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The chamber housing the current Wizengamot session is packed, with a sea of deep plum and gold robes filling the vast hall. Not a single seat or space is visible as what feels like the entire Ministry looks on. Banners ripple overhead, shifting between the sigils of the Sacred 28 and the Ministry’s official crest as they waft a cool breeze over the congregation.
The enchanted sconces around the room give an artificial glow over the polished stone floor, the flickering lights almost theatrical, as if this moment has been meticulously staged for effect.
At the centre of the chamber, standing on a raised dais, Kingsley Shacklebolt awaits his fate.
His broad shoulders are squared, his back straight, the very image of composure. Yet beneath the calm exterior, tension coils like a snake. He feels the weight of the chamber’s collective gaze, the unspoken expectations and whispered judgments pressing in from all sides. The Chief Warlock, standing solemnly at his side, lifts a scroll and unrolls it with a flick of his wand. The parchment unfurls with a whisper, magic sparking softly from its edges.
“By decree of the Wizengamot, and with full authority of the Ministry of Magic,” the Warlock announces, his voice steady but firm, Sonorus echoing through the chamber, “we hereby appoint Kingsley Shacklebolt as Minister for Magic.”
There’s a moment of deafening silence as the crowd takes in the verdict; it hangs low and drags its way to the polished floor. Kingsley plants his eyes on his feet. A murmur of approval starts to soar, rippling to a steady applause. Yet Kingsley feels the hesitation like a chill beneath his robes. Many in attendance privately support the appointment, but the reaction begs to differ.
He lets his gaze travel over the chamber. Familiar faces meet his eyes, some nodding, others averting their gaze. There are those who have fought beside him during the war, who believe in what he stands for. Then there are the old pure-blood families, their expressions carefully neutral, their approval forced. The war has changed many things, but some prejudices run too deep to be erased overnight.
The Speaker of the Chamber raises his gavel and concludes the session. Before the sound finishes reverberating around him, Kingsley makes quick steps towards the exit, leaving the hushed whispers in his wake. As the doors open a flash of movement at the front of the crowd catches his attention. Rita Skeeter stands poised, her acid-green quill scratching furiously across a floating parchment. Her eyes glitter with something too eager, lips already curling in anticipation of whatever headline she will craft from this moment. The instant Kingsley steps forward, she pounces.
“Minister Shacklebolt!” Skeeter’s voice rings out, smooth and sharp as the edge of a knife. “Critics argue that your auror background makes you unfit for policy reform. Do you really think you’re the right person to lead this transition?”
Kingsley meets her gaze without flinching. He expects this. Skeeter never wastes time before going for the throat.
“Rebuilding takes strong leadership,” he says, his voice steady. “The war has left our institutions in pieces and our community fractured. The skills I’ve developed in the field—decisiveness, adaptability, bringing people together—are just as crucial in government as they are in battle.”
A wiry wizard with sharp spectacles steps forward. “Do you even have experience in international diplomacy? With tensions rising at the ICW, people are concerned you don’t have the finesse for the job.”
It isn’t a question, it’s an accusation dressed up as one. Kingsley inhales slowly.
“Diplomacy is about collaboration, and that’s what I do best. My priority is transparency and integrity, things this Ministry has been lacking for far too long.”
Another voice cuts through the murmurs. “Are you just keeping the seat warm until they find someone better?”
There it is. No attempt to hide the condescension. The phrasing is careful, but the message is clear: You’re a placeholder. A bandage over a wound. A stopgap until someone more palatable steps in.
Kingsley hesitates for just a moment. Doubt creeps up his throat, threatening to spill over. He has fought too hard, seen too much, to let a handful of well-placed words shake him, so he pushes it down.
“I was appointed because I am the best person for the job,” his voice projects across the sea of reporters, unwavering. “I intend to serve as long as I am needed and as long as the people trust me to lead them.”
A beat of silence follows before quills resume their furious scratching, ink flying across parchment as the press scrambles to distill his words into something that will sell issues. Kingsley already knows what tomorrow’s headlines will say. Some will call him competent but untested. Others will paint him as an interim figure, chosen not for his merits but for his optics as Dumbledore’s man.
