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Chapter Twenty-Five—Trials

"So you're the Minister's soulmate."

I win the bet, Harry sent to Tom as he turned around and gave Arcturus Black an insincere smile. Tom had thought Black would approach Harry with an obsequious attitude, angling to get the Minister's soulmate on his side. But Harry had thought it would be contempt, because Black would hate the fact that Tom was matched with another half-blood.

"That's right," Harry said. "It took some people long enough to acknowledge it."

That made Black pause and stare at him, obviously wondering if Harry considered him one of those people. Harry drew his lips back to show his teeth and, when he could see Black reaching the point of wondering if that was a smile or not, Harry dropped them back again.

"Including me," he added, and turned to face the door of the Wizengamot courtroom.

Black reached out and put a hand on his arm. This time, Tom sent only a lightning storm of rage, and for Black's sake as much as Tom's, Harry stepped back, shaking his head.

Black sneered. "Too good to have a pure-blood touching you?"

"I'm the Minister's soulmate," Harry replied quietly. "How do you think he feels about a pure-blood touching me?"

Black's eyes widened a second before Tom appeared at Harry's side, one hand digging into his shoulder. Harry zapped him back with unhappiness and pain, and Tom's hold eased. "Black. Always a pleasure, but not a usual one. Did you have something to say to us before the trial?"

There was a long moment when Harry could feel Black furiously calculating the odds, and then he evidently decided to charge ahead. "I don't think it's appropriate for your soulmate to be at the trials, sir."

"Why not?"

"These people are his friends."

"I explained to you yesterday how the Truth Crystals worked, Black," Tom said, his smile and his posture soft and persuasive. Harry was the only one who knew that Tom was eyeing Black's body, looking for the weak points. "Harry won't be able to speak less than the truth when he's in the room with them. And Harry is not on trial. I think you've forgotten who is."

Their eyes held for a second, and then Black jerked his head and turned away. Tom smiled coldly, and the bond coiled around Harry like a serpent. "They thought that they would discover my soulmate before I did, and they could use him or her to control me," he said softly. "They won't be happy that you stand at my side now."

Harry blinked. "You were searching as hard as you could for me. Why would they think they'd find me before you?"

"Wishful thinking." Tom's hand was firm around his wrist as he guided Harry towards the courtroom again. "They want to have a chain on me. They ignore it most of the time, but whenever they actually remember that a magically-powerful half-blood is in charge of their government, they panic."

"Their government?"

"I told you of the game I have played," Tom murmured, lowering his voice almost to vibrations against Harry's ear as they passed through the great arched doors. "It has belonged to them more than to me, at least on the surface."

Harry squeezed Tom's wrist and made himself look towards the center of the courtroom. This particular hall was arranged in a huge circle, with three tiers of seats going around all the walls. In the center sat the two chairs, in this case, for prisoners, more like an elongated bench with arms dividing different sections of it from each other. Hermione and Ron sat there, chained with spells more effectively than with physical bonds.

Hermione caught his eye and stared at him with such harsh betrayal that Harry nearly turned away. But Tom's hand was still there, like a chain on Harry's wrist itself, and he shook Harry a little.

"Never let anyone in public see your weakness," he murmured. "And especially not these traitors."

"Technically they haven't—"

"They betrayed your friendship."

Harry grimaced a little and sent the thought to Tom as Tom's warm hand on his back escorted him to his seat, Technically the friendship was never what they thought it was. I lied to them all the time.

A sharp pinch to his back showed what Tom thought of that, and also made Harry straighten up just in time to turn and face Madam Moonwell. She had her cane in one hand and eyes so bright that Harry was sure some of it must come from vicious enjoyment. He nodded to her and tried to restrain his scowl at Tom. Tom could feel perfectly well what Harry was going through from the emotional bond, anyway.

"You are playing a dangerous game," Madam Moonwell muttered. "To come in here and flaunt your complete bond in all their faces?"

Harry didn't know what she was talking about, but he did his best to keep his face open and relaxed, not glancing at Tom. Tom was the one who raised his eyebrows and said in a thin voice, "They never had any hope of finding my soulmate, and most of them had given up trying."

"But they hadn't given up thinking that you might not have a soulmate, and trying to insert someone they controlled into the position of your lover. And don't scowl at me, young man, you know it was a common assumption after your soul-mark was burned."

