Chapter 12: Meeting Amelia Bones

Amelia Bones couldn't help but stare as Harry Potter fell out of her floo and landed on his bum.

"Are you alright, young man?" she asked, moving forward to help him up. He stood up quickly, brushing the soot of his robe, and blushing furiously. She could have sworn he muttered something like "damn godfather".

He looked up, giving her a sheepish smile, and then held out his hand.

"Harry Potter" he said, in a confident tone, startling her with the sudden change in demeanor. It was like he had suddenly found himself on stage, and was acting out a half-memorised role.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me," he continued, and Amelia shook herself out of her thoughts and replied, "Your letter indicated that it was a matter of great importance".

"It is," he answered somberly, as he took the seat she offered.

Amelia took her seat across the table and waited for him to continue.

"I believe I mentioned the attack by dementors, against my cousin and I," he stated, resting his hands on the armrest.

Amelia nodded, wondering what exactly this boy wanted from her. If he hoped that she would somehow excuse him from attending the trial, then he had another thing coming.

"I would like to share my memories of the incident. And other equally important ones that are relevant," he said.

Amelia silently levitated her pensieve onto the table in front of him. He took out his wand, and handed it to her.

"Please cast the Priori Incantatem on it," he asked.

Amelia did as requested, and could barely hold back a startled gasp. Out of the tip of the wand emerged a beautiful ethereal patronus – a stag.

"Did you cast this? A corporeal patronus?" she asked. For someone who was barely fifteen, it was very impressive.

"Yes, Madam. I'll be showing you the memory in a moment," he replied, stretching out his hand to accept his wand back.

Holding the tip of the wand to his forehead, he pulled out a long silvery thread and dumped it in the pensieve.

He pushed the bowl towards her, and watched as she cast a series of spells to check for any sign of manipulation. Satisfied, she looked up and asked, "Will you be joining me?"

A shadow passed over his face, and Amelia wondered if rumors of his reaction to the dementors were true.

"I'd rather not. There are several unpleasant memories that I need to share with you that were hard enough to go through the first time around."

"Very well." Amelia wasn't worried about leaving him alone in her office. She had plenty of wards that would alert her if he tried anything.

Pressing her face into the contents of the bowl, she felt herself falling and landed on her feet in the middle of a park. She glanced around and found Potter seated on a rusty swing, moodily staring at the ground. 'Why was he dressed like that?" she wondered, staring at the pathetic rags he had clothed himself in.

The sound of voices caused both of them to look up. A group of teenage boys were approaching the park, laughing and talking loudly. One look at them, and Amelia knew they were trouble.

A glance at Potter, and she could see that he was itching for a fight. The boys continued along the road, until they were out of sight, and Potter's shoulders slumped, almost as if he was disappointed.

He scowled and followed in their direction. Amelia hastened to follow. Spotting the gang again, he quickly stepped into the shadow of a tree and waited.

"…squealed like a pig, didn't he?" a burly boy said, and the other boys laughed.

"Nice right hook, Big D," a thin mousy looking one said, slapping the back of an obese boy.

Amelia watched as Potter rolled his eyes. They stood in silence as the gang dispersed, until only the 'Big D' was left.

She observed Potter move behind him, and call out, "Hey, Big D!"

The boy turned, and instantly grimaced. Amelia watched as Potter taunted the boy (probably his cousin, she thought as she remembered his letter) about his new nickname. He appeared to be getting some sick sense of satisfaction on taking out his frustrations on his cousin. Was the Daily Prophet right about him?

Amelia almost felt sorry for his cousin until she heard him talk nonchalantly about beating up a ten year old kid.

She watched as Potter pulled out his wand. The sudden fear in his cousin's eyes was worrying. What had he done to his cousin?

And suddenly the tables were turned.

"I heard you last night. Talking in your sleep. Moaning," Dudley sneered.

Potter's face drained of all color. "What d'you mean?"

"Don't kill Cedric! Don't kill Cedric!" Who's Cedric – your boyfriend?" Dudley laughed mockingly.

Amelia felt a cold chill settle in her chest.

"Come and help me, Dad! Mum, come and help me! He's killed Cedric! Dad, help me! He's going to –" his words were cut off as Potter suddenly pointed his wand straight in his face. He was breathing heavy and looked too angry for words.

"Don't ever talk about that again," he snarled. "D'you understand me?"

'Point that thing somewhere else!'

'I said, do you understand me?'

Their heated exchange was interrupted as the lights in the street flickered. Everything suddenly grew dark. Silence descended in the empty street.

