A Scoundrel's Staycation Ch. 57 (Harry Potter AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Harry usurps control of the Wizengamot.

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As the ritual challenge begins and their magic clashes, the first few seconds are just the two of them. It takes time, albeit not much of it, for the power of the rest of the Wizengamot to reach the daises, after all.

In those handful of moments, its incredibly obvious that Harry has Augusta entirely beat. He’s so much more powerful than her that it’s not even funny. Her face becomes strained and her lips thin out as her wrinkles pull a bit taut. She braces herself against his strength, weathering the storm of magical power being sent her way as she waits to be reinforced.

Of course, they’d both already known that he outclassed her in power. Harry couldn’t have broken her connection to her own wards or frozen her in place for as long as he did if he didn’t have quite a lot more magic than she did. As such, the Longbottom Matriarch doesn’t look all that surprised… merely determined.

And as those first few moments pass, more power starts to come in from the rest of the Wizengamot. It becomes Harry’s turn to brace himself as the witches of the all-female Wizengamot reinforce their Chief Warlock. It’s no less than he expected from most of them, to be fair. He was the ‘stranger’ here. He was the ‘other’. Even in the face of his accusations against Augusta, even with Alice Longbottom literally on his side… they’re still more inclined to believe one of their own over him.

Not every single witch sides with Augusta… but the vast majority do. Harry simply hadn’t gone out of his way to try and make that much progress with the women of the Wizengamot. He hadn’t even answered Lady Zabini’s letter yet, for instance.

In the end, the only two witches who side with him are Daphne Greengrass and Griselda Marchbanks. The older witch has a frown of concentration and consternation on her face, while Daphne is gritting her teeth. Both women are putting aside their affiliations to support him. In Daphne’s case, Harry isn’t all that surprised… she’d sworn he would always have a friend in her House for as long as she lived.

Griselda though… well, Harry must have left quite the impression on the old woman. More of an impression than he had thought.

Still, the three of them against the rest of the Wizengamot. A tall order, no? So what, Harry should just roll over and give up? Hah! Of course not! If he was going to do that, he would have just stayed home in the first place and let Augusta kick him out of the Wizengamot in absentia. No, fuck that… she’d made her bed. Now Harry was going to make sure she lay in it.

Calling upon more of his power, Harry watches Augusta’s eyes widen further and further as the matchup grows progressively more even with every passing second. The strain on Daphne and Griselda’s faces eases off as Harry takes on the lion’s share of the burden. As much as he appreciates their loyalty… this is his fight at the end of the day.

Alas, if only the rest of the Wizengamot saw it the way he did. Even as he begins to overwhelm them, the other witches of the Wizengamot continue to struggle against them. Whitened drawn lips, hands clutching at the arms of their chairs, they nevertheless remain banded together in support of Augusta Longbottom, fighting to stop what they likely see as a tyrant from taking over.

In the midst of them all is the core of their power, the only reason Harry hasn’t already ‘won’… Lady Slytherin. The veiled woman sits with one leg crossed over the other, her hands resting casually in her lap. Unlike her fellow witches, she looks entirely unbothered by this entire affair.

However, Harry knows better. While he’s not supposed to be able to, he can perceive the exact makeup of the power he’s up against all the same. The vast majority of his opposition right now is coming from Lady Slytherin. She’s at least as powerful as Voldemort if not more so.

The mystery surrounding the woman needles at Harry more than ever before and he decides then and there that she will be his priority after this. Finding out her identity, figuring out why she feels different from last time, and learning her true motivations… he won’t stop until he’s uncovered every last thing there is to know about her.

First though, he has a battle to win. And for all that Lady Slytherin is backing Augusta to the hilt… it’s still not enough. Harry smiles grimly as he calls upon even more of his power. Where before they were like two waves crashing back and forth over one another, Harry allows the veritable ocean of magic within him to spill forth.

Even among fellow Harry Potters, he’s always been special. The Master of Death… and the only Master of Death among Harrys that he’s ran into so far. The others either never gather the Deathly Hallows or they give them up for some reason or other. Harry has never truly understood why, but if there’s one thing he’s confident in… it’s his power. So much power that he doesn’t even know what to do with it most of the time.

But here? Now? Against a corrupt old woman clinging to authority so she might abuse it for her own ends? Harry knows exactly what to do with his power. And so he swallows their wave with his ocean, ending the challenge quite decisively in one fell swoop as he utterly overwhelms even their greatest effort against him.

The twin daises he and Augusta have been standing on thrum so loud its almost deafening, until it becomes a concern whether even they can contain the magic being bandied about. And then, as suddenly as it all started… it ends.

The daises quiet down. The chamber falls silent. For a long moment, nobody moves, nobody breathes, nobody speaks. And then… a flash of magic as Augusta’s robes transform right before their eyes. The robes of her old station, that of Chief Warlock, vanish to be replaced by her normal attire.

At the same time, Harry’s own clothing undergoes a change in the opposite direction and he’s suddenly clothed in the robes of the Chief Warlock. His ascension is undeniable. His triumph is unquestionable. And as he steps off the dais and makes his way to the Chief Warlock’s podium to take his rightful place, Harry knows… he’s terrified every woman in the room.

Even Daphne and Griselda are looking at him a little differently now. Despite Daphne feeling his power once before with the ritual to cure her sister, she still looks a little taken aback. Likely because this time around, she felt the violence much more keenly as his magic clashed with the magic of his opponents. Astoria’s blood curse, he’d simply eradicated. Here, he had positively dominated.

