Announcements!

To the best of my predictive powers to ascertain, this arc will be concluding with the next installment. Unless of course certain characters simply fail to shut up and keep talking for way too long.

Following the conclusion of this arc, there will be an editing pass over all the chapters. Copyediting and whatnot. Probably also looking at some continuity issues (I think I spotted at least one error that I should probably fix).

I know what the next arc is. There will be less Harry, finally. Yes, I'm terribly sorry, and mildly annoyed, that he has featured so prominently. Hermione is the title character for a reason, its time to start focusing on her more.

And last, but certainly not least, I'm looking for betas for some original fiction. Possibly several pieces of original fiction. The first is definitely a sci-fi mystery/thriller short story. If anyone is interested in betaing that or a longer fantasy piece that's in the works, PM me.


Dementor Disaster

Wizengamot Decimated

That was what the headline of the Daily Prophet proclaimed. The exact nature of the disaster was carefully unspecified. Causes were 'under investigation'. And assurances were most definitely made that the dementor in question was 'under control' thanks to the 'valiant efforts of aurors at the scene.'

Due to the volume of prominent obituaries, "Boy-Who-Lived Arrested for Underage Magic" was pushed back to page four. Like the front page, the story was littered with generalities and vague claims. The only statement that committed to anything stated simply 'Mr. Potter is being detained at the Ministry.'

Quietly slipping onto the back page was the innocuous article "Wizengamot Considers Prison Without Dementors". It attributed the supposed motion to the aforementioned disaster on page one. No mention was made of the fact that magical Britain had perhaps three dementors left anywhere on the islands.

Harry Potter folded the paper before setting it aside. The carefully-worded lies and weasel non-statements weren't much of a surprise. Between Lucius Malfoy's control of the paper, what was likely several False Memory Charms used on the reporters present, and crafted statements by Amelia Bones temporarily acting as the head of the government, the truth had been meticulously plastered over. It was hard not to respect the skillful cover-up. Harry wondered if most of the Wizengamot still remembered what happened.

He placed the Daily Prophet on the desk before reaching for the Quiddler, which had been under it. He almost dropped it in shock when he finally got a look at its front page. "Harry Potter Fires Opening Salvo Against Death-Eaters" proclaimed the headline. His mouth worked soundlessly. Apparently several Death-Eaters had attacked Miss Granger, but they had been thwarted by Harry Potter, and most of them were killed in the attempt. Then the Boy-who-lived and Miss Granger had vanished mysteriously to safety.

Harry burst out laughing.

He was sitting in a nicely appointed apartment, somewhere proximal to the ministry building. Presumably this was some sort of diplomatic suite, usually used to house visiting magical dignitaries. The unit, and three others like it, were accessible only by floo network. Despite the impossibility of him going anywhere, there was an auror in the hallway that connected the four units who had been ordered to make sure Harry didn't leave the room. He presumed Hermione was also on the floor, but, having decided that further provoking Director Bones was a poor idea, he hadn't been able to look in on her. But the auror had gladly provided this morning's entertainment, courtesy of the newspapers.

It couldn't be long before someone came to get him. They needed a resolution to this as much as he did.


When Hermione awoke, Dumbledore was standing over her, concern on his face.

"Miss Granger, it is good to see you awake."

She found herself in a strange bed. The room was mostly dark, illuminated only by something which also radiated heat and comfort, oddly placed above and behind her on the back of the bed. She rolled her head back, arching her spine slightly to afford a clear view, and was surprised to see Fawkes perched above her. Hermione pushed herself up to a sitting position.

"Headmaster, where...?"

"Somewhere safe, for the moment at least. Would that I could spare you this, but I must know. Tell me, what do you remember?"

Hermione couldn't bring herself to think of the events of the Wizengamot chamber, not with the peace radiating from Fawkes. But Azkaban was almost a happy memory. She brightened at the thought of the powerful light that had emanated from her. "...I cast a patronus. Harry helped me. It was so bright and pure, and... I could feel it... the peace... as it spread over the people... the prisoners..." She looked guardedly at Dumbledore.

"Is there anything else you..."

"Did you know?" She interrupted

Dumbledore arched his eyebrows in question.

"Did you know about the condition of the prisoners. Of how horrible it was."

There was pain in Dumbledore's eyes, but he was slow to speak. Hermione recoiled against the back of the bed.

"You knew."

"I knew."

"How could you?! How could you let that place exist?!"

The phoenix light brightened from a subdued flame to a blaze. In the harsh light, Hermione could see Dumbledore's shoulders sag a little. His eyes sombre. Overall he seemed diminished. Haggard. Hermione felt a pang of sympathy for him.