Harry winced in silence, and Tom sent back a flow of warmth and reassurance. None of that showed in his expression or voice, which were both thick with disdain, as he murmured, "Well, if they tried to kill Mr. Potter, they would find out the error of their ways. Unless you were not hinting at them trying to kill him?"

"Among other things." Madam Moonwell turned more fully to look at Harry. "And I hope that you're taking good care of yourself as well as your soulmate, young man."

Harry shrugged and said, "He makes it difficult. We're all doing our best."

Madam Moonwell snorted. "Some of us are not," she said, glancing towards the door, where Black had come in with Lestrange. "But others are." And this time she turned towards Amelia Bones as she stumped to her seat, although Harry supposed that might have been a coincidence.

"You never said what you were going to do about Bones," Harry said, mostly under his breath, as he moved beside Tom towards their seats.

"There has to be a trial. She attacked the Minister in front of Aurors. My opponents would scream that I was favoring an ally if I let her off without one." Tom smiled, an expression that darted across his face like a lizard and into hiding. "But they cannot say anything about me handling her questioning myself."

"And with the Truth Crystals in the room."

"Exactly."

Harry sat down in his seat next to Tom, this time one that looked exactly like every other chair in the courtroom. He found it easier than he'd expected to keep his eyes away from his friends, despite the heat of Hermione's betrayed stare on his face. He had more interesting things to think about.

More interesting than your friends?

That horrified voice in his head sounded more like Dumbledore than Harry was comfortable with. He just nodded and leaned back in his chair, raking the floor and the seats in the gallery with a dispassionate gaze.

More than one person scowled at him or mouthed what looked like a threat, but Harry had a response to that. Tom had agreed that it would be foolish to keep it concealed when everyone would expect to see it anyway.

Harry dropped the guards he had maintained for so long on his power. It came rushing out of his skin, battering at the air for a moment in a white-gold corona before it grew towards the ceiling in spikes.

There was utter silence for a long second. Then people started talking again, all the while pretending that the silence hadn't existed.

Harry smiled and threw one arm over the back of the chair. They might assume that he was drawing on his power joined with Tom's and had never been that impressive on his own, the duel with Lestrange notwithstanding.

But it hardly mattered. The message was still clear: You do not want to fuck with me.

And that was all Harry really wanted.

"He completed the bond with Riddle."

Hermione nodded in silent agreement with Ron's assessment, her own breathing shallow and stricken. She found herself unable to take her eyes from Harry, who sat in the seat that she knew was reserved for the Minister's consort and blazed with a magic that wasn't his, could never be his.

"You know," Ron said after a second, his voice thick and choked with grief, "I suppose part of me never gave up on him. I was hoping—I didn't know I was hoping, but I hoped it was some kind of ruse to fool Riddle. To get close to him and then assassinate him. That Harry hadn't betrayed the Order's ideals."

Hermione sighed, her eyes tracking Harry as Riddle bent down next to him and said something that made him laugh. The open adoration on Harry's face was something she had never thought she would see there, and she would have given up everything except her soul-bond with Ron to let Harry feel it but direct it towards an appropriate object.

"That was never going to work unless he was a much better actor than he is," she whispered. "Riddle is a Legilimens. He could have known Harry was lying."

"Like I said, it was a stupid idea." Ron leaned as close to her as he could get when they were both chained. "But I wanted to believe it. That's all I was saying."

Hermione nodded without taking her eyes from Harry. "Yes. I know. But we don't live in an ideal world, so we have to prepare ourselves to live in the real one."

"Right." Ron straightened up again as one of the Aurors shot them a warning glance, which Hermione found nearly as infuriating as Harry's sudden allegiance to Riddle. Did none of them wonder what had driven her and Ron, normal schoolchildren until Professor Dumbledore had recruited them, to rebel against the Minister? Didn't they wonder what he had done that could be so awful, and want to investigate?

Well, why should they, when they have comfortable lives under the pure-blood supremacist regime? Hermione thought snidely, and returned her gaze to Harry. And he did the same thing. He gave up his ideals for material comfort and a warm body in his bed at night.

Her hope that Harry would rescue them, as stubborn and blind as Ron's in the end, flickered and died.

Tom watched faces as two of the Aurors who had been present when Madam Bones brought the blood-soaked handkerchief to him and Harry gave their testimony. More than one person looked disgruntled. Others looked bored.

Aelia Malfoy looked alert, and was glancing towards the corners of the room that held the Truth Crystals. Tom was a little surprised that she had deigned to pay enough attention to notice that the Aurors' reports were unusually detailed and were admitting their own biases as they talked.