He turns to shake hands as the crowd parts. Some grips are warm, others cold and cursory. He can see the calculation in certain eyes, the silent assessments.
They want change, but do they truly want him?
As he exits the lobby, the murmur of voices swirl behind him like restless ghosts. The weight of leadership settles over his shoulders, heavier than he imagined. He has won battles, but this war has only just begun.
He makes quick, purposeful steps to his new office. The secretary’s desk lies empty, another change to be made during his term as Minister.
For a moment, Kingsley simply stands there, letting the silence envelop him. The Minister’s office is vast, ostentatious; overwhelming in a way he doesn’t expect. The scent of old parchment, polished wood, and the lingering smoky smell of used magic fills the air, steeped in history.
His eyes sweep over the room. A comically large, high-backed chair looms behind an imposing desk, dark leather pristine and untouched. Perhaps it’s an indication of the previous leadership’s vision. He hesitates before it, fingers grazing the armrest but not yet sitting. It feels wrong, too grand, too symbolic of something he hasn’t yet claimed as his own.
Rows of portraits line the walls. Past Ministers watch from their gilded frames. Some gaze down at him neutrally, others with barely concealed skepticism. Cornelius Fudge’s portrait is the worst, his smug expression etched deep in the ridges of his aging face, beady eyes glinting with the same oily self-importance he wore in life.
Kingsley scowls and, without hesitation, flicks his wand to turn the portrait to face the wall.
The desk in front of him is immaculate, nothing out of place. His old Auror office had been lived in, ink stains on the wood, map corners curled from use. This desk feels sterile, like a space waiting for its true occupant.
His reflection catches his eye in a floor-to-ceiling cabinet of enchanted glass. He looks older, more tired than he remembers. A leader instead of a soldier. Running a hand along the chair, he traces the fine leather, but still, he does not sit.
Kingsley has always taken pride in being a man of action. He stood at the front lines, fought in the shadows, executed missions that never made it into the record books. The war carved his name into stone not because he wanted it, but because someone had to stand up when everything fell apart. Action was simple; unforgiving, yes, but simple. You moved forward. You reacted. You survived.
Now, in the stillness of his office, that clarity is gone.
The sunlight spilling through the enchanted windows has none of the warmth it should. It settles against polished surfaces and gold-embossed ministry seals but does little to touch the coldness he feels beneath his skin. His desk is clean but covered with expectation: stacks of policy drafts, memoranda, legal documents, all requiring his signature, his judgment, his vision. Tucked between them, an article, folded once, then again, as if to hide the headline that continues to ring louder than any victory speech.
IS KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT READY TO LEAD?
The print glares up at him, bold and deliberate. The corner curls as his fingers smooth it flat. He doesn’t need the byline. The voice is unmistakable. caustic, performative, just subtle enough to skirt libel. Rita Skeeter's style is as recognisable as her acid-green quill.
“A soldier is not a statesman.”
“A temporary solution.”
“Is he truly capable of leading in peacetime?”
His eyes flick across the phrases. They don’t sting, not quite. They don’t surprise him. But they linger. Sink deep.
He presses his thumb against his temple and closes his eyes. Not because of fatigue, but because the part of him that agrees, however small, won’t be quiet.
The war was brutal, yes, but it had a rhythm. It was chaos, but it was predictable in its cruelty. You learned to see death coming, if only by the silence it left in its wake. And when it came, you responded. Fought back. Protected who you could. Buried the rest.
But this? This isn’t war. This is rebuilding.
And rebuilding requires patience, nuance, a different kind of endurance. It asks for decisions without urgency, compromise without surrender. The margins for error feel smaller now because every wrong step threatens to undo the peace they fought so hard to win.
He leans back, eyes tracing the high ceiling. Ornate crown moulding creeps along the edges like ivy, reminders of old wealth and older power. This office is steeped in the residue of generations of politics, most of them slow-moving and self-preserving. It smells of old parchment and polished wood. Of tradition. Of things that resist change.
His thoughts wander, unbidden, to the Order of the Phoenix. To the dusty rooms and whispered plans, the scent of mildew and firewhisky soaked into the walls of Grimmauld Place. The war rooms in abandoned houses, where hope took shape between maps and mugs of cold tea. Dumbledore’s half-smile. Harry’s trembling hands. Molly Weasley’s arms around grieving children who hadn’t yet accepted their grief.