"I have no certain answers for you. For all its unspeakable horror, it was a symbol of justice and law to witches and wizards in these isles."

Hermione was looking past Dumbledore, was thinking about the woman that Harry described to her. "It was evil," she said flatly.

"I see that you, too, have learned to speak with what voice phoenices might speak, were they to talk. Maybe it was evil, I can no longer say. But I could not lightly wield power against all opposition, and then, its been a long time since I was a hero."

Hermione said nothing. Listening. Trying to understand the ancient wizard who before yesterday she would have proclaimed a beacon of goodness without question.

"I've been playing this game for too long, waiting for the next hero, for the cycle to repeat, for the story to go on. I thought it was my role, my duty as the mysterious old wizard, holding the fort until a champion was needed when darkness rose once more. But now I find that the hero doesn't need me as a mentor, and the one whom I thought would be champion keeps other counsel."

"Harry..."

"Harry has made his own choices, as he always has."

"Headmaster, how do I save Harry from himself?" Fawkes was now a dim glow, casting long shadows across the wizened face that looked down on her.

"I wish I had the answers for you, Miss Granger. But I am out of answers."

"How can Harry be a hero after... that..."

"Harry is not the hero I referred to."

There was a long moment as they looked at one another, the young witch and the old wizard. Her blood beat audibly in the silence, counting the seconds as they extended into minutes. Dumbledore gave her a sad smile that didn't reach his eyes.

Hermione couldn't stand that smile. It looked like defeat. She broke the silence first, grasping at the first thing she could think of. "Headmaster, will you be taking Fawkes with you?"

"A Phoenix is not ordered. It goes where its heart tells it to go. And like the Phoenix, the cause of the good and the light does not suffer permanent death, but is gloriously reborn. Reborn in the hearts of new champions who will carry on where others left off. The phoenix follows the light."

Hermione glanced at Fawkes again, who was looking down at her, head cocked. "I couldn't."

"He has chosen you, Miss Granger. Would you deny Fawkes his choice?"

She reached up to Fawkes, who nuzzled her hand briefly before stepping gently onto her wrist. She brought her arm down before her, across her body, feeling the warmth of the phoenix clearly. She didn't know what to say to Headmaster Dumbledore.

"Headmaster, I don't understand."

"Don't trouble yourself, young Ravenclaw, it is not your burden to bear. There will be plenty of others for you. And mysterious wizards would fail to be mysterious if we were so easy to understand."

Another awkward silence descended briefly. Hermione broke it quickly.

"And what happens to me now?"

"Mister Potter has secured your freedom. When you are fully recovered, you may return to Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall will be by later today."

"And what will happen to Harry?"

"I am uncertain. He is to be meeting with Director Bones and some others at this moment to discuss the situation."

She felt a succession of contradictory emotions about Harry. It made her stomach ache hollowly and brought tears to her eyes where they glistened, unshed, in the phoenix light.

"I don't want to see him."

"Then you won't have to."

She half-smiled. "Thank you for being here Headmaster."

Dumbledore stood straighter and nodded his head. Sensing the conversation had run its course, he slowly strode to the door from the room. He turned back to her, nearly lost in the shadows of the subdued light, his hand on the door.

"Farewell Miss Granger. May we meet again under happier circumstances." Then he was out the door, closing it softly behind him.

He was gone by the time she'd understood those two sentences.


Harry found himself within a rather plain room, boxy and mostly bare. Grey paint was in various states of peeling about the walls. A rectangular table and four chairs were the room's only ornament. The auror escorting him led him to one of those chairs, facing the other three across the table. Harry pushed the chair back on its rear legs slightly before spinning it about and then sitting on it backwards, straddling the seat and resting his chest against the back of the chair. He looked at the auror, but there was no reaction. The auror left him there in the room.

If their positions had been reversed, Harry would let captive Harry sit. Make him sweat. Of course, Harry had seen muggle crime dramas. The whole thing seemed trite and ridiculous now that he was actually sitting there. Its not like he was going to come to some deep realization about how much trouble he was in, he already knew that. He'd had plenty of time to think while waiting in Azkaban, and again this morning.

Harry was here because he wanted to be here. That gave him power. That gave him control.

To exploit that control he was going to need his dark side. He needed the clarity and he needed the threat of it just below the surface. So instead of thinking about guilt and consequences, he thought about pain. About the woman in Azkaban. About Hermione in the metal chair before the Wizengamot. He didn't fall into it though, but merely readied it, held like a pitbull on a tight leash with a trespasser before it. He was ready.

