Disclaimer - I don't own anything. As the corporations say these days, you will own nothing & be happy. I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or Disney or any of its characters. With that out of the way, let's goooo!
Hogwarts
–Damian Hawthorne–
Looking at a smiling and not insane Sirius was very relieving for him, as that meant he hadn't just messed things up, which was not always a given when it came to any action he took based on his meta knowledge. The world seemed to have an idea when he did something based on knowledge he should not have, and then, seemingly simple tasks turned into complicated messes that further deterred him from taking any major steps using his knowledge.
Quite a nifty system Fate had up and running, he must say. Or maybe it was just the world functioning as intended, and he was just making things up about an entity with an imaginary interest in his life, when, by all means, he hadn't done much to step on her toes.
Maybe he will in the future? Actually, how does Fate actually perceive time? Was it like Dormammu, where time didn't actually flow for them, but they could peer into time like it was a different stream, giving them the ability to perceive any point in time, all at once? Or was it like a slightly advanced alien, with long lifespan and a time related ability, allowing them to peer ahead or behind in time, but with the caveat of always coming back to live in the present?
Or was it like the sight granted to the Sorcerer Supreme by the Eye of Agamotto, where they get dominion over viewing Time through the Time Stone, but even with that, they were bound by human perceptions and had to livethrough the timelines, aging them, not physically but mentally. It was the same reason why the Ancient One could compete with horrors that lived outside of time despite being a squishy mortal. Her body might only be mildly enhanced by Sorcery and kept alive by a steady flow of Dark Juice from Dormammu, but her mind was truly formidable, having lived through countless timelines to become what she is today.
He wagered that she was, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of years old, if not a million years old. After all, parsing through millions of timelines, even if you spent only a minute there, added up fast. She had a lot of time miles racked up, one could say.
Meanwhile, as he had promised to Sirius, they could certainly do something about his wrongful detention. Now, his destruction of Azkaban without doing the public groundwork and raising questions about the whole detention process had accelerated a few things. A bit of an oopsie on his part, but nothing he couldn't solve.
See, he intended to seed the doubt of Sirius' sentencing in the public mind a bit ahead of time, so the topic remained fresh in the public's mind, and so the Ministry couldn't just sweep this all under the rug, but since the Wakandans spooked him into destroying the prison earlier than he intended to, the Ministry had done what it did.
Processed the documents.
Slowly, as was expected, but they were definitely going to get it done soon, and once they had declared Sirius dead officially and legally, the process to get his name cleared was going to become infinitely harder. He already made it kind of difficult when he killed everyone else and left Sirius alive. There were definitely going to be some pointed questions when Sirius turned up alive.
His recent infamy as the destroyer of important Government Infrastructure was only going to add to the pain, though the recent Troll incident might mask things a bit. Lucius, if he was as smart as he thought the man to be, will make sure that the paperwork goes through, but not in an overt manner. It will be subtle.
He will, for sure, not involve the Minister himself in sensitive matters such as this. Cornelius might act oblivious at times, but he knew for sure that he walked a thin line, and upsetting and appeasing any single part could lead to his downfall. He would most certainly love something he could lord over Lucius, something to keep as backup against the slimy Death Eater who had not just escaped the clutches of the law but had successfully built up his family name's reputation once more.
The other Death Eaters might have escaped jail time, but the entire Magical Britain knew of them and what they did. They had not escaped the Jail of Social Justice. Lucius, on the other hand had managed to become a respectable figure in the Magical Society. Someone who could make a comeback like that would never make the mistake of giving Cornelius important ammunition like his son getting a hold of the Black Fortune if a single person was declared legally dead.
As Sirius was in Azkaban and his will was non-existent, the Black Fortune was going to fall into the hands of the closest heir apparent anyway, which was Draco, but that would only happen once Sirius died, in prison. Now that the man was dead, it only served to hasten the process.
With that in mind, he began writing a letter, with some rather juicy details, to pass on to a certain Beetle who lived and breathed controversy, and something on this scale was bound to get her attention. Well, if the information itself did not motivate her, he had more than enough means to get her to do whatever he wanted.
As he finished writing down the letter, he paused and leaned back in his chair, thinking of a different angle to get things done.
Dumbledore.
Theoretically, the man was one of the reasons why Sirius languished in prison for as long as he did, since he considered inaction an action on its own, but Dumbledore's perception in his mind had changed a lot, and maybe, just maybe, it might be logical and downright helpful to get the man involved first?
But how would Dumbledore go about the whole thing, and help Sirius get the legal issues solved if it was clear for the entire world to see that the only reason Sirius had survived was because the Giant Killer wanted him to.
Ugh. Him and his paranoia.
Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to write a letter, explaining his thought process about the prison and the kind of background research he did to justify his actions. They certainly wouldn't be enough for Dumbledore's morals, but they were enough for him.
The fact that Sirius didn't get a chance to defend himself, his mental state obviously not conducive to a trial, with the rushed transfer to Azkaban, and the lack of evidence collected from the crime scene.
Even with all of that, he knew it was not going to be enough. All of that was circumstantial at best. The only way to get concrete information to Dumbledore was to get Pettigrew, the rat.
Unfortunately, he was not with Ron at Hogwarts. He'd checked it very early on in their semester. He wanted to get his hands on the rat and keep him handy for evidence, but it would seem that the world's changes, especially when it came to Hogwarts and its extensive ward network, had foiled his plans.
He'd overheard Ron talking about it one day, about Scabbers running away from home and coming back after Ron had left for Hogwarts.
It would seem that even Pettigrew knew that it was dangerous to enter Hogwarts. He looked up at the clock mounted on the ceiling, an odd position certainly, but oftentimes he found himself looking straight up, and having something to look at helped, which is why he knew he only had two hours at most before he had to return home.
He looked at the letter, at the details, at the time, at the Weasley Home address he had on the files he had collected and updated meticulously over the years, and made up his decision.
Adding one final line to the letter he intended to send to Dumbledore, he closed it up before disappearing from his office, appearing in the Portal room before disappearing with a smile once more.
Time to catch a rat.
As always, you can read ahead(upto 12 chapters) and support me on Patreon. Your support and patronage are what make all this possible. So, drop a sub if you can. It would be pretty awesome of you and help me out quite a bit.
My Patreon - IdleMuse