The Protagonist System

After helping Harriet Potter out by being there for her and then giving her a makeover that let her feel confident, I had a general overview of what had happened in this version of Harry Potter. Unlike a lot of female versions I had seen, this one had looked more like the original Harry Potter instead of looking like a smaller version of Lily Evans.

That also probably explained why Severus Snape hated her so much, since she looked like her father. Little did he realize she had been humble and non-confrontational for the last three years, just because she didn't want to deal with the fallout or the consequences of sticking up for herself. Keeping her head down and avoiding conflict was something she had learned when she was a little girl and had carried over into her as a teenager.

She was 14 and had dealt with a lot of crap the last three years, since a female version going through the same things a boy had, seemed to be so much worse. Was it because she couldn't hide her emotions as much as a male Harry could? He had been really good at suppressing them and not reacting much when things went tits up. Harriet was not like that at all.

Still, since she was at school and dealing with her new appearance and showing off to the people that used to be her friends, I needed to handle a few things. My first visit was to the Ministry of Magic and I kind of repeated my trick with Gladys and the phone booth entrance, except I claimed I was Harold Peverell and was there to invite her to lunch and save her from the drudgery of her job.

The little badge popped out of the coin return and I laughed at it saying my name and that I was on a rescue mission. The booth descended and again I was met with Gladys and an Auror, except this time it was Nymphadora Tonks instead of Rufus Scrimgeor. When I remembered it was several years after Harriet had started school, it explained why Tonks was there instead. Rufus was much higher in the Ministry at this point in time.

“Whoa, there's two of you that needed a break from work? I feel so lucky!” I joked as soon as the door to the booth opened and both women blushed.

“N-no, it's still just me.” Gladys responded. “Auror Tonks was assigned to make sure you weren't here to do anything nefarious.”

I intentionally put a sultry look on my face and gave the pink-haired Auror a smirk. “Reaaalllly? You want her to join us and watch?”

That really made both of them blush and I had to laugh. It broke the tense atmosphere and they seemed to relax.

“I am only here to have a good meal with a good woman, with no strings attached.” I explained. “Maybe we could take a tour of the Ministry afterwards, now that we have been assigned an official escort?”

“I'm not sure she's allowed to...” The Auror started to say.

“Of course, Harold.” Gladys agreed and cut her off. “We can start right after we have a meal in the cafeteria.”

“Ah, you're not allowed to leave during the day. I understand.” I said and she nodded, so I offered her my arm. “Then lead the way, my dear. We can eat and you can tell me all about your day.”

Gladys looked happy and Tonks looked shocked. I was led to the elevators and Tonks entered behind us to stand at the back of the car to keep me in sight. I ignored this as I chatted with Gladys about what the cafeteria offered and I asked if they allowed people to cook and serve themselves.

The elevator operator took that as our destination and engaged the mechanism to get us moving.

My question sparked a lengthy conversation about the things the cafeteria staff could learn if they did allow others to submit recipes or showed them how to properly cook certain dishes that they always cooked improperly.

Even the elevator operator expressed an opinion and Tonks seemed surprised at how I had so quickly made others relax around me. In her thoughts, she felt that way as well and discreetly cast several diagnostic spells on herself to see if she was being influenced with magic or something. She wasn't, so the non-results kind of baffled her.

I told the elevator operator I'd bring him a snack when we returned and he gave me a huge smile and thanked me for being so thoughtful. Gladys led me to the cafeteria and Tonks kind of stayed near us but didn't crowd us, so it gave Gladys a feeling of protectiveness and a sense of privacy, so she pretty much laid her entire career on me.

Apparently, no one else had ever expressed any interest in her job and she kind of gushed everything out at the first opportunity she had to get everything off of her chest. I sympathized with her and told her the same thing I had told the other Gladys when work ethics had come up. Her job was essential for the running of the ministry and she should be proud she had been chosen to fill such an important role.

Tonks looked surprised at how Gladys responded to my positive reinforcement. The older woman sat up straighter and had a smile on her face and agreed that she did have an important job, even if it was usually boring and she barely had anything to do. I made the suggestion of taking some of the homeschooling courses and learning something she always regretted not taking at hogwarts.

That really made Gladys happy and she agreed, even if she didn't plan on taking the OWLs or NEWTs for it. We would stop in the education department on the tour and would look into it. When we finished eating, I grabbed a few little things that were easily edible and we went back to the elevator. The man inside accepted the snacks and tucked them away in his pockets, then took us up to the top floor.

