The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. The next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.
"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There's talent, oh my goodness, yes — and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting. … Such a pity that I can't actually place you today."
Harry blinked, not that it did much with his vision blocked. "What do you mean you can't place me?"
The response obviously came from the hat speaking, instead of whispering in his ear as the effect that had blocked outside sound stopped working. "Your guardian has not granted you permission to attend, and until they do, you cannot be sorted."
"Er..." he thought, considering how much Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had wanted him to not attend.
"Not your family, your magical guardian. In fact, now that I've sat upon your head, I will need your current guardian to be brought before me before I can sort you."
"I have no clue who that even is."
"You can't consciously recall the memory, but it sits in your head anyway. Your magically-sworn godfather, Sirius Black, is your guardian."
It sounded like a large percentage of the hall had gasped at that, and he had no clue why.
A smaller table had come into existence off to the side at some point, and Harry was placed there for the rest of the sorting. The feast then started properly, and a diminutive professor introduced as Professor Flitwick had moved over to join him at the table after a hushed discussion with Professor McGonagall. Something had then been done that prevented anyone else from hearing Professor McGonagall having an obvious row with the Headmaster.
Over the course of dinner, Harry had learned quite a bit about his family and the magical world. Details nobody had yet told him about his parents, what had supposedly happened the night they'd died, and why some of that was outright impossible in light of the new revelations. At the same time, it was likely to be several days to a couple of weeks before anything could be done. But the professor promised that it wouldn't negatively impact Harry's lessons, even if he couldn't attend normal classes. Tutors, staff and students alike, would be helping him learn about the magical world and keep up with his lessons while this whole thing was worked out.
When the food finally vanished, the Headmaster informed them of several things before the students were sent off to bed. Professor Flitwick held Harry back at first, the two of them actually the last two out of the Great Hall. They went up a couple of floors to what the professor referred to as 'guest quarters', guarded by a suit of armor that would move aside with the tap of an approved wand. Adding Harry's wand was easy enough for the professor, and they found Hedwig waiting inside of the room.
Voldemort was incensed at the corruption that would've been needed to send a sworn godparent to prison for betraying their godchild. The number of things that would have to have been intentionally bypassed or ignored to make that happen was far beyond anything he'd wanted to fix in the government before.
Having the truth revealed as it had been meant that it wouldn't be possible to cover it up. If someone killed Black then Potter could never be sorted, no matter who became his magical guardian, and he would need to be sent elsewhere for his magical education. The government wouldn't dare do that, not with how public this was all going to be. But there were ways to speed things along, and one of them was in the castle now.
Working together with Quirrell, they tracked down one Peter Pettigrew, in rat form trying to escape the castle. The traitor to his friends had never even mentioned that Potter had even one sworn godparent, even though that had to have been why they used him as a secret keeper. A Fidelius with someone magically sworn to that degree would be weakened to an unacceptable level for what they intended it for, and using the werewolf would've created other problems if the secret had bound to the wolf instead of the man. Sworn godparents changed a number of things though, and might have even been part of how the child survived that night.
Once they found the rat, stunning him was simple enough. Quirrell was going to have to start casting animagus-revealing spells at unexpected animals to cover how the rat was found though. Perhaps claiming that one had nearly killed him as a minor incident? Who knew, it might reveal others and allow the man more trust later.
The only other question was who was in the castle to turn the rat over to. Dumbledore and McGonagall were almost certainly paying the Minister and...Bones, perhaps, personal visits...
Lucius seethed as he considered why the full Wizengamot was meeting today, not trusting things to the Council of Magical Law. Multiple wrongs had to be righted today, given what had been discovered over the past few days. The team sent to arrest Barty Crouch for sending Black to prison with no trial record had found the man's supposedly-dead son in the house, alive but under the Imperius, implying that a number of things had been going wrong for years.
Things were bad enough to unite the Wizengamot, something that had only happened a scant few times in recorded history. None of them wanted the travesties of justice known about to happen to them and their families, and strong messages needed to be sent about things. Not to mention that now a full audit of those in Azkaban had to be done, to see who else might be there without having had a trial.
Sadly, this wasn't something that could be used against Dumbledore. The man had, rightfully, filed the correct parchmentwork to recuse himself from trials of those that might have been his allies, and Black was on the list. That Crouch hadn't recused himself from his son's trial and had thrown at least one almost guaranteed-to-be-innocent man in prison said a lot more about how...lax certain things had been back then. Something that had been to Lucius's personal benefit, but shouldn't have allowed this to happen.
"My apologies," Bones called out. "But I've found that we need to adjust the day's docket slightly. I promise that the added case is relevant to our other items."
"Relevant how?" Longbottom called, sounding miffed.
Bones ignored the woman, turning to the door. "Bring in the first accused!"
The unconscious man the aurors dragged in and chained to the chair was a shock. Where the hell had someone found Peter Pettigrew?
Bones turned to them, not a single person daring to object to the addition to their docket. "Peter Pettigrew is charged with aiding and abetting the Dark Lord in the murders of James and Lily Potter and the attempted murder of Harry Potter through revealing their Fidelius secret, of being an illegal animagus, of using his animagus form to frame Sirius Black for his own crimes, of using his animagus form and compulsion charms to hide among the Weasley family, and of using his animagus form to illegally access Hogwarts."
By Merlin's ghost, this entire thing had just acquired several levels of disturbing. He might even have to back off of Arthur for a bit if the man had been spending years under compulsion spells.
Harry's first week at Hogwarts had remained unusual in that he'd not spent the bulk of it in the castle. Volunteers from the first- and second-years had been asked to help him learn about the magical world, a mixture across all four houses. This had included Malfoy, who had apologized for some of his statements as there was an assumption that Harry had grown up in the magical world and would know more of its customs. Most of the initial lessons actually came from Hermione Granger, who had gone over what she'd been told about the magical world. Not to mention quite a bit she'd learned since, with corrections from others that seemed annoyed at needing to correct her in some cases.
Most of those cases were things she'd stated she'd been told, instead of found in books, implying that some of the 'welcome to the magical world' speech was seen as wrong...though it also felt like some of it was subjective? Different sections of society differing in their opinions...
The biggest thing to come of that was her grumbling about the vaccinations needed after being informed of magic's existence. Something that Harry hadn't received, and led to an early trip to the hospital wing...and then to Saint Mungo's, as Madam Pomfrey couldn't administer the vaccinations, just confirm that he hadn't had them. The Healers had then given him a much more complete examination, and for some reason he'd found himself babbling about his treatment at Privet Drive...and mentioning things about his scar, which struck him as even odder.
One of the...nurses? He wasn't sure if that was the correct title, but she'd apologized for the babbling effect before explaining what a number of the potions they'd be giving him were for. They wanted to start him on nutrient potions to help with not having been fed enough, before giving him his vaccinations, but 'specialists' wanted to take a look at his scar before that....