Although Amelia was insulated from the effect of the dementors, she could feel goose bumps rising along her skin.

And then it happened. A dementor appeared at the end of the street, and its rattling inhalation was heard. Dudley panicked, and lashing out managed to knock down his cousin, only to run straight at the foul creatures.

"DUDLEY, COME BACK! YOU'RE RUNNING RIGHT AT IT!" Potter yelled, as he scrambled around, trying to find his wand.

"Come on," he muttered frantically, groping in the dark. "Lumos"

Amelia gasped. His wand had lit up! The boy was obviously powerful to have channeled his magic like that. Was he trained in wandless magic?

A second dementor was approaching him. Potter was unsuccessfully trying to fight off it effect.

Two tries, and nothing. Then – "EXPECTO PATRONUM"

The enormous silver stag that Amelia had seen earlier, erupted from his wand. The dementor shrieked in pain, as it was gored by its antlers.

As the defeated dementor fled the scene, Potter directed his patronus to the other dementor. Amelia's heart was in her throat as she watched the foul creature lower his hood over the prone boy.

The patronus caught the dementor with its antlers and flung it in the air, and as Potter ran towards his cousin, it escaped.

Thinking that was the end of it, Amelia was prepared to leave when she spotted Arabella Figg running towards the two, looking completely winded.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" Amelia said, smirking.

*******************

As Amelia rose out of the pensieve, she observed that Potter was still seated where she had left him. He waited patiently for her to take her seat. Amelia made sure her expression betrayed none of her thoughts.

"You said there were other memories you wanted me to see?" she prompted.

He simply nodded, and pulled out another long strand of memory. He stared at the bowl, and from his eyes, she could make out that he was reliving the horror of that memory.

Silently she entered into the second memory.

Fifteen minutes later, Amelia had landed back in her office, her face pale and body shaking.

"It's true! He's back!" she whispered. And for the first time, she saw a flare of anger light up in his eyes.

"Do you see now? What the Prophet is trying to do?" he asked, as he shook his head in disgust.

Amelia clutched the corners of her table and took deep, steadying breaths.

"Did you tell anyone from the Ministry about this," she asked, managing to keep her voice from shaking.

He snorted. "Of course I did. Take a look," he replied, pulling out another strand of memory.

By the time Amelia had gotten back, she was over her initial shock. Instead, she was furious. The reason?

Fudge. That moronic pea-brained idiot who had somehow landed himself the role of Minister.

She sat quietly in her seat fuming for sometime, while her companion made no effort to interrupt her thoughts. She thought about dear Edgar, and the loss she had felt when he and his wife, had been brutally tortured and murdered by Voldemort himself. She remembered holding her niece in her arms, struggling not to cry. She remembered the promise she had made to herself. Every single Death Eater had learnt to fear her skills in battle. And when the Ministry had promoted her to a desk job, she had ensured that she had used every bit of power she wielded to make sure the people she caught got their due.

Yet, it hadn't been enough. Voldemort's reign of terror seemed unstoppable. And then, the impossible had happened. He was defeated by a mere baby. Amelia remembered the joy she had felt, when she had learnt that her brother's murderer was gone. She remembered the cries of people around her, 'Long live Harry Potter!"

The boy was a legend. But for eleven years, he had disappeared from the public eye. Then he had come back and had sent the public in a tizzy. Rumors about him floated all around, but no one knew the truth. Amelia herself was quite shocked at how ordinary he was. No fancy airs, not a trace of arrogance. In fact, it seemed to be the opposite. He seemed to be the shy brooding type.

Observing him from the corner of her eye, she noticed him struggling to put on an air of indifference at her unnerving silence. Someone had coached him, she realized. But who?

"Why did you approach me?" she asked, wanting to know at the outset what his expectations from this meeting were.

"The only people in the know were not bothering to do anything with the information I had provided," he said. Amelia noticed how he had carefully phrased his reply to include not only Fudge but also Dumbledore.

Did Potter know that he had not only provided proof of Voldemort's return, but also of the existence of the Order of the Phoenix? What would Dumbledore do if he found out?

"What do you know about Arabella Figg?" she asked.

She was amused at the way he tried to hide his scowl. "She was my babysitter. As you must have seen, I had no idea that she was aware of the magical world, until the attack."

Amelia nodded. It was clear that Dumbledore had planted that woman.