The suspected the tour would be nearly identical to the one I had before, except the first stop we did was in the education department. While Gladys was keeping the receptionist busy, I walked around a little and then cast a notice-me-not on myself and spent a little bit of time doing my own thing right under their noses.

I slipped copies of Harry Peverell's OWLs and NEWTs results into the files, with the same dates I had received them, so they had been technically filed over a decade ago, which would explain why no one in the current department had seen them be filed or knew they were there.

I drifted back towards the front and saw Tonks looking around for something. I let the notice-me-not spell fade while I was behind her and she didn't notice. Gladys was handed her exam results and I saw that she had high marks in Charms and Herbology, then she started to reminisce about how much she had enjoyed working with plants back in school.

“While I'm here, I might as well get a copy of my own results.” I said and Tonks let out a squeak of fright and whipped around to glare at me. I just smiled at her.

“Name?” The receptionist asked me and looked amused at how Tonks had reacted, too.

“Harry Peverell.” I answered and tapped the visitor's badge on my robes.

The woman read it and let out a little snort and a giggle about me being there for a rescue mission. “I'll be right back.”

Tonks gave me a complicated look and then glanced at Gladys, then her thoughts made the connection. I really had rescued her from her drudgery job and she would be keeping herself busy by learning while she had so much free time while at work.

“Here we are. I just need a minute to copy it.” The receptionist said and opened the file, quickly read through the results, and froze. She shook her head and read it again, much slower this time, then she lifted her gaze from the parchment papers in front of her and stared at me.

“Just a summary is fine.” I said, saving her a little work.

“Y-yes, sir. Right away.” The receptionist said and licked a dicta-quill and then whispered to it to copy over my exam results.

Both Gladys and Tonks stared at the growing list of subjects and how many of them had accompanying NEWTs. They also saw that all of the scores were well above passing but not spectacular, so they turned their heads to give me a similar questioning look.

“A lot of them are make-up tests after I passed the core subjects.” I explained and they both nodded. A lot of people needed to take the make-up exams to fix their grades, especially the potential Healers and Aurors that needed a higher potions grade to be hired.

“H-here you go, sir.” The receptionist said an handed over the quite full piece of parchment paper with an official education department seal on it.

“Thank you very much, Veronica.” I said and tucked it away into my robes as I stored it.

“You know my name?” She asked, surprised.

I couldn't help respond as I always did when asked that. “I know everyone's name.”

That earned me three more stares and I laughed, which they wrongly assumed was me making a joke, since I was laughing at their reactions.

“Let's continue the tour.” Gladys said and tucked her own results into a pocket and I was led around through the rest of the ministry. Unlike the last time, I did not meet Amelia Bones or many of the other Aurors on duty. Apparently, they were too busy to entertain a visitor and had much better things to do.

I did not point out them losing out on a thousand galleon donation to their department because of it, though. I didn't want Tonks to hate me for not being treated like royalty by her fellow Aurors, which wasn't her fault. She was only just out of the Auror Academy training herself.

I did use a touch of clairvoyance power to make sure Sirius Black hadn't had a trial when we passed the records room and it was true. All that was there was his arrest and the order to send him to Azkaban, signed by the Minister, the Head of the Auror Department at the time, and the Chief Warlock. I thought about copying it, then shrugged. It wouldn't make any difference if I had it.

Albus knew Sirius wasn't guilty and didn't do anything about it, so trying to do it without him being onboard with it, would only result in showing Harriet how corrupted the current Ministry of Magic was. I was still going to do that of course, just so she could confront Albus about it and show how much hypocrisy the old man encouraged by never doing anything to stop it.

The Games and Sports department were actually saddened at their current situation, mostly because the Quidditch World Cup had been marred by a Death Eater attack and the current Tri-Wizard Tournament was tarnished by the Harriet Potter scandal and having an underage witch participating with legal adults.

The press was raking them over the coals for both things, and throwing blame around on everyone except where it actually belonged. I did not get any tickets or banners this time, so we moved on. We finished the tour in the atrium, just like last time, and I thanked Gladys for indulging someone she didn't know all afternoon and that I had a great time.

Gladys accepted my thanks and gave me her own. She had a renewed passion for what she actually wanted to learn and she wouldn't waste the opportunity I had given to her. Tonks stood behind her and off to the side, observing us and not saying anything.