At one point she looked straight at him, which Tom thought doubly unusual, until he realized that her eyes were focused on Harry. Well and so. She can be unworldly, but she can also recognize a threat when she sees one, presented by a half-blood or not.

The second Auror finished her report, and Tom stood with a sigh. "When the Aurors searched Madam Bones's office, they found this device." He nodded towards the object like a tuning fork that had been placed in the kind of stasis globe usually used for the transportation of vicious animals in a menagerie. In truth, he had examined it and didn't think it was dangerous to anyone but Madam Bones—it had been made to resonate with her mind specifically—but he would take no chances.

"How can we prove where the object came from?" That was Lestrange, although he quailed when Tom's eye fell upon him. Apparently he was still trying to make up for his loss of prestige after the duel with Harry by offering random questions. "I mean—it just seems there's no evidence to link it to your enemy, Professor Dumbledore, Minister."

"Former Professor Dumbledore," Tom said, and how he enjoyed saying that. "It's true that we have no magical signature of his on this handkerchief or Dumbledore here to question him. However, we do have other people who know something important." He turned towards the doors of the courtroom just as they opened and former Auror Whipwood was ushered inside.

Whipwood walked with her arms linked together behind her back and her head uplifted. She nodded in recognition to Granger and Weasley, sneered at Harry, and sat down in the chair that was provided for her without trying to remove her arms from the tight hold of the magical bindings.

"You'll get little out of me," she said. "Vows protect the Order of the Phoenix's secrets."

"I want to know where Professor Dumbledore might have found items like the Truth Crystals that now stand in the corners of this room," Tom said, and nodded to the nearest Crystal in case she had missed them.

Whipwood turned her head to look, and then snapped back around, staring at him. "You found them? Where did you find them? They were hidden in Hogwarts!"

Tom smiled thinly. It appeared the vows were less restrictive than he'd thought, or perhaps they were simply less restrictive on someone like Whipwood than someone like Granger or Weasley, who had been trusted with important raids and were wanted enough to go on the run with other Order members. "He found them in Hogwarts, then," he said to the watchful audience. "I see. And why did he never report to the Ministry that he had discovered artifacts so useful?"

Whipwood sneered again. "I don't know his thought processes."

"In your opinion?"

"Why would he report anything to you, when he knows that you're planning to launch a secret war that would kill all Muggleborns and most half-bloods?"

Tom sighed, while mutters swept the courtroom. It was their first look at the Order's unvarnished paranoia, for many of the Wizengamot members here. Other people he'd captured hadn't known as much as Whipwood or hadn't had open trials. "And that would include artifacts like the Truth Crystals. I see. What were they originally used for?"

"To prevent students cheating on exams."

Tom snorted quietly. "And in your opinion, could Professor Dumbledore have found a store of similar artifacts that he would use in other situations?" The question about her opinion was an easy step around some of the Order's vows, especially with the Truth Crystals to compel someone to speak at length. They might get inaccurate information, but at least it would be some information instead of silence.

"He could have found them, but he would use them for only the best purposes, like bringing down an illegitimately-elected Minister."

"Why do you say that I was illegitimately-elected?" Tom noted more than one person staring at Whipwood in disbelief, which he fully intended to enjoy. His opponents had been desperate, after the second time he won an election, to prove that not that many people would have voted for a half-blood. If they hadn't managed to uncover anything in their investigations, it was unlikely that an "Order" composed of paranoiacs and fugitives would have managed.

"How else could someone like you have won?"

"Who do you think should have been elected instead?" Dumbledore had never been interested in election, which Tom understood—he wanted to keep his stranglehold on children at Hogwarts rather than deal with other adults in the Wizengamot—but neither had he backed any of the candidates who had opposed Tom.

"Someone who wasn't insane!"

Tom sighed and abandoned that line of questioning. Making Whipwood look that mad in front of the Wizengamot actually wasn't his goal, any more than it was with Weasley and Granger. The Wizengamot would be more inclined to think their testimony wasn't useful, in that case. "Very well. Have you ever seen this artifact before?" He gestured to the tuning fork, while around him his bond with Harry abruptly shifted into a buzzing alertness. Tom didn't look at him, but extended a tendril of curiosity.

Ron and Hermione are staring. They might know something about it.

Tom sent back a frisson of understanding rather than nodding, because for the first time, Whipwood appeared to be struggling not to speak. She lost the battle as the Truth Crystals glowed a little, and blurted, "I haven't seen that particular artifact before, but I saw something like it in a book that Professor Dumbledore gave me to read."