"How do your Muggle relatives treat you?" Amelia asked. From what she had seen of his pathetic cousin, his whining Aunt, and the verbal lashing his Uncle had given him on spotting his son's state, she was worried about Potter's home life.

Obviously caught off guard, he simply shrugged. An action that was contrary to the pureblood act he was trying to pull off. Amelia was dying to have a word with his coach.

Dropping the matter for the time being, she opened a file that she had kept ready for this very meeting. "I strongly believe there is a connection between the two 'incidents' you've shown me. But for the moment, I will be treating them as separate cases. First is the attack by dementors. I have your file from the Improper Use of Magic office. There are two incidents of note here, in your second and third year."

He nodded as though expecting this. "The first one was done by a house-elf that was trying to prevent me from going back to Hogwarts. The second one – well I'd rather you see the memory for yourself." He pulled out two separate strands and placed them in the bowl.

"I'll look at them later. Now the standard questions required before I can file an attempted murder case. Do you know of anyone who would wish to get rid of you?" she asked, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"Voldemort, his Death Eaters, Fudge… Take your pick," he smiled back.

"Have there been attempts on your life in the past?" she asked, casting her mind back to that Halloween night.

To her surprise, he didn't refer to the night he lost his parents. Instead he pulled out what looked like half his memories, and dumped it in her pensieve.

Eyes wide, she spluttered, "You can't be serious."

His expression showed no signs of amusement. "There has been an attempt on my life during every single year I've been at Hogwarts"

"What!" she exploded. "Dumbledore didn't inform me of anything of that kind."

He snorted, and leaned back. "Dumbledore? Isn't that man above the law?"

Amelia did not like the implications of his statement. Frowning heavily she barked out, "You'd better explain what you mean. Right now."

"He makes the rules, he enforces it. But who checks up on the great man himself? If Dumbledore says so, it must be right. Isn't that the attitude here? So no one says anything when the man takes a one year old baby and leaves him on his Muggle relatives doorstep. No one bothers to question the absence of the Boy-who-lived from the wizarding world. No one finds out that he has left the head of a pureblood family ignorant about his own inheritance. Nobody knows the dangers he exposes his students to every year." Potter said this all in a calm, almost aloof tone, but Amelia could see the poorly hidden anger in his eyes.

Amelia was silent for sometime, but her mind was working furiously. From the bits and pieces she had gathered, she understood that Dumbledore had been poking his nose into Potter's life for too long. It appeared that the boy had actually entered the wizarding world with no knowledge of his fame. How could that old coot leave the Boy-who-lived unprepared for role he knew was going to be thrust upon him?

Suddenly it all made sense. The reason for his shy diffident attitude was not his usual personality, but the insecurity he felt at his ignorance of this world. Someone had opened his eyes to Dumbledore's true nature. Probably the same person who had suggested that he approach her.

"Dumbledore supports your claim of Voldemort's return," she pointed out.

"He does," he answered, not elaborating.

"Do you wish to press some kind of charges against him?" Amelia asked, wondering how far he was willing to go.

"And have him wriggle out of them? I don't think so," he smirked.

Amelia felt a rush of irritation at his jaded words. But he was right. Charges against Dumbledore never seemed to stick.

The slander campaign Fudge had mounted against him was a temporary inconvenience. Voldemort's return couldn't stay hidden for long.

She sighed. "I'll speak to someone in the Improper Use of Magic office about dropping the hearing."

Surprisingly he shook his head at that. "No, I don't want that. The old man might get suspicious."

Understanding dawned on her. "Dumbledore has no idea that you've come to see me, and you want to keep it that way," she stated.

"Exactly."

She frowned. "The hearing is supposed to be in my office. But I've been hearing rumors of Fudge wanting to hold a trial in one of the Courtrooms. Either way, I'm going to need to use your memories during the trial to prove your innocence."

"How about I come in early on the day of the trial and ditch whatever guard Dumbledore sends with me. If it's in your office, then I don't need to explain how you got my memories. But if it's an open trial then I'll say that I came in early for the trial, met you, and during the course of our conversation, I handed over my memories to you," he suggested.

It was a good plan, and Amelia agreed. "Dealing with Voldemort is going to be a lot more complicated though." She couldn't exactly voice her frustrations with the Minister openly.

"It will be complicated as long as Fudge is in power," he said carefully.

The conversation was entering dangerous grounds. The boy was practically implying overthrowing Fudge's government while sitting in a Ministry office.