I resisted commenting that Tonks didn't get a chance to see Gladys and myself in a compromising position, and instead apologized that she only had a fairly dry report to file with her boss later. She nodded and didn't speak as she pointed her wand up at the muggle entrance. The booth descended and we stepped back to wait for it.

Like the last time, I had spent a lot of time browsing through people's minds to see who had been bad and who needed to be dealt with before they did too much damage. I just had to decide if I wanted to arrange for their disappearance and leave evidence of someone else's involvement or if I should just make them go bye-bye and not worry about the lose ends.

My thoughts went to the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, whom was still busy sitting in his office and twiddling his thumbs. His undersecretary was the vile Deloris Umbridge and she had cashed in nearly all of the blackmail she had to gain her current position, at the cost of several people's careers.

This included the life of her father, the half-blood janitor. He would have ruined her fake reputation as a pureblood and had to be disposed of before her lies could be exposed. It was proof that she would do or say anything to get her way and that was not the kind of person that needed to be in power at the Ministry of Magic.

As the booth rose and I waved goodbye to Gladys and Tonks, I decided Fudge would be running off with his Undersecretary and stealing Ministry funds, after he had cleaned out his bank vault and hidden stash of bribes, and they would disappear to the Caribbean Islands.

I was also pretty sure that was where Sirius Black had been hiding out, too. I didn't bother checking, since I knew he was already on his way back to Britain after Harriet's letter about being entered into the Tri-Wizard Tournament. When he did eventually show up here in a few months, I'd make sure he had a comfortable time living in the cave near Hogsmeade.

Mind you, that was assuming it wasn't Albus Dumbledore himself that had arranged it. If it was, then he wanted to keep Sirius in a weakened state and making bad decisions, which would also keep Harriet's personal life as the mess that it was. It shouldn't have happened, not if any of the adults around her had been competent.

That thought made me laugh, since the last thing most wizards and witches had was competence. I mean, anyone with a lick of common sense would have seen how much Harriet's life sucked and they should have stepped in to deal with it, except they all assumed someone else was and that everything was fine. The problem was, no one bothered to check if that was true.

Albus himself, in many iterations, admitted he knew he was sentencing Harry to ten dark years, then he claimed he cared too much for him and tried to be hands-off as much as possible to give him a childhood to enjoy.

It was such a cop-out, especially with the fake tears, that I usually transfigured him into Harry Potter permanently and did the same thing to him I had done to that being I made into a snotling. I would send them into one of the many terrible Harry Potter worlds and they would be killed practically every day and would reform and heal back to normal.

Once I was out of the phone booth and had changed my clothes to muggle ones, I stepped from the muggle entrance of the Ministry of Magic and near Privet Drive. I checked the house and no one was inside, so I went invisible and flew up into the air and thought about the best way to handle things.

After a moment, I chose a similar fate to what the Ministry of Magic used as an excuse and used Legend's laser powers to shoot the house and simulated a gas explosion. The modest two storey house completely disappeared in a blast so huge that the sonic boom it created had shattered every window in the neighborhood.

I whistled in awe as the fire left behind pretty much blew itself out as the pressure wave dissipated and there was nothing left to burn. “That felt surprisingly cathartic.”

Thankfully, there was nothing inside that Harriet had wanted to save, so I didn't feel guilty about destroying the only connection she had with the place. The blood wards were also obliterated, which was funny. I hadn't intended harm on anyone that lived there, so they didn't activate; but, I could easily destroy the house without any kind of retribution or magical backlash.

I flew down to hover above the concrete slab the house used to sit on and it was shattered into many pieces and had a huge crater in the center that also went several feet into the ground. It would need to be dug up and replaced, assuming the insurance company covered it. There was literally nothing left for the investigators to investigate, so there was no telling what they would decide about it.

With that handled, I flew off through the air to head to the next place I had to take care of. I doubted I could do the same thing, not with all the magical protections it would have. Then again, maybe I didn't have to destroy it. I could magically evict the current owners and move in, after transfiguring it into a more appropriate style, of course.

It wasn't like the Minister of Magic was going to be using it anymore. I was also sure his wife would love getting half of his secret stash to run off to the tropics herself. It was a lot of people's dream destination for a reason, after all.

That made me wonder if the keys I had in my inventory would work on the vaults in this world. I'd have to ask to see Harriet's key to find out if the one she had matched the same magical signature as the one I had. If it did, I had 33 vaults to empty before I took care of Voldemort's inner circle of Death Eaters.