A shiver seemed to run across the occupants of the bleak stone courtroom. Although it had been nearly a year since Dementors had been allowed in the courtrooms, or any Ministry of Magic building for that matter, the group of twenty or so men and women dressed in stately robes of rich purple seemed to be feeling the echoes of their presence. They sat in a half circle surrounding a solitary stone chair, on which a squat older woman was seated. It appeared that she had not been deemed a serious flight risk; the chair was equipped with a set of heavy manacled chains on the arms, but they simply hung beside her. She was constantly scanning the crowd overhead as though looking for something. When she didn't find it, her demeanor seemed to relax significantly, and she even managed what she seemed to think was a friendly, winning smile.

"Dolores Umbridge." A voice boomed from above, magnified and echoed by the room. "You have been brought before the Wizengamot to answer for your acts of treason, torture and murder." Kingsley Shacklebolt, recently appointed Minister of Magic and acting Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot spoke with righteous fury glinting in his normally calming voice. "As evidence, I present the Wizengamot itself… Or what's left of it, at least." He gestured towards the empty seats peppered throughout the crowd behind him. For every occupied seat, there was at least one or two empty spots on the benches.

"When Lord Voldemort (another suppressed shiver circled the room at the mention of the name) usurped the Ministry of Magic one year ago, you were one of the few active Ministry officials allowed to maintain your position in his new order. On testimony of many of those in this very room, you were a key piece in the Death Eater's takeover of the Ministry, leading to the torture, slaughter, and exile of the existing Wizengamot and Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Following Voldemort's coup, The council you oversaw was directly responsible for the systemic torture of innocent witches and wizards, many of whom became victim's of the Dementor's Kiss; again, at your orders." Kingsley gave a small, weary pause before continuing. "In light of these accusations, do you have anything to say in your defense?"

Dolores Umbridge was still smiling, but it seemed to be little more than a reflex. She seemed unable to immediately contest his account, only being able to utter half formed excuses. The crowd waited patiently for her response, but her blithering was interrupted not a half minute later by a knock on the door in the far corner of the room.

"Ah, about time." Kingsley said, a note of satisfaction appearing in his voice. "I'd begun to think that we'd be finished by the time he'd showed up. Weasley, why don't you let him in?"

A tall, thin wizard with horn-rimmed glasses nodded quickly and stood up to run to the door. As Percy Weasley opened it to allow the newcomer to step in the courtroom, a deeper hush fell over the crowd gathered in the room, few of whom seemed to have much interest in what Umbridge had to say. The muttering stopped, instantly replaced by an almost reverent quiet that was rather belied by the visitor's appearance.

He was a young man of just slightly above average height and quite skinny despite having developed a slightly more muscular physique during his travels of the past few years. His bright green eyes shown through his distinctive round glasses, and his messy hair just barely allowed sight of a scar shaped like a lightning bolt on his hairline. He seemed rather tired, but not at all unhappy. On the contrary, his appearance seemed to brighten the dark stone room almost immediately. As if he didn't notice the interruption that he'd caused in the court proceedings, he shook Percy's hand while muttering a quiet greeting and silently took a seat on the bench next to Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Umbridge's smile had slipped into a look of grim shock. She simply stared at Harry until Kingsley spoke again.

"The Council is waiting on your testimony, Dolores. Unless you are ready to proceed to sentencing?"

This seemed to galvanize the witch. Though she still stuttered, there was otherwise a fair amount of conviction in her obviously well-rehearsed statement.

"Well, you see Minister…" She said in her nauseatingly saccharine voice that she'd been perfecting for her entire life. "I have only vague recollections of the time that I… Ahem… Served in You-Know-Who's Muggle Registration Committee." She punctuated the statement with a fake little cough as though she found the whole idea rather absurd. "I must have been under the effects of the Imperius Curse!" She finished dramatically, as if expecting the courtroom to gasp in amazement and declare her innocence on the spot. When nobody countered her, her smile began to return. Until that is a fake cough, not unlike her own emanated from Harry.

A few of the witches and wizards actually laughed, and even stern Kingsley seemed to be struggling to hide a note of amusement in his voice as he addressed Harry.

"Witness for the prosecution, you may introduce yourself and make your statement."

"Harry James Potter." Harry said. "Former student of Dolores Umbridge and witness to her Muggle-Born trials." At these last words, the smile that had been playing around his lips since he'd mocked Umbridge's fake coughing habit faded. "I've known Umbridge for four years now, since she was a teacher at Hogwarts." He paused to gather his thoughts before continuing. "While at Hogwarts, she took no greater pleasure than punishing students, using methods tha-"

He was interrupted by a sudden outburst from Umbridge. "My methods were approved of and properly vetted by the Ministry!" She shouted indignantly. "Not that it has any relevance to this hearing in, but as High Inquisitor I simply acted on the whims of my Ministry superiors. Any issue with Ministry policy at the time should be taken up with Cornelius Fudge!" She barked, all of the sweetness having suddenly evaporated from her voice.

"No, no, you misunderstand." Harry said. "You're completely correct. You're not on trial for what you did at Hogwarts, disgusting as it was. I was simply going to say that during my time at Hogwarts, I had a lot of teachers, and I learned something from every one of them." He was now glaring at her, all of the usual kindness wiped from his eyes and replaced with cold fury. "Even the ones who refused to teach. In fact, I think I learned more from you than most of my other teachers, in a way."

Even Umbridge couldn't hide the look of shock on her face. "Harry gave a grim chuckle. "Not spells or anything that you were actually hired to teach, but something that's actually much harder to pass on. Do you remember the lesson that you spent your entire year at Hogwarts driving home?

A look of dark realization had dawned on Umbridge's toad-like face. "Yes, that's right. Why don't you say it out loud for everybody?" Harry said in a taunting voice. "Come on now, surely you haven't forgotten? After all those times you watched me write it?" Umbridge appeared to have been struck mute. Her mouth opened and closed several times in rapid succession. "Ah, well." Harry continued. I suppose that I can help you out a bit then. He pulled back the sleeve of his robes and revealed a slightly faded scar on the back of his right hand; the words 'I must not tell lies' was written there in his own hand.

"I must not tell lies, Professor." He said the last word scathingly. "Even when lies are easy, the truth is more important. Shame you never took your own advice. Would you like to take back the lie you told us just now?"

"I am telling the truth!" Umbridge shrieked, beginning to sound truly desperate. "I was placed under the Imperius curse by the Death Eater Yaxley!"

Kingsley interjected, heading off Harry's anger. "The Imperious Curse is difficult to dispute… It leaves no traces, obviously. Yaxley has declined to cooperate with Ministry investigations into his crimes. Am I to understand that you have proof that she wasn't under the Curse, Potter?"

Harry nodded and continued speaking. "Like I said, I saw one of her phony 'trials.' I snuck into the Ministry in disguise and saw the whole thing. Nothing more that an excuse to arrest innocent muggle-borns. They gathered them up and threw them in a room like this. Surrounded them with Dementors and told them to prove that they hadn't 'stolen their magic' from proper wizards." The steely edge was resurfacing in his voice.

Umbridge looked slightly confused, but Kingsley seemed to have caught on to what Harry was getting at. "Tell me, if you can remember, of course, how the dementors were kept at bay from the judges during these trials?" He asked Umbridge.

She appeared search the question for traps momentarily before answering. "Well, with a Patronus of course… How else would you repel a dementor?"

"I see…" Kingsley continued. "And incidentally, what from does your Patronus take?"

"It's a cat, Minister." Triumph flashed in Harry's eyes.

"Ms. Umbridge," Kingsley said slowly. "The Patronus charm is a complex one that by it's very definition requires a great deal of agency and emotional input from the caster. Such being the case, it cannot be cast while under the Imperius Curse. And I take it that the Patronus that Harry saw in the courtroom the day that he infiltrated the Ministry was-"

"A cat." Harry finished for him. "The only other people in the room who could've been maintaining it were my friend Hermione, who's Patronus is an otter, and Yaxley. And I don't think that cat belonged to Yaxley." Harry's eyes narrowed. "Which brings us back around to 'I must not tell lies."

Harry could see drops of sweat forming on Umbridge's bloated face, causing her copious amounts of makeup to run and clump. "It- it- it's my father!" She said desperately and wildly. Her eyes looked like they were painfully bulging out of their sockets. "They said they had him, they probably still do! You-Know-Who's faithful are still out there, please, they could be torturing him as we speak, you have to-"

"Your father died six years ago, as you are well aware." Kingsley said harshly, cutting off her rambling. "After you severed ties with him, he died in St. Mungo's. As a former ministry employee we have his records on file. Incidentally, we also have the letter sent to you by the organizer of the funeral, which you sent back indicating that you did not wish to attend. We have been preparing this trial since we captured you on the run three months ago. Do not insult us by assuming that we haven't done our research on the matter."

"Now as I think that we've all heard enough of your stories, we shall proceed to your sentence." Kingsley said as Umbridge slumped back in her chair defeatedly. "For years, you've acted in a way that disgraces the Ministry and escaped punishment through flattery, blackmail, and every other foul trick that you could manage. I'll stand for it no more. All those in favor of conviction?" Every hand in the room flew up to answer Kingsley's call, except for Harry who wasn't allowed a vote. "The Wizengamot hereby finds you responsible for your actions. In light of the closing of Azkaban and the resulting overcrowding of other prisons, you will not be given a prison sentence."