"What was that book called?"

Again a struggle, and then, "Agents of Prophecy."

More than one person laughed. Madam Moonwell called out, "You mean that tome of nonsense that that madwoman Hilaria Ashenblossom wrote? The one that claims our world is always alternating between two realities, and agents of prophecy run around trying to make one reality permanent? That's nonsensical."

"If Professor Dumbledore believes in it, then it's not nonsensical!" Whipwood turned her head to glare at Moonwell over her shoulder.

Tom shook his head and turned to his peers. "Well, it seems that she's given as much useful testimony as she can. Unless someone else has another question?"

Arcturus Black stood. Tom nodded to him, wondering what question Black had thought he could come up with to undermine Tom and Harry and get damning information out of Whipwood—because he wouldn't have wanted to question her for any other reason.

"Why does your leader believe that Minister Riddle is mad?"

"He's going to launch a secret war, you idiot! One he's spent decades preparing for." Whipwood stared at Black with the kind of contempt that Tom knew would make him bristle faster than anything else. "Have you listened to anything I've been saying, or is your head too far up your pure-blood arse?"

Black sat down abruptly. "No more questions, Minister Riddle."

Tom smiled as he turned back to the Aurors who had escorted Whipwood in and nodded to them. They led her out again. She was shouting something about the "secret war" as they did, but honestly, most people had already started whispering to their neighbors or had gone back to looking at the artifact or Madam Bones.

The more you call me mad, old man, the more I can beat you at your game.

"Votes on whether Madam Bones should be held responsible for her actions?" Tom asked, looking around the courtroom with his eyebrows raised.

The vote went the way he had expected it would, with nearly everyone concluding that Madam Bones should serve no time in Azkaban or even with a Mind-Healer. If the artifact hadn't been definitely proven to come from Dumbledore, at least there was the high chance it had. And more, this kind of anonymous threat meant that nearly everyone in the Wizengamot could see themselves a victim.

Tom wasn't about to enlighten them that Dumbledore wouldn't have chosen any of them as victims because he would never trust them as near him or Harry as he had trusted Amelia.

But it didn't matter. The outcome had been the one he wanted. Now Tom picked up the next stack of paperwork, nodding to Amelia, who had an expression of profound relief on her face, and turning to conduct the real trial of the day.

Harry had been ignoring his best friends' expressions as well as he could. They were looking mainly at him rather than Tom, except when they nodded in support of Whipwood's conclusions or stared hard at the artifact. Hermione had tried to mouth something to him, but Harry had deliberately avoided looking at her too closely.

Now he would have to speak against them, probably.

Hermione caught his eye again. Harry only raised his brows and glanced over to Tom, who was regarding him with a tilted head. Harry nodded back without being obvious about it, and Tom faced Ron and Hermione.

"Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, you stand accused of murder, attempted murder, damage of Ministry property, and terrorist violence in your actions against the Department of Mysteries," Tom said. His voice was cold and dry. Harry wondered if anyone else knew exactly how much he was enjoying this. "This body will present the charges. Then you may respond. You have refused the solicitor assigned to you, so therefore you will provide your own defense."

Harry started. He had assumed that the solicitor simply hadn't been in the courtroom for the first part of this trial because there was no reason for him or her to be there while they were debating Amelia Bones's guilt or innocence. But to know Ron and Hermione had refused that kind of help…

He caught Hermione's eye again, but this time she was the one looking away. Hermione sat up and smoothed her hands down her robes, as much as she could move them with the chains of magic on her arms. "That's right."

Tom nodded. "This body may present questions on many aspects of the raid. Keep in mind that you may ask for extra time on questions, but you will not be telling less than the truth with the Crystals present." He looked around the Wizengamot. "Does anyone have any questions for the defendants before the charges are presented at length?"

Harry held his tongue. This sounded unfair, making Ron and Hermione respond to questions outside of their defense, but he knew it was also fully legal Wizengamot procedure. He'd spent a lot of last night reading up on it.

And it was yet another thing that Dumbledore and the Order had never sought to change, even when it might have benefited them if they were captured and tried.

Aelia Malfoy rose to her feet. Harry felt Tom's surprise like a hidden lightning strike, but Tom nodded. "The Ministry recognizes Madam Malfoy."

"What was your motivation for making the raid?" Malfoy asked, turning and staring at Hermione. