Chapter Seventy-One: The Trial of the Century

Hermione did not seem to realise that she might be considered to be fulfilling Trelawney's prophecy from the first day of class, when she jammed her textbooks into her bag and stormed out. Lavender and Parvati, by contrast, were almost inclined to gloat. They'd spent an unfortunate amount of time holed up with Professor Trelawney during lunch breaks, and now seemed to view her as an infallible purveyor of knowledge.

Harry was quite as frustrated as Hermione, but for completely different reasons. Still, he reasoned, it was almost inevitable that the subject he most wanted answers upon (and now with much greater ardour) should someday come up. Perhaps in one specific class lecture.

If all else failed, he could stay back and ask her after some lesson, which grew more appealing by the day, despite how he was growing more repulsed by the idea of staying here a second longer than necessary. The constant fog in which she immersed the classroom couldn't be good for anyone. But he knew—better than almost anyone, for he remembered his research—that there were such things as true prophets, who gave true knowledge.

If Hermione had listened, she would have noticed Professor Trelawney's emphasis in the simple subtleties of forecasting the future—Trelawney said it often enough. But Hermione, he was beginning to understand, was good at learning facts and processes, able to recite and regurgitate information, but with almost no capacity to do anything creative with it. She took always the most literal, logical approach to things, and any illogical thing was a stumbling block for her to overcome. Divination was not straightforward, not a matter of process, not a matter of memorising words and pronunciations and wand movements. It was not fixed and immutable, and there was always some leeway in interpretation, even as the future changed as it was observed.

Accordingly, she assumed that Professor Trelawney was a fraud, and that all of her predictions were hot and cold readings. It was an easy enough assumption to make, and Trelawney's need to seem more powerful than she was lent extra plausibility to this interpretation.

Most of her predictions were small, simple things, things that eluded your notice unless you watched and kept track in a tally board. But if you did keep track, you would notice that her accuracy was greater than that suggested by mere statistics, and that, because the matters were mostly all too small to merit notice, because they were not big, earth-shaking predictions, Hermione dismissed them. Harry did not.

Divination, Professor Trelawney said several times, was not a discipline that could be used on command. It required a certain openness and receptivity, a flexibility that Hermione lacked, with her rational, methodical mind, and that Ron was too impulsive and stubborn to access. Of the three of them, he had the greatest chances of becoming a seer. Harry had shown his own weakness in his three year refusal to accept the truth when it stared him in the face. But he was at least open enough to recognise that something real was happening, even if it was beyond his ability to access.

Only Ron had any genuine skill in the subject, which Harry did not, for once, begrudge him. It was kind of amusing. Or, perhaps he was just his father's son, and some of the pain of his father's sacrifice for wisdom had rubbed off.

That was a much less amusing interpretation.

Although Ron seemed to have some sort of latent skill in the subject, that couldn't have been his reason for signing up, last year. Harry knew his own motivations—what exactly had made Thor choose this subject? Harry had wanted to know how anyone who had never even been to Asgard, and were highly unlikely to have met anyone in the royal family, could know the deep secret that had torn the dream-family apart. Then, too, he'd heard about Ragnarök, and wondered if it could be avoided. Had Ron heard of Ragnarök? Should Harry tell him about it, just when they'd made amends?

Because he didn't have ready answers, he kept silent, awaiting a topic that might never come up.

It was near the end of April that Professor Lupin took Harry and Ron aside to give them the update on Sirius Black's now-impending trial. The obvious conclusion was that they'd done all the investigation and interrogation pertaining to Buckbeak's trial that they were going to do. Now, on to Sirius Black.

He'd been moved from the "secure and isolated" facility to a prison cell, complete with a light guard of dementors. No one save for Dumbledore, Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Ron, Harry, and Hermione knew that Sirius Black was an unregistered animagus. The only thing holding Sirius Black in his cell was his gryffindor sense of chivalry and honour. He could escape, if need be, but Harry still grit his teeth at the injustice of it. But, until Pettigrew was convicted….

Well, Sirius had already lasted for over a decade in prison. A couple of months couldn't do that much more damage. Harry silently set himself the task of researching any possible means of helping Sirius Black to recover. He knew from personal experience that the effects of dementors were rooted far more deeply than mere physical drain on the body. Mother said that soul-stuff gradually regenerates, given time—unless you had crossed a certain threshold. He rather suspected that Sirius Black had, and that it would take more than just waiting to put Sirius back together.

The more relevant fact was that Ron and Percy, at the very least, were expected to testify, having been the "owners" of "Scabbers" for several years. The Wizengamot would extract as much information as they could—any signs that Scabbers had been other than he appeared, while he had been in hiding. This was particularly important in Percy's case, as his lack of involvement in the reveal meant that his testimony was "unblemished" by "association" with Black. In other words, because he and Sirius Black had never crossed paths, Black had had no opportunity to cast any sort of unsavoury spells on him. Such as any sort of memory modification charms.

Professor Lupin, also, was being called to testify, and Harry had to be prepared—they probably wouldn't call him, but they might, so he ought to be ready. But, as the trial was due to start, soon, Professor Lupin, Ron, and Percy would be leaving in a couple of days.

"You will be alright, while I am away?" asked Ron, with more than a bit of trepidation. His meaning could not have been more obvious, but this was just the same as when he'd paid Harry a visit before the trip to Egypt.

"I promise not to go mad and try to take over the world," Harry said, rolling his eyes. Professor Lupin thought that he was being sarcastic. The secret meaning in Harry's words was lost on those with no background knowledge of the Chitauri Invasion. Which was just him and Thor. "With the dementors gone, the main threat is Malfoy. I doubt Riddle is going to make some sort of attempt on the school whilst you're gone. We would have seen some hint of that fact, and furthermore, Dumbledore will still be here."

"Dumbledore is leaving, too," Professor Lupin had to add. It was tempting to glare at him, too.

"Well, Riddle is currently a disembodied spirit hiding in the forests of Albania."

"Harry," Professor Lupin said, and Harry could tell this was going to be bad news as much by the hesitation, the long pause after his name, as by the uncertainty in his voice. "I will most likely not be returning to Hogwarts."

He was going to continue, but Harry leapt into the slight pause. "Whyever not?" he demanded, eyes narrowed at Professor Lupin. Now, he might glare. "The year isn't even out, yet, and you're the best Defence teacher we've had!"

Professor Lupin looked down at his briefcase and avoided looking at either Ron or Harry. "Ah. Well, my affliction is likely to come up in testimony, and this trial is national news. Parents will not want a werewolf to be teaching their children. Dangerous half-breeds and monsters, you know; there are Ministry officials who try to deny us basic rights, never mind mention a job teaching children. It might not come up, and if it doesn't, I'll be glad to finish off the year—but I rather think I've served my purpose here. Now, what was I saying? Ah, yes.

"I have arranged for a substitute to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts—Dumbledore is calling her a junior professor to try to avoid the curse said to be on the position, and I'm still the official professor. You'll like her; she's Sirius Black's cousin, and she shares his…disregard of norms. She's an auror, too. She should be quite good at her job. I've asked her to help finish your lessons on the Patronus Charm, and I'm sure the two of you will have no problem getting rid of the boggart at last, which, I might add, is at this point something of a mercy for it."

Harry flinched, but Lupin was too busy looking at his suitcase, packing away papers, to notice. Ron glanced at him again, as if to ask if he were absolutely sure that he would be fine in Ron's absence.

"I just wanted to warn you in advance, give you time to say your goodbyes, and whatnot. I'll take good care of Ron, never fear, and you will be seeing me again, even if I never return to Hogwarts. You have an owl; she'll have no trouble finding me. It was a pleasure teaching you. You're one of the brightest students I've had the pleasure to meet."

Ron was shaking his head, as if to say of course. It couldn't possibly be considered a surprise that one of Asgard's premier magic-users would be considered "a good student".

"Then I suppose it now falls to the three of you to see Sirius exonerated. A chance for you to redeem yourself, in his eyes, and in yours," Harry said, gaze lowering to the floor. There was an odd relationship between him and Lupin, and between him and Thor, but he'd never spoken to just the two of them, together, before. Perhaps Ginny was right in considering him socially awkward—any knowledge Loki had of how to interact with individuals was either irrelevant, skewed by differences in culture, or outright lost in transference to Harry. He'd have to go the human route of figuring society out on his own.

"Be careful, little brother," Ron said, with that stern gravity that had been rather scarce, of late. Harry just shrugged and grinned.

"Ah. Well, you know me."

That was, of course, the problem. Unsurprisingly, Thor was not reassured.

