That's pretty cool. I love the explanation. I look forward to future handwaves. Thanks for writing.

I don't understand what your bothered by the Clintons frikking killed people

I beg to differ. Fudge is an incompetent fool. You think there is no way such a person can become a head of state, but the reality is that many heads of state arrive to office through corruption/ballot sale/propaganda. Not only wizards are stupid, the public are also sheep. They will vote for the guy that is most handsome/ looks more "thustworthy"/ promises to lower the taxes the most (nevemind he/she doesn't even explain how it will be done)/is the candidate for the party all the family votes for/is not the candidate for the party you are against, etc. Now, add the fact that corporations will make sure that the politician who favors them the most will be the one to win, and you find yourself looking at an idiot as a head of state.
If Fudge was competent in something, it was in catering to the pureblood interests. That's why he was in office. And he sure did a damn good job as a puppet for the pureblood and rich citizens.

Doesn't work simply cuz Fudge has proved his incompetence time and again. You can't say he's intelligent or cunning cuz he is winning and then again say he's dumb as well when he is in Malfoys pocket and doesn't believe in Voldys return. This fic has more holes than whatever JKR did.

Its still bit unlikely explanation. Best is use occam razor, Fudge is death eater. Or Umbridge is that casts confondus to keep him from questions.

SO what kind of explanation would you have for the dementors at hogwarts

I like this idea, that fudge isn't completely incompintent at leading, he's just waaaaay out of his comfort zone in leading a war. I believe you are misrepresenting the sheer influence malfoys $$$ could have on his election.

The is well written like your other works, but...

I can look past the not-quite-all-together argument for Fudge as Minister. I can look past the two drinking buddies agreeing with how Fudge handled the Voldemort investigation. I can even look past the duo ignoring Fudge's past mistakes (Dementors at a school, attempting to politically kill Harry, etc) and the fact that he had NOTHING to do with rebuilding Magical Britain after the first war.

However, Harry Potter, Wizarding Hero twice over, walks into a pub with his two best mates, Ron and Hermione - both of which are Heroes in their own right - and NOBODY recognizes them. That was the one PLOT HOLE that ruined it for me.

This is - at most - a few years after the war ended (judging that Shacklebolt is just now leaving office) and Harry has already fallen into obscurity? Yet, ten years after he defeated Voldemort the first time around, he was instantly recognized by people in a PUB despite the public having no foreknowledge of his person prior to showing up.

Like I said, I just couldn't move past that one thing, but the story was well written and easy to follow, so kudos for that.

In rebuttal I post you this;

George W. Bush.

Also, he could have secured it, to begin with, with a damn good marketing team. One thing you must always remember, humans are not, never have been, nor will ever be (within the foreseeable future of the behavioural sciences) rational creatures. Canonically, wizards are even less rational than muggles. It would be impossible for him to get voted back in post-war, though, no matter his policies, as no political leader has been voted back in after f'n up their war. Screw up your war as badly as Fudge did and it is political suicide. Also, dropping your police presence so soon after a civil war is, again, political suicide; people want to be safe first and foremost - especially when it was dropping the police force's numbers that allowed the terrorists to nearly win in the first place.
Fudge's advisors would tell him to quietly vanish after the war.

I do agree, however, that he may have been good for the country after the first war, or he might have only been serving his first or second term when Voldy showed his ugly mug again.
As for the werewolf registration; the real concern would be if the record was public or not. If it is not, then there is little issue, but this is the Potter-verse we are talking about; they would be all for naming and shaming - werewolves are, after all, not legally human.

All in all, an interesting idea, but one I do not agree with.

Nicely written and it is definitely a plot hole.

I can see ill-informed people overlooking the fact Fudge failed to even minimally investigate Voldemort's return until his nose was rubbed in it, however, there is a flaw in the argument of Fudge as a rebuilder. The peace time vs war footing argument holds, but Fudge took office in 1990. Millicent Bagshot was minister from 1980-1990 during the rebuilding following the first war.

A peace time election in 1990 could have had similar issues. Although the Minister seems to be elected in canon, its not clear by whom. It may be the Wizengamot which would change the equation.

In canon Fudge allowed Umbridge to use a Blood Quill on minors, turn Hogwarts into a government-controlled prison, and was most likely taking bribes from Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy. And it seems to me that Wizarding Britain get themselves a Dark Lod every fifty or so years.

Actually, it doesn't. Make sense, that is. You claim to be filling JKR's plotholes, but what you're doing is open up entire vallleys. As for fudge, the words "corrupt to the point of being an honorary death eater" ring a bell? The only reason behind the lack of evidence about voldy's return was that fudge was too much of a coward to look for it.

No offense, but I'm not buying it. Fudge just seemed to simple minded and incompetent for this to be plausible. I applaud the idea though. If Fudge didn't actually contradict this entire piece, I could believe this.

Yeah, except that there are still a crap-load of holes not mentioned. How about the fact that the man is blatantly corrupt and malfoy owns him? Or that he spent most of Harry's 5th year abusing his power to control the press and try and ruin Harry. He didn't just not want to put resources towards a threat he didn't believe in, he abused power to try and destroy anyone who disagreed with him. If he was a decent minister, he would have actually investigated. Yeah, he didn't have any evidence to support Voldemort's return because he refused to look at any of it. He could have had Harry submit memories to back up his story. How about the idea of sending hundreds of dementors(who want to eat everyone's soul) to guard against Sirius? Throwing aside the insanity of issuing a kill-on-sight order for someone who never received a trial, he still put 'guards' to protect Harry that tried to kill him...how many times? 3? How are you going to spin that one to look like a good idea? And the werewolf registration thing is NOT how Fudge handled them in cannon, though possibly that was more his racist undersecretary. Still...The fact that he chose her at all is a pretty big mark against him, since she is even worse(and barely tries to hide it even from her enemies. I can't imagine she did a better job hiding it from Fudge). Not to mention Fudge passing all those educational decrees, which destroy education. And his general belief that Dumbledore was trying to raise an child army to try and take over the wizarding world by force just further highlights his stupidity. If Dumbledore wanted to be Minister, he could have just accepted the position when offered way before Fudge's time. There just isn't any way around it that Fudge truly is simply an idiot.

Honestly I don't particularly see it as a plot hole. The entire wizarding world is shown over and over again to be made up of massive idiots, so why would it be a surprise that one of the biggest idiots is made their leader?

Fudge is an idiot. That doesn't mean he can't be good at cutting red tape and assigning people - just that he didn't want to admit the bogeyman was back, and that his employees (hem hem) were horrible. A politician with a bad public image is a politician with no career.