At last the door opened and three people filed solemnly into the room. Director Bones was first, stepping briskly to the center chair, crisp and professional. Lucius Malfoy followed behind her, taking the left chair. No surprises yet. The third was Professor McGonagall, moving with determination but without her usual energy. Harry forced himself not to frown. He'd been expecting Dumbledore. All of their faces were schooled masks of indifference.

Harry permitted himself a sly smile as McGonagall was seating herself. He was never going to get a better chance to say this. Before Director Bones could assume control by speaking first, he spoke confidently, "I suppose you're wondering why I called you here."

Three sets of eyes stared at him impassively across the table. But there was no backing down now. He was in control here. They were here because he had made them be here, and he wasn't going to concede anything he wasn't prepared to concede. This was his meeting.

"Ahem. Mister Potter..." Amelia finally began.

"That's Potter-Evans-Verres."

"Mister Potter, you do understand the severity and significance of your actions which cause this to be necessary?"

"Have you seen the morning paper? I especially liked the Quibbler headline." He relaxed with his arms crossed before him over the back of his chair.

Lucius's eyes darkened slightly, but he was otherwise the picture of stern composure. Amelia was giving him that look his father gave him when he was angry and wasn't going to let Harry change the subject. The only real reaction he got was from Minerva.

"Harry!"

He ignored her. "You're not looking for proof of my understanding. I would hazard at most one of you cares at all what's going on in my head. What you're looking for is reassurance for yourselves that whatever devil's bargain you make today is the right one. You're looking for guilt so that you can use it to control me. I will not utter meaningless reassurances and I will not be blackmailed by my guilt. Should you find any reassurance after our discussion, it will be because you have reasonably come to the conclusion that the outcome will be better than if we had not talked."

"Mister Potter, these..." Amelia began.

"Potter-Evans-Verres."

"Mister Potter-Evans-Verres," she sighed, "these are serious offenses against state and society."

"Offenses that you seem unwilling to make public. Although the news did make for entertaining reading this morning. Where is Dumbledore anyway?"

"The administration of Hogwarts is represented here, Mister Potter," McGonagall said sternly. Harry filed that under things to think about later.

"Before we talk about anything of substance then... has everyone been read in?"

Harry didn't expect an answer. Instead he paid careful attention to their reactions. Lord Malfoy raised one eyebrow slightly, nonchalantly. Director Bones pupils dilated just a little, her face assuming the poise of someone who knew they were composing their face to show no response. McGonagall's eyes glanced to her right quickly, her mouth open just a fraction, before she regained her composure. Her hands smoothed her skirt beneath the table in distraction.

"Well, I suppose that answers that. Thank you for your honesty."

"As fascinating as this is, Mister Potter-Evans-Verres," Lord Malfoy began, Harry's full last name sharp and precise, "would you please stop wasting our time."

Harry nodded.

"Mister Potter-Evans-Verres," interjected Director Bones. "I am not in the habit of making deals with cold-blooded mass murderers. Before we go any further you will tell me what in the Fiddly-Snocks you were thinking."

"Oh this should be a fun game. Let me guess, I try to find the explanation that I think you will find most sensible, and you try to tell how badly I'm lying?"

"What I want, Mister Potter-Evans-Verres, is the truth."

"That's a great set up, but my Robert DeNiro isn't very good. Maybe after puberty."

Silence.

"Very well. I could tell you that I chose the course of action that I did because I expected it to be better than the alternatives. That I was cognizant of the fact that many of the dead were either Death Eaters themselves or willing pawns of Death Eaters. That I couldn't necessarily name all the names but I'm certain you have your suspicions Director Bones. And that my action, while alarming on its own, will likely prove beneficial in the next war. That would be a lie, although there is certainly truth to it, but it was not what I was thinking. It would be a post hoc justification, and I try to be more honest with myself than that."

"But we shouldn't discard that observation either. Because even if I wasn't thinking that, my actions still have the same impacts, the same consequences."

"And what of the consequences, Mr. Potter, to Miss Greengrass," Professor McGonagall interjected. "She lost her mother yesterday. A mother who, to the best of my knowledge, was never a Death Eater, and never in their thrall. Or there's Theodore Nott, who lost his great-grandfather and guardian, a man who may have been sympathetic to the Death Eaters himself, but that is not salve for a child's grief. They're not the only children who lost family members, although they're the only ones you may have known well. Would you have liked to have taken my place last night when I told each of them. Seen those consequences first hand."

Harry closed his eyes briefly. Somewhere inside a part of him was screaming. He opened them again and met Minerva's gaze.

"And that, professor, is why I'm here, and why we're having this conversation."