They had been the light in the darkness. Visionaries, heroes, people who believed in something better.
And Kingsley? Kingsley had followed.
The thought lands like a stone in his chest. Not because it’s untrue, but because it’s truer than he’d like to admit.
He’s always been seen as a leader. He carried responsibility on his shoulders like second nature. But now, with the noise of war quiet, he wonders if he ever truly led . He had been a protector, a strategist, someone who could hold the line. But not the one setting the path forward.
And now the path is his.
His gaze returns to the desk. The top document is a proposal for reparations to Muggleborn families displaced and persecuted during the last regime. He lifts it, eyes scanning the language. It’s careful, precise. Legalese wrapped around pain. The inked words fail to reflect the rawness behind them: families torn apart, homes raided, identities questioned, children terrified by letters that demanded they justify their right to exist.
He shifts a stack of old files from the far corner of the desk. They’re from the war, mostly; tattered, discoloured, the parchment curled from years of neglect. The drawers are still empty; he hasn’t had time to fill them yet. Everything important remains out in the open, waiting to be sorted, waiting for him to decide what stays and what is finally let go.
As he lifts one particularly overstuffed folder, a loose sheet slips out from between the pages and flutters to the floor.
Not parchment.
Photograph.
He pauses, breath catching before he even sees what it is. There's something about the way it lands, half-hidden beneath the edge of the desk, the way dust unsettles in its wake, that feels strangely ceremonial.
He bends down slowly, carefully, as though reaching for something fragile; not in substance, but in meaning.
The moment he picks it up, the air shifts.
Worn at the edges, the ink beginning to fade, colours dulled by time and touch. But the image is unmistakable.
The Order of the Phoenix.
He lowers himself into the chair, not out of choice but necessity. His knees buckle, and the weight of memory presses down harder than any headline or policy ever could.
Sirius, forever half-smiling in the moment the camera froze. There’s a restlessness in his eyes even here, a spark of rebellion that never quite dimmed, even in Azkaban. He had been shaped by suffering, twisted by it, and yet clung to his ideals with a kind of stubborn madness. For all his bravado, Sirius bled deeply. He hid it with humour, but Kingsley had seen glimpses of the guilt that hollowed him out, over James, over Harry, over time lost behind iron bars. He had fought hard and died harder, still trying to outrun a fate written long before the first spell was ever cast.
Remus stands to one side, slightly apart from the others. His posture is soft, unassuming, like he’s unsure whether he belongs in the frame. But he does. More than any of them. There’s exhaustion in his shoulders even in stillness, the kind that doesn’t come from sleepless nights, but from years of being quietly unwanted. His eyes are kind, as they always were, but tired—deeply, bone-deep tired. Kingsley remembers the way people looked at Remus when they thought he wasn’t watching. The way Ministry officials refused to sit near him. The way shopkeepers flinched, even when he smiled. He had spent his whole life being made to feel like an afterthought, like a threat, like his humanity was something conditional.
And still, he showed up. Still, he fought. Still, he gave everything.
Remus Lupin died defending a world that never made space for him in life. That truth carves something sharp and cold into Kingsley’s ribs. It’s not fair, was never fair. And Kingsley can’t help but wonder if their victory is enough to honour that sacrifice. If changing the system now, piece by piece, can ever redeem what it cost.
He says Remus’s name aloud. Quietly. As though speaking it might anchor him.
Then Moody, caught mid-blink, his magical eye already swivelling out of focus. He had lived in a constant state of anticipation, always ready for betrayal, always prepared for violence. Paranoia wasn’t a symptom. it was survival. And maybe he was right, in the end, to trust no one. Still, under all that gruff vigilance was a man who believed in justice. Not bureaucracy. Not image. Just the simple, unflinching concept of right and wrong. It killed him, that distinction. But it had also kept others alive.
The Prewett twins grin out at him, arms slung over each other’s shoulders like the world could never touch them. They were loud, unbreakable, full of laughter that came too easy. Gone before anyone could imagine the world without them.
Marlene McKinnon. Fierce, brilliant. Her wand never wavered, even when everything else did. Her name lives on in stories, but Kingsley can still hear the sound of her laugh echoing across a ruined field, moments before a duel began. She died with her entire family. A clean sweep. As if history wanted to erase them entirely.
Dorcas Meadowes. Always the first to volunteer. Always the one stepping forward when others stepped back. Her body was torn in two when they found it, blackened by a spell no one could identify. She had been hunted personally, Voldemort had made sure of that. She didn’t go quietly.
Even Snape appears, blurry in the corner, face twisted in disdain. There are still arguments about whether he belonged. Whether redemption matters when the dead can’t speak for themselves. But Kingsley doesn’t have the energy to re-litigate Snape’s past. He had chosen a side in the end. That would have to be enough.
And then there’s Kingsley himself, caught at the edge, serious, motionless, as though even then he knew he would outlast them.
He doesn’t move for a long time.
I am the last one left.
The realisation doesn’t strike, it settles. Like ash after fire. Thick. Inevitable.
He reaches for the photo, but his hands are trembling now. Not from fear. From memory. From weight.
It’s not just that they’re gone. It’s that he remembers them so vividly, how they moved, how they laughed, how they argued over the smallest things. The tension before a mission. The exhaustion after. The silent agreements made with a glance.
And now, he alone is left to remember.
He whispers the names, one by one. Not as an elegy. As a promise.
“Sirius.”
“Remus.”
“Moody.”
“Marlene.”
The Prewetts. Dorcas. Lily. James.
He pauses, throat tightening.
And then the others come, not in the photo, but carried with him just the same.
Tonks, all colour and chaos. Her grin had been the brightest thing in the room, even in its darkest moments. She could make Remus smile when nothing else could. She had believed in possibility, in a world where people like her, like him, could live without apology. She died before that world could exist.
Fred Weasley, who should have lived long enough to tell these stories himself. Who should be mocking the pomp of this office, who would have hung his own portrait on the wall as a joke. Kingsley remembers his laughter echoing down stone corridors. Too loud, too alive to be gone.
Colin Creevey. Too young to fight. Too stubborn to stay away. He died with his camera still strapped to his chest. The world never got to see the photos he took during the battle. Kingsley sometimes wonders if one of those photos was the last record of a dying world.
And Teddy. Remus and Tonks’s son. Barely born. Orphaned before his first words.
Kingsley thinks of him often. Not just in grief, but in warning. The war left more than ruins behind—it left legacies. Scars passed down like inheritance. Will Teddy grow up chasing ghosts like Kingsley does now? Will he find photos in old drawers, whispering names to himself just to feel close to people he never knew?
The thought is unbearable. And yet, it drives him.
This grief is not just mourning. It’s fuel. It must be.
They didn’t die for medals. They didn’t die so their names would gather dust in Ministry archives.
They died for something .
For a future.
For this.
He looks again at Remus, at the quiet sorrow in his smile. Remus died believing that maybe, just maybe, he was finally allowed to live. He died fighting to give his son a world that wouldn’t hate him for what he was born as.
Kingsley can’t waste that.
The fire in the hearth cracks louder now, drawing him back. The air feels different. He is still grieving, yes. He always will be. But something has shifted. The weight hasn’t lifted, but it’s no longer pressing him down. Now, it grounds him.
He sets the photograph down with care, smoothing the corners, as if the faces might crumble under his fingers.
He breathes deeply.
Then he reaches for the first document.
Reparations for Muggleborns.
He signs with steady hands.
Remus would have wanted this. For people like him. For people who never got to see the apology, only the persecution.
Next, trials for war criminals. Because justice must be more than punishment—it must be restoration. It must say: we saw what you did. We remember. We choose not to forget.
Then, restructuring the Auror department. This one makes him pause. He knows its faults better than anyone. He saw the way power twisted good people. He won’t let it happen again. This department must change. It must protect the vulnerable, not harass them. It must serve, not dominate.
And finally, a new vision for the Ministry itself. One that remembers. One that includes. One that refuses to be built atop unmarked graves.
He signs.
The ink glistens before it dries. The ghosts stay, but they do not weigh him down.
They watch.
They witness.
And Kingsley Shacklebolt, the last one left, rises not as a man consumed by the past, but as the one who carries it forward.