Chapter 20: Hearing

I was trying to talk my stomach into the idea of toast the next morning when Proudfoot arrived to collect me, knocking on the door with one of his equally functioning arms. He didn't muck about thanking me, to my relief.

"The hearing is scheduled in an hour and a half. Until you're called for your testimony you'll be in a secure chamber off the hearing room. We can wait here –"

"No, let's go now." I was sick of these walls.

After a few moments of thought, I tucked my book into my jacket pocket, and we flooed directly through to the holding room. It was quiet and paneled in dark wood. There was a wood writing desk against one wall and a painting of a landscape slowly scrolling along over the mantel. Two sealed doors led out, one presumably into the hearing room. Proudfoot let himself out to guard the other door into the corridor.

There was a small lav off on one side. Well, I still had to change my appearance. I stepped in and used the mirror as I applied the glamours to lengthen and darken my hair and transform my jacket to robes. I knew I needed to return to my old appearance, but it didn't help my nerves. It was rather like being back then in that wretched time, with the weight of impossible plans riding on my shoulders.

I sat on the sofa in the holding room watching the painted landscape drift slowly along and tried to clear my mind. Only my testimony would be needed.

Draco arrived half an hour later and gave a start as I turned to look at him. He wasn't expecting to see me in my old appearance. "Sorry, sir, I just…" he trailed off. Of course, he had his own bad memories.

He took a seat in a rather worn green armchair and immediately began picking at the upholstery seams on the chair arms. He looked off. I couldn't place it at first. There it was, his robes didn't fit him. Surely he had never worn such badly-tailored robes before. They were a bit too large, cuffs falling too far on his hands, his collar too loose. Ah, Madam Lubin was trying to make him look younger and more vulnerable. His nervousness might actually be a help.

"Madam Lubin will have me in first to testify about the contract and some of the, ah, circumstances, and then she'll call you," he said abruptly.

"Yes."

"If… if this goes through, Madam Lubin thinks I have a good chance to get my probation reduced. As soon as we can, we'll be going to stay with mother's friends on the continent. At least for a while."

I nodded.

"And you're going back to… wherever you are." He didn't pose it as a question, but he was wearing his plea openly on his face.

"Miss Bulstrode will be handling communications. For the reference requests."

"Oh. Thank you, sir."

We both sat in our nervous silences.

"How's Goyle?" What on earth inspired me to bring up that miserable topic?

"He's… not so good, sir."

I half-hoped Draco would stop there. No such luck. "I try to visit him when I visit father. Most of the time, he doesn't want to talk to me. He and… he and Vince were closer to each other than they were to me. Anyway, I think he'll be eligible for parole in a couple of years."

I doubted my good references would help Goyle much.

Finally, there was some sort of muffled pronouncement behind the hearing room door and dry shuffling. They were starting. Dim voices were followed at length a higher nasal call rising above the others. The door opened and the bailiff was there saying, "Mr. Malfoy." Draco hurried out.

The door shut and I listened to the swell and fall of distant voices as the landscape rolled past. Waves of landscape and waves of sound. I was at sea. But we had prepared for all this, all I had to do was follow the script.

The high nasal voice again. I stood and walked towards the door. A moment later, the bailiff opened it and Draco came through quickly, his face flushed. I didn't have a chance to examine him more closely, the bailiff was calling my name and ushering me out into the hearing room.

It was bright and exposed after the small dark holding room and there was a wall of people observing me. I focused on the witness chair and headed straight for it. Lucius was bound in the accused chair in the center, I could see his hand on the chair arm from the corner of my eye. I didn't look at him.

All the eyes were on me, like dinner in the Great Hall, that last year, all of them hating, every one of them wanting to kill me and I must not show anything… no, I did not need to look at that wall of faces.

I looked at Madam Lubin, round face smiling at me. It was different now.

They swore me in quickly, then Madam Lubin was beginning. "Mr. Snape, will you please state your name for the sentencing board?"

"Severus Snape."

"Thank you, and your current address?"

