fact that Dumbledore was not seen as a great person or a Merlin reincarnate outside Britain, they had no problem in criticising him for his actions.

The many Dumbledore haters in the ICW used this opportunity to call an emergency ICW meeting and in that meeting Dumbledore was removed from the ICW governing body with an overwhelming majority of the members agreeing to the decision. The French representative to the ICW replaced Dumbledore as the new Supreme Mugwump.

In the end Dumbledore got away with losing only the international reputation which I don't think mattered to him too much. His attention was always focussed on Britain and he did not care what happened elsewhere. So in a way he gained extra free time from the punishment that he could use productively and to regain his lost reputation.

Dumbledore's first action after the busy week of meetings was apologising to the students for putting them in danger which he did in the great hall before the entire student body. He said that he must not have been in the right mind and did not think clearly while agreeing to help the Flamels in their time of need. He thought that the stone being with him would have deterred all dark wizards from going after it and hence no student would have been put in danger. He apologised and told that he had learned his lesson and will make sure that it does not happen again and Hogwarts remains a safe haven of learning.

Most of the students bought his act and the undecided students were forced to think that way due to the efforts of many Dumbledore's vocal supporters in different houses. The incident was also heavily publicised in the papers and people decided to forgive him since it was a foolish mistake that everyone makes once in a while. They thought that Dumbledore deserved a second chance.

The stunt by Dumbledore worked and the numbers of daily howlers drastically decreased until there were none bringing Hogwarts back to its normal routine.

While all this was going on, I decided not to act and just focus on my studies. All I wanted to do was create some doubt in everyone's heart and not ruin Dumbledore's image completely. I had a lot of material which I could release to the world that would make him want to commit suicide. But doing that would drastically alter the timeline which I did not want.

My plan was to alter things slowly and ruining reputations until both Dumbledore and Voldemort had only their devoted followers left with them. Even after all my revelations if both of them still had followers then those followers were unredeemable and needed to die as well for the betterment of magical Britain. This would make sure that I can end this war with the very little amount of bloodshed. I will let those two sides fight among themselves while everyone else was protected.

I will force people to think on their own and slowly remove their sheep mentality. This was something that must be done before actions could be taken to bring in new ideas and bring the magical community into the 21st century.

So for now I will let him manipulate things while secretly ruining his plans. This way moew safe and more fun.