Standing at the podium, Harry feels the weight of his new position settle on his shoulders both metaphysically and metaphorically. He is the Chief Warlock now… an undeniable fact that nobody in the room can do anything about. After all, he had just used their method for removing him to pointedly show them they didn’t have the power to do so.

The only way a Chief Warlock could be removed from the Wizengamot was by challenging them and stripping them of their post and then calling for a vote to expel them from the magical governing body. Harry had neatly sidestepped Augusta’s ability to do the latter by doing the former and effectively making himself untouchable.

Of course… now that he was here, Augusta was vulnerable to the exact same thing. She could be removed from the Wizengamot by a majority vote at any time now that she was no longer Chief Warlock. And yet… Harry knew better. Given just how many witches had fought against him, he knew full well that trying to hold a vote to have Augusta removed was more likely to fail than not.

Instead, looking down at Augusta as she remains standing on her dais looking a little lost, Harry finally speaks, cutting through the oppressive silence that has fallen over the chamber.

“Take your seat, Lady Longbottom.”

Augusta flinches back as if struck, her eyes unconsciously going to the Longbottom Seat, which she obviously has not used in years while she occupied the position of Chief Warlock. For a moment she looks like she wants to argue, to rail against the ‘injustice’ of what has been done… but she was at the forefront of the ‘battle’ they just had.

Lady Slytherin might have supplied the power needed to make the fight take as long as it did but it was Augusta who stood on the frontlines and felt the true depth of Harry’s magic in full. And he can tell that even more than their encounter in her home; this experience has shaken her to her core.

Her shoulders slump and her head lowers, leaving her looking much more like the frail old woman she’s supposed to be as she carefully and slowly makes her way over to her seat and sits down without another word.

Alice, watching from the defendant’s section still, scowls a bit as she glares at Augusta the entire while. But she also doesn’t raise a fuss. In the end, Alice’s priority is not Augusta… it’s Bellatrix and her mistresses. It’s finding who killed her husband and son and making them pay, along with making Bellatrix pay for driving her and Frank insane.

To that end, she doesn’t really care about Augusta anymore, save for the woman’s slander and lies. And now that she’s been shut down… well, the problem is dealt with.

Of course, while Harry knows he cannot remove Augusta from the Wizengamot entirely today, that does not mean he is completely powerless. The Chief Warlock has quite a lot of authority in fact, and there are some things he can do without needing to put it to a vote. Such as…

“As your new Chief Warlock, I have but one single decree to make.”

His eyes sweep across the chamber, causing witch after witch to tense up as they clearly imagine the worst from their new ‘tyrant’ of a leader. Finally though, Harry settles his gaze on the one woman in the room who he can’t lock eyes with.

“After today, this chamber will no longer host members who insist upon hiding their true identity from their peers. No masks, no hoods, no veils. No disguises of any sort will be allowed within the Wizengamot any longer. All of us deserve to know exactly who we are dealing with at all times.”

Dozens of witches look to Lady Slytherin at that. Even if Harry wasn’t staring directly at her, it would be incredibly obvious just who he was targeting with this decree. Unfortunately for her and any of her supporters, they cannot stop him from doing this. Dress code within the Wizengamot itself is one of the many things the Chief Warlock is allowed to modify without input from the rest of the governing body.

There’s a pregnant pause… and then Lady Slytherin rises to her feet, turns, and steadily walks out of the chambers without saying a word. Harry watches her go, eyes narrowed as he studies her back profile. That feeling of wrongness from before only grows, but he’ll figure out why that is in a bit.

For now? Harry looks to the rest of the Wizengamot and doesn’t bother hiding his disappointment and contempt in many of them.

“This session is over. You are all dismissed.”

They all file out after that, even Alice when he gives her a nod. Some of them throw him backwards glances as if they’re afraid he’s going to attack them from behind or something though. It’s a tad ridiculous… he’s already proven that he wouldn’t need to sucker punch any of them. Even if he gave them all hours of prep time, they would still fall before his might.

Ugh, that sounded like something a Dark Lord might say. At least he’d only thought it rather than said it out loud. So cringe. Regardless, once everyone is gone and only Harry remains… well, he’s not about to let an opportunity like this go to waste, is he?

Pulling out the Elder Wand, Harry uses his new authority as Chief Warlock to completely lock down the Wizengamot Chamber. No chance he’s going to allow anyone to try to assassinate him while he works. Then, he casts his favored recall spell, looking back on the events of this meeting.

More specifically, he spends a long time studying Lady Slytherin in all of her obfuscated glory, trying to decide exactly what felt ‘off’ about her. Eventually, he pushes the recall spell back further, to his last Wizengamot Session, the one where he’d died for a time to carbon monoxide poisoning.

He studies this Lady Slytherin as well and the dissonance grows. Finally, Harry brings up both moments at the same time with the recall spell. It’s a bit trippy of course, with two sets of every single member of the Wizengamot overlaying themselves and glitching in and out of their own bodies.

But Harry focuses purely on the two versions of Lady Slytherin. Around them, many of the other members of the Wizengamot sometimes meld so perfectly with their other selves as to appear as one woman. And yet, despite Lady Slytherin being one of the stillest and least likely to fidget, that never happens. And not because she never assumes the same pose between the first meeting and the second.

No, rather, as the two copies of Lady Slytherin overlay each other in what should be perfect synchronicity… they simply don’t. Because Harry realizes at long last… they aren’t the same person.

Lady Slytherin is not one witch. She’s at least two. And Harry… Harry knows this means something big. He knows there’s something here to be uncovered at long last.

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11LL7BAv4VMYswcyWTZaDGAEG7YDTHLGi7CeJOE4EFZk/edit?tab=t.0