He thought he saw relief, if only for a moment, in McGonagall's eyes. No Minerva, you haven't lost me to darkness, not yet. But then it was gone or perhaps he'd just imagined it. He turned his attention back to Director Bones.

"What I was thinking was that any group which would condemn a twelve-year-old girl to Azkaban had such a fundamental values dissonance with me that conflict was inevitable. In effect they, and by extension of the power they wielded as the voting majority of the Wizengamot, the government of Magical Britain itself, had declared war on my values. I said as much to them. To you. I'm sure it did not help matters that the twelve-year-old girl in question was my friend, but I'd like to think that I'd object to anyone my age being sent to torture and murder masquerading as justice. I tried to forestall the conflict with a less drastic solution. I was blocked at every turn. There are some values which I will not sacrifice, not when it is within my power to protect them."

"And you still believe what you did was right," Amelia Bones said. It was not a question.

"It was. They were guilty the moment they voted."

"Self-serving nonsense." Lucius Malfoy pushed himself up from the table. "To hold a twelve-year-old girl's life above the lives of over fifty men and women? Preposterous."

"Should you happen to come across several armed thugs robbing a single man, their weapons drawn, do you protect the man or his assailants?"

"I'm not susceptible to your sophistry Mister Potter."

"You protect the man, Lord Malfoy, because its not just about the one man in his person, its about all the other possible men and women who could and will be in that place if the thugs are not dealt with."

He had raised his head and held Lucius's eyes while he spoke. And then he could feel it, the tiny feelers of legilimency scraping across the surface of his mind. Harry was going to let him find nothing, frustrate him with the fact of his occlumency, but then a wild idea took him. He brought two thoughts to the forefront of his mind, in front of his barriers. The first, something he had read in one of the recent histories. All the power of the dark lord in his scar. The second, a memory. The memory of his voice as he acted as the dark lord, just the voice, a chill whisper in the endless night of Azkaban. Hello, my dear Bella. Did you miss me?

In Harry's mind, but only in his mind, behind his occlumency barrier, there was a sound of fingers snapping.

Lucius stumbled back into his chair, toppling it and almost falling over himself. There was a brief look of pure fear in his eyes before he composed himself again. With deliberate slowness he bent down and righted his chair before reseating himself. Both McGonagall and Bones looked at him curiously before turning back to Harry.

"That seems to have established the facts of the matter," Director Bones said. "Now, as to Azkaban, what exactly did you do with the Dementors, Mister Potter."

"I believe I told you already. I ate them."

"Be more specific, Mister Potter."

"-Evans-Verres. And they are no more. Dust and less than dust."

"No one destroys their strongest weapon voluntarily," Lord Malfoy said, more to the two adults than the child they faced. Harry smiled.

"You conclude he is lying, Lucius?" Amelia said to him.

"That is one possibility," Harry offered, resting his chin on his arms. "There is another."

Lucius had not taken his eyes off Harry. Amelia and Minerva exchanged a worried look.

"Ahem. As to the terms of your incarceration..."

"I believe the only charge you're willing to make public is underage magic use, Director Bones."

"I could have your wand snapped for that alone, Mister Potter-Evans-Verres," the Director of the DMLE said sharply.

"Not that we would imagine doing such a thing to you, Mister Potter, of course," Lord Malfoy said.

This was going to take awhile.


In the end, it wasn't as bad as Harry had been willing to accept. Ten years of imprisonment, here, in the elegant apartment they had been keeping him in already. Access to tutors and educational materials – McGonagall had agreed immediately with him on that. Use of wand while supervised. Visitors permitted. It wasn't much different than his expected future at Hogwarts, albeit a bit longer and without peers readily available. Lucius had become an unexpected ally, and so Harry had merely had to steer the conversation in the appropriate directions and let it run its course.

The exact nature of the agreement would be a state secret, known only to the Wizengamot, who would ratify it tomorrow. It felt, to Harry, that he was being treated like a political prisoner more than anything else. Which made sense, in a way. There had even been a formal declaration of war. This was the peace treaty.

McGonagall had escorted him through the floo travel and back to the apartment, before going to check on Hermione. Harry had wanted to look in on her, but Minerva had been resolute that he should go to his rooms.

There was something slightly amiss when he entered, some nameless difference that he felt more than observed. Intuition making leaps with evidence his conscious mind hadn't fully processed. He walked over to the bedroom and opened the door.

Dumbledore was sitting in an upholstered chair, his purple robes blending into the darkness of the unlit room. His hat was in his lap.

"Good evening Harry. I thought we might speak one last time."