We had been over this. I let my nervousness twist my face into anger. "As there are still former Death Eaters at large, I must respectfully decline to answer that question for my own safety."

We had agreed on a few questions to signal that we had not rehearsed or colluded on my testimony. As we had. Madam Lubin did a credible job of looking abashed.

"Of course, Mr. Snape. Simply a routine question, but I believe we can pass over that. Now it has been generally believed that you did not survive the Battle of Hogwarts. How is it that you were able to survive?"

"Again, Madam…"

"Lubin," she supplied.

"Again, Madam Lubin, these are details that could compromise my safety and I must decline to answer. I fail to see how they are pertinent to the matter at hand."

As she had told me before, we might as well shut down the predictable prying from the start and have my denials directed at her rather than the sentencing board.

"As, yes, quite right, Mr. Snape. To the matter at hand."

She produced a copy of Lucius' contract.

"Mr. Snape, will you please examine this contract? Have you seen it before?"

The sentencing board had their own copies, I could see them shuffling papers. It was a bit easier to look at them now that their eyes were off me and on their papers. One had his head almost buried behind his copy.

"Yes."

"Could you describe it for us?"

"It is a contract between Lucius Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore dated 8 August 1995, stating that Lucius Malfoy would aid me in my intelligence gathering for the Order of the Phoenix and that he and his immediate family would be protected by the Order after the end of the war."

"Were you present when the contract was drawn and signed?"

"Yes."

"Was Lucius Malfoy coerced to sign the contract?"

"No, he freely chose to sign it."

Or I would have set him up as a traitor to the Dark Lord, but a choice was a choice, as Albus always had it.

"Based on previous testimony by Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt, Harry Potter, and other respected members of the Order of the Phoenix, you had been well established as a spy and had been successful in passing information to the Order since 1980. Why did you go to what must have been great risk to recruit Mr. Malfoy to help you?"

"After Voldemort's second rise in 1995, he was in great doubt as to my loyalty. I had actively opposed him and his followers at several of his previous attempts to rise from the dead. I gave him passable explanations for my actions, but after his rise he was constantly putting me to the test." No need to remember that, now. "The simplest way for him to test my loyalty would be to feed only me a piece of false intelligence and then wait to see if that information passed to the Order. As such, I could not be of any use to the Order without a way to confirm all information before passing it."

"If I understand correctly, Mr. Snape, Mr. Malfoy's role was to confirm your information for accuracy."

"Yes, that was his primary role."

"And did he carry out that role?"

"Yes."

"So he didn't himself go to any particular risk."

"If he had been discovered, he and his family would have been tortured and killed."

Someone in the gallery above coughed. I glanced up. The man who'd had his face buried in the contract before was holding a handkerchief in front of his mouth. Was he getting all choked up over the good old days?

"But perhaps that risk was not so great; after all, it sounds like he was able to confirm your information and you were not being actively tested."

"No. On two occasions I was able to discover I had been given false information by checking my intelligence against Mr. Malfoy. He also covered for some of my absences.

"If you had not been able to check with Mr. Malfoy and had given that information to the Order, what would have happened?"

Madam Lubin had a look of concern on her face. There was a flash of white in the corner of my eye; the handkerchief had come down. I didn't want to look at that wall of faces again, but if there was something going on, I needed to know.

"If the Order had acted on the information, I would likely have been discovered as a spy, tortured, and killed. And if I had revealed Mr. Malfoy's involvement in the course of that, the same would have happened to him and his family."

I glanced back up at the gallery. The man with the handkerchief was half-buried in the contract again. How very interesting.

"At such great risk of discovery, Mr. Snape, why go to the trouble of having a contract at all? Surely it would be safer to have no physical record of the agreement."

"We needed the contract to protect Mr. Malfoy and his family. It was clear that Albus Dumbledore would be targeted for death by Voldemort, and I had doubts about my own chances. We needed some physical proof of Mr. Malfoy's service to the order so he would not be unjustly punished at the end of the war if we were not available to give testimony."

If I watched from the corner of my eye while looking at Madam Lubin, I could see the man with the contract slowly lower it when I wasn't looking at him. He didn't want me to see his face. And why would that be?

"Well, then why wasn't the contract produced at the end of the war?" asked Madam Lubin.

I kept my head turned to Madam Lubin and quickly flicked my eyes up. He froze. He looked vaguely familiar, but not extraordinary. A shock of brown hair stood up in front, a sort of scared rabbit look. Younger than most of the sentencing board, not that that was very difficult. Of course with how rife collaboration had been during the war, there must have been many openings after collaborators were purged.

I looked back at Madam Lubin. "The hiding place of the contract was destroyed during the war. The portrait of Albus Dumbledore, which was to have turned it over, assumed that the contract had been destroyed as well."

How did I know him? It had something to do with Hogwarts, and not something pleasant. It must be important if he was bothering to hide himself.

"Is that just hearsay?"

"No, when I learned that the contract had never been produced, I questioned the portrait and recovered the contract from the remains of its hiding place."

It had been in the Headmaster's office, I remembered. Amycus was there. And he was saying… "Mr. Jerome, this is most helpful," and the nervous young Ministry clerk with a scared rabbit look and a shock of brown hair, was handing over a bound report of all Hogwarts students and their family records. Collaborator.

"Mr. Snape, how would you describe the importance of Mr. Malfoy's aid to you?"

"It was essential in my gaining and maintaining Voldemort's trust so I could pass information to the Order. Information that allowed the Order to counter some very destructive Death Eater raids. His help allowed us to save lives, at the risk of his own."

"Thank you Mr. Snape." Lubin turned to the head of the sentencing board. "Mr. Lutwidge, I reserve all further questions."

The question was why was there a collaborator on the sentencing board?

Mr. Lutwidge stood, creakily. "I will open the floor to inquiries of the witness from the honorable members of the board, who will be regarded in turn –"

Several fingers and quills were raised.

"And questions will be strictly limited to the matter at hand."

Several hands dropped again.

"I recognize Madam Fenno, you may proceed."

An elderly witch with a sharp face and a clear carrying voice said, "Mr. Snape, Mr. Malfoy has previously testified that he and his family were in disgrace with Voldemort and being held under strict observation and control by him and his followers. How was he able to render any useful aid if those circumstances were correct?"

"Those conditions did occur, after Mr. Malfoy's arrest in June 1996. Much of his aid to me was rendered to me prior to that."

"So, his help to you as described was confined to between the contract date of August 1995 and June 1996. A period of ten months," she continued.

"Not entirely. The fact that he and his family were being held in close quarters with Voldemort and high-ranking Death Eaters did mean that he still had access to information. Occasionally he was able to confirm that information to me without being observed."

Would that be enough for them?

Mr. Lutwidge was calling on a Mr. Cubitt. He cleared his throat at length. "Now, I have been on this sentencing board for some, for some time. I do recall Mr. Malfoy's first trial. In nineteen-eight- in his first trial for aiding and abetting the, ah, the so-called Dark Lord, he pled innocent, innocent on the grounds that he was placed under the Imperius curse and made to act against his will. If that, if that is the case, then how is it that Voldemort would elevate, would consider him a trusted follower to the extent you described, ah, to be party to and able to confirm sensitive information? Wouldn't such a one who had to be forced to obey either be Imperiused again or held in extremely low regard? Hmm?" He trailed off with a wheeze.

I always knew that Lucius hadn't really thought through all the possible consequences of that plea, but at the time, neither of us saw the Dark Lord rising again. Any possibly explanation of Lucius' status would be thin at best, better not to attempt one at all.

"I cannot possibly speculate on Voldemort's thoughts or logic," I said dismissively, "only that I noted that his rational thought processes seemed to be considerably impaired after his rebirth."

He was fucking mental might be a bit blunt for this lot.

And was that how our collaborator Mr. Jerome had got his spot on the sentencing board? A plea of coercion? I rather thought not; they wouldn't want that perception of weakness and corruptibility for anyone on the board. No, I was fairly certain that no one knew about it at all.

Mr. Lutwidge was calling on a Mr. Tichborne.

"How did you come to choose Mr. Malfoy to aid you?"

"Someone who had to be Imperiused to join would be a very good choice." Since they had brought it up, I might as well turn it back on them. Besides, my real signal of the veiled remarks we had exchanged over the years would only have confused them.

"Any more? Ah, Madam Rusk," said Mr. Lutwidge.

"In your estimation, what is the likelihood of recidivism on Mr. Malfoy's part?" asked Madam Rusk.

"None whatsoever," I said. If Lucius managed to get out of this, he would be doing everything in his power to reestablish his standing, and nothing else.

There were several more questions, rehashing details of the contract and the information Lucius confirmed. Finally, there were no more quills raised, and I was dismissed. I could see Lucius bound in the other chair as I rose and turned to go. He was sitting in still calm, not looking at me. The bailiff opened the door for me and I was through to the quiet dim safety of the holding room. We were shut in silence again.

Draco was pacing, his robes restored to their usual excellent tailoring. I headed immediately for the writing desk.

"How did it –"

"I need a quill and parchment now. When do they begin deliberations?"

Draco joined me at the desk. "I think they're hearing some, ah, victim testimony first. And then there'll be a recess until the afternoon. What do you need parchment for?"

I was rifling through the innumerable fiddly drawers.

"There's a collaborator on the sentencing board."

"What, really?" said Draco, delighted. He began yanking open drawers as well, and managed to come up with a few sheets of parchment and a quill.

"Yes. He saw me recognize him. Ought to give us at least one vote. More, if I can get him to influence the others." I set an ink-pot on the desk with a click.

"What –"

"Quiet, Draco." I needed to word this perfectly. It must be crystal clear to Mr. Jerome and completely obscure to anyone else.

My dear Mr. Jerome,

What an unexpected pleasure to see one such as yourself advance so quickly in your career. I only regret that I never had the opportunity to give you public recognition for the aid you gave me in my role at Hogwarts. You truly went beyond what was necessary to simply carry out your duty. If you wish me to make the matter known for public acclaim, you need only say the word, and I would be happy to oblige. I hope for all of our sakes that everything goes well in your current concern.

Yours,

Severus Snape

I folded the note and addressed the front. Draco had been reading over my shoulder. "It's beautiful, sir," he said in open appreciation. "What did he do?"

"You don't need to know that."

His delight vanished. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and turned away.

I began removing the glamours on my appearance, one by one. "Your barrister, she seems competent."

"Yes, of course," he said, irritated.

"Give the note to her; she'll know what to do with it."

"I would know what to do with it too, sir."

"She is better placed to deliver it, Draco, you've done your part."

"That's not what I –"

There was a knock at the door. We stared at each other.

"It's probably Madam Lubin," said Draco.

I moved out of the sight line of the door as Draco went to open it. No need for anyone else to see me in my current appearance.

Draco pulled the door halfway open. I could see his face in profile as he smiled. I knew that smile, it was the one he got when he was about to do something he oughtn't.

"Well," he said, "come in, Potter."

A/N: Thank you all for reading! I am now back in town and can respond to reviews more quickly. And thank you to my anonymous reviewers – I'm sorry I can't reply to you directly!

A clarification for the reviewer who brought up the differences in impact between Voldemort and Manson: I absolutely agree that in the context of the Harry Potter universe, Voldemort's campaign had much more of a impact than Manson and was much more genocidal in nature. However, Snape's identification with the book was not in terms of the scope of Manson's impact (he does specify that Manson couldn't get his war off the ground) but in the nature of his recruitment style, his obsessions, and his psychopathy. Remember, Snape was initially reading the book in the 1980s, long before muggle registration committees and Voldemort's takeover of the Ministry. To Snape, the significance isn't Manson's overall impact, but rather the account of how teenagers became part of a death cult run by a psychopath. It's a story he identifies with rather personally.