At these words Umbridge's strained expression broke into a strange mixture of disbelief and relief that only lasted until Kingsley's next sentence: "In lieu of prison, you will be sentenced to exile from the Wizarding community. You'll turn over your wand to be destroyed, and tracking spells will be placed upon you to ensure that you do not obtain another or cast any form of magic. You'll report to the Muggle Liaison Office tomorrow to receive the details of your new living arrangements. Hopefully you can learn tolerance at the very least." Sensing another angry outburst from her, he hastily said "This court is now dismissed."

Harry stood and watched as Umbridge was dragged off, still screaming, by two uniformed Ministry security guards. He couldn't help but smile to himself as he watched her tiny legs kicking in every direction, eventually forcing one of the guards to cast a jinx binding them together for fear of losing his teeth. Her shrieks carried all the way down the hallway outside the courtroom until she was carried into the lift at the end of the corridor.

With the formalities out of the way, Kingsley clapped Harry on the shoulder as though greeting an old friend. "Excellent work, Potter. She's had that coming for even longer than you know… But enough of that. I take it that you're going to be settling down for a bit now, yeah? Finally ready to join the Auror office?"

Harry grinned. "Yeah, I'm back for good." After his defeat of Lord Voldemort, the greatest dark wizard of the era just barely one year ago, he'd been faced with a crossroads of sorts. Having skipped the last year of his education at Hogwarts to defeat Voldemort, he'd been invited to return by new Headmistress. Minerva McGonagall. While this offer had been sorely tempting on account of his girlfriend Ginny Weasley (with whom he had already been forced to part with for nearly a year), he'd ultimately turned it down. As he'd already received an invitation to become an auror for the Ministry of Magic and had several lifetimes' worth of practice combatting Dark Magic, he had little to gain from another year at school. Instead, he had decided to take a well-earned sabbatical. He'd spent the year traveling the world with his best friend Ron Weasley. Together, they'd journeyed the globe, engaging in Dueling tournaments, studying bizarre creatures that Harry could never have imagined before.

Harry's other closest friend, Hermione Granger (who also happened to be Ron's girlfriend) had of course been invited along, but had declined in order to finish her N.E.W.T.s. Ginny had been more interested in the trip, but as she planned on entering into the National Quidditch League, the extra year on the Gryffindor team would help sharpen her skills as a chaser and prove her abilities to potential recruiters. Not to mention, as Ron had pointed out, Mrs. Weasley would likely drop dead from shock if Ginny became the fourth of her seven children to drop out of school.

So Harry and Ron had set out on their own. At first it had been a thrilling affair; all the excitement and adventure of their journey to destroy the scattered fragments of Lord Voldemort's soul without the chilling stakes and danger. Harry had also found it something of a relief to visit countries where Voldemort's impact hadn't been so severe; while many had heard of him, his fame was diminished (and Harry's own fame by extension). However, as they'd neared the end of their travels, both Harry and Ron seemed to grow restless. Harry had only been able to see Ginny on Hogsmeade weekends and when he'd gone to her Quidditch matches. As good company as Ron was, he and Harry had a tendency to butt heads from time to time.

Much to his chagrin, he had seen even less of Hermione. She had been so engrossed in studies for her full schedule of advanced level classes that she'd rarely been able to find a moment to pull herself away, and when she did, it was difficult to get her to speak of anything else. All in all, the four of them were all very glad for the end of term and a relative return to normalcy. After so much travel, Harry could hardly wait to settle down. To this end, he'd emptied out a fair amount of his Gringotts bank account buying a small cottage house on the outskirts of Hogsmeade Village. As soon as he'd finalized the purchase, he'd sent a letter to Ginny asking if she'd like to stay with him. Not an hour later, he'd received a hastily scribble letter of confirmation.

Kingsley clapped Harry's shoulder again, shaking him from his daydreams about the new life that he was about to begin. "Very good, very good." Kingsley boomed. "The Auror Department is still gutted, it'll be very helpful to have you and Ronald around. And I've already begun the process of deputizing Hermione and Ginevra… Shame they wouldn't come on full time, but we'll take all the help that we can get. But there'll be plenty of time for that letter, I'll have an owl sent out soon. I daresay that you have other places that you'll be wanting to be now?" He gave a knowing wink.

Harry looked down at his watch and nearly jumped. "Yeah, thanks. I'll see you soon Kin- I mean, Minister Shacklebolt." Harry gave a hurried wave and darted out of the courtroom towards the lift at the end of the corridor.