It was decided that Harry Potter did not need to appear before the court, which was almost a shame. He'd spent quite some time studying wizarding court etiquette for Buckbeak's doomed case, after all. Still, he was cheered by the knowledge that wizarding trials tended to be rather brief affairs. He had no idea how long the average muggle trial was for similar circumstances, but a verdict was promised for a few weeks after the trial began.

In the meantime, he and Hermione followed the trial by way of the Daily Prophet, which seemed unsure whether to continue kissing up to Fudge, or whether to curry favour with the last scion of The Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. Sirius Black might have mentioned that he, like Malfoy, was practically nobility.

Hermione disapproved of the whole thing and seemed to worry constantly about Ron, which, as Harry knew for his own part, was laughable. Any way you cut it, Ron was more than a match for the courtroom. Son of a king, strong and resilient (body and soul), steadfast and confident, with a strong sense of self. Pettigrew's advocates might try to unseat him, but they would fail. They had no idea whom they were messing with.

Hermione continued to fret, and Harry had little he could do or say to reassure her. Hogwarts seemed dingier, somehow, with its Weasley population halved. The Twins (who really counted as only one person) and Ginny were left behind. Ginny, at least, had faith in Ron, which was more than could be said of the Twins. They seemed determined to remember Ron as he'd been back before that fatal tenth birthday. And, interesting though it was to hear about a very different, very human Ron Weasley, Harry wished they'd give credit where credit was due.

One good thing to come of all this was Nymphadora Tonks, their assistant professor. Malfoy was horrified by her presence for about a hundred different reasons, from the fact that she was a "blood traitor" and an auror, to the way she often flouted the unspoken Hogwarts policy that even teachers had to wear nothing but robes, appearing frequently in t-shirts and jeans. And then, there was her bright pink hair….

Even worse, she could find no fault with their previous professor, whom Malfoy loathed for mysterious reasons (perhaps he knew that Professor Lupin was a werewolf, or perhaps it was that his clothes weren't high enough class for a Malfoy's tastes). And she went by her surname, Tonks, which was a muggle name, as she was a halfblood. Malfoy glared daggers at her, and she, in a conspiratorial whisper, shared that Malfoy was technically her cousin, too. "His mum's my aunt. I've another one, too, but she's crazy and a psychopath. Dunno how Sirius escaped the family curse."

She was, however, more of a hindrance than a help, when dealing with the boggart-dementor, owing to her extreme clumsiness. She had to stay well away from the chest, and try not to move around too much, lest she come too close, and the boggart transform into her worst fear, or she accidentally kick it open by tripping over it.

"Just how do you go about making those horrid things amusing?" she muttered to herself, which was a very good question. Harry could always corral the dementor back into its box, now, but they remained stuck on that front. Tonks refused to violate Professor Lupin's instructions for Harry's tutoring. He supposed the practice was no longer hurting him. He let it pass.

He asked around at Gryffindor Tower, and Dean Thomas enthused about some muggle movie called Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, released several years ago. He set to drawing a scene from the movie, in which Death, whom the dementors superficially resembled, was dressed up in a…well, dress, to have an audience with God. It was all unsettlingly religious for Harry, but nevertheless fodder. Dean's rendition of Death-in-a-dress was noteworthy on its own.

But that was probably the way to go about it. Dementors could not be made less frightening, but Harry had no great fear of death, or even of Death. This was a breakthrough, although it reminded him of that first class, with Neville and Professor Boggart-Augusta-Snape. Tonks loved it. And "Death in a dress" seemed to work decently for dealing with dementor-boggarts, as long as you kept yourself from noticing their frigid chill, and acted before they could start sucking all joy and life from the room. This probably meant that Harry owed Dean.

Despite her clumsiness, and her less laid-back air, it was generally agreed upon that, if Professor Lupin had to go away, he'd found a suitable replacement. The only thing they seemed not to like about her was her periodic habit of shouting "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" and then smirking, as if there were some joke they should be getting.

Sense would be made of that in-joke all too soon.

Sirius's acquittal was both the obvious outcome of the trial, and reassuring. The Daily Prophet was abuzz for a few weeks with speculation as to what other innocents might be trapped within Azkaban, and what other guilty parties might still walk free, which put Malfoy in something of a mood. Sirius Black had kept his secret of being an illegal animagus, although he'd privately, quietly registered himself on a secret list he'd petitioned to have made.

Professor Lupin was not as fortunate: the trial was not the only headline news in the paper. True to Professor Lupin's prediction, the school flooded with owls begging the recently returned Dumbledore to fire Professor Lupin, and the same sentiment could be found in the editorials, although there were also plenty of people (an amount that Lupin would later admit surprised him) who supported Professor Lupin, noting that the Wolfsbane Potion made him safe to be around children, and werewolves had to live too, you know. Actually, some of the letters arriving by the dozens might have been speaking in his defence, too. It wasn't as if Professor Dumbledore read them aloud before the whole school.

Ron, Percy, and Professor Lupin returned to the school soon after Dumbledore, in late May, and Professor Lupin pretended not to hear the whispers and comments about him that ran rampant through Hogwarts's halls.

But, Harry still heard. He seethed. Professor Lupin clearly knew his material, and there hadn't been a single incident—some of these students whispering about him behind his back had thought him "cool", before. Public opinion, especially at a school, was a fickle thing.

They had an unnervingly quiet April and May. Tonks stayed behind to continue her role as assistant professor. Since the Wizarding World was currently at peace, the Ministry didn't mind sparing her for an extended period—particularly not since it was partly their fault that the real professor had been called away, and definitely their fault that he as on the outs.

Harry was half-expecting Riddle himself to pop up out of nowhere, by now, as he'd joked about to Ron. He didn't know what to do with himself, with a normal education. He, Ron, and Hermione studied diligently for the upcoming final exams (Ron had the added burden of needing to catch up on all the material he had missed, and too little time in which to do so). Hermione seemed to enjoy trying to tutor him; Harry wished her joy of it, but, as a workaholic, she was happy to have a challenging pupil.

Sirius Black made arrangements to come to Hogwarts, to speak with the headmaster about Harry, Harry's lodgings, and just what Sirius was supposed to do with himself, now that his name was cleared, and the Order of Merlin that had been given to Pettigrew had been destroyed, and Sirius had been awarded one in his place.

Dumbledore was firm that Sirius had to recover his strength, first, although he looked far less skeletal than before. He recommended that Sirius return to St. Mungo's. Sirius put his foot down, and insisted upon staying at Hogwarts for the rest of the year. "I'm his godfather, and I've already missed over a decade of his life. That's unacceptable," he'd said.

Dumbledore had either grudgingly agreed, or Sirius had once again found a way to go behind his back. They never seemed to be in the same place at the same time, which made it difficult to tell. Professor Dumbledore was busy with…something. Presumably, it had something to do with his responsibilities as headmaster. And Sirius seemed to spend quite a bit of time catching up with Professor Lupin. Most of the students gave him a wide berth, but not the Weasleys, or Ron, Harry, or Hermione. Since Professor Lupin would only be teaching until the end of the year, he quietly looked the other way, and "forgot" about the Marauder's Map.

He and Sirius were good for stories about James, back when he'd been in school. Harry had even learnt the reason for the fierce ire directed their way by Professor Snape. This was one of the "intelligent people do stupid things" instances Sirius had hinted to Harry about, when they first met, and he'd still been wearing tattered robes, instead of a black muscle shirt advertising some muggle band Harry had never heard of, and black jeans. He seemed delighted by how this dress style offended the purebloods.

He offered Harry a home again, more than once, but Harry thought of Mother, the connection to her sustained by the blood she shared only with Aunt Petunia, and held firm. He tried to explain it to Sirius, but the way in which Sirius laughed off Harry's refusals suggested that he didn't understand. Harry wasn't sure that he understood, himself, but he knew what Dumbledore had said.

Despite that small hurdle, Harry and Sirius became fast friends within that small window of time. Sirius's concern for Harry's happiness and well-being were foreign, but welcome. Harry felt that he'd found another adult that he could trust. These were few and far between. And the sorts of antics Sirius described him and his friends (Harry's dad among them) getting into at school, and the sorts of mistakes Harry knew him to have made, made Harry want to confide in him about the biggest secret he held. That was not, of course, his secret, alone, to bear, but when he cornered Ron to ask about it, Ron seemed to think the decision of whether or not to tell was Harry's choice to make. They both seemed to trust Sirius, although a nagging familiarity—a commonality of experience, perhaps—made Sirius easier to trust than anyone Harry had ever met before. Always before, the adults in Harry's life had let him down—except for Professor Lupin, and Dumbledore. Truly, this was an odd year.

Despite how much they trusted him, they left Sirius Black out of Hermione's end-of-year mad scheme.