She gave him a warning look, but he ploughed on. "I think that my upcoming trial is going to be very enlightening. It's not a closed trial is it? "

"No it isn't," she confirmed. Fudge probably wanted the world to watch as he crucified the Boy-who-lived.

"Then the evidence you present will be an eye-opener to many. Getting people to accept the truth is after all the first step in dealing with that monster."

Amelia agreed. She spent the next ten minutes taking down his statement.

"Final question. Please name all the Death Eaters you remember seeing during the rebirth ceremony," she asked.

"Avery. Crabbe. Goyle. Nott. Malfoy. Macnair. Pettigrew," he stated.

Sweet Merlin, Amelia thought. How many more surprises is this evening going to hold? Resigning herself, she wearily asked, "Pettigrew?"

His face was a mask of hate. "Peter Pettigrew. The man Voldemort referred to as 'Wormtail'."

Amelia quickly cast her mind back to the rebirth ceremony. From what she could make out in that dark graveyard, the man did indeed resemble Pettigrew. Mind working furiously, she wondered what Sirius Black's role in the whole mess was.

He continued. "I need to take my leave. I've stayed as long as I could. You can use the communication parchment if you need to contact me for anything else."

Amelia quickly duplicated his memories, and returned the originals to him.

He shook her hand, and walked towards the fire place. Turning around he added, "Madam Bones, among the many memories I have given you, you will also find evidence of another person's innocence." He hesitated. "This person means a lot to me, and I'd appreciate any efforts you can make towards ensuring that justice is served to the real criminal."

And with that, he was gone.

Amelia waited for a second, before diving for the pensieve. Pressing a rune on the side, she ensured that all the memories would now be played in the sequence in which the events had occurred.

Taking a deep breath she plunged herself in.

An hour later, a pale and shaky Amelia Bones, landed back in her office and collapsed into her chair. "Merlin!"

A mere child facing Voldemort, basilisks, dementors, and werewolves with such courage! Amelia felt a new found respect for the Boy-who-lived. He was every bit as courageous as his father.

And suddenly she was lost in memories of two bright eyed recruits who had joined her team. James Potter and Sirius Black. She had been wary of the two at first, having heard of their 'exta-curricular' activities in school. The other trainers had been quite critical about their unorthodox methods.

But when they had been assigned to Amelia's team, she found herself blown away. It was true that they didn't use the same standard practices that the other recruits adopted. But Amelia saw this as an advantage against Death Eaters who had been trained on how to react to the standard Auror spells. And she had been proved right.

Within their first week in the field, the two had managed to capture three middle-ranked Death Eaters with what they called the Disco Ball jinx - a spell that created a flashing lights effect that tended to hypnotise those not protected by the counterspell. Her co-workers had complained that they were ruining the reputation of Britain's Auror force; Amelia pointed out the fact that not being able to catch terrorists was doing better job of ruining their reputation – her men were getting the results, never mind the 'technique'.

She would never in a hundred years have accepted that Sirius Black had betrayed his best friend and comrade. They were the perfect team. But with all the evidence pointing his way, Amelia had reconciled herself to believing that perhaps this time, her intuition was wrong.

Now Amelia could do nothing more than curse herself for failing one of her own Aurors. Because of her blindness and stupidity, an innocent man had spent thirteen years with the foulest creatures on the planet.

Dumbledore knew, she realized. He had helped Black escape the Kiss. Why had he not brought this to her notice? Was it to avoid bringing to light the fact that he had instigated two thirteen year olds to break all time-travel laws in a bid to help Black escape?

Dumbledore was playing a dangerous game with the Boy-who-lived. It seemed that Potter had now realised that the old man was up to something. And Amelia knew just who had probably opened his eyes. Harry's godfather, the one and only Sirius Black.

If she was going to set this right, then she had a ton of things to do.

Getting those ridiculous charges against Potter dropped. Writing a few letters to the more influential members of the Wizengamot. Pushing Fudge (or his successor, most likely) to get proactive against Voldemort. Stepping up the training for the Auror forces. Keeping a look out for Pettigrew (alias: Wormtail). Launching investigations into every single breach of security at Hogwarts over the years. Keeping a close eye on Dumbledore and his Order. Not to mention, all the 'former' Death Eaters including Lucius Malfoy and co.

But first, she was going to get herself a pot of coffee. She needed to pull a couple of all-nighters to get on top of the situation.

A shot of caffeine later, Amelia rolled up her sleeves and got down to work. She had a Dark Lord to catch.


Author's note: Does anyone know when the prophecy was actually made? Was it before or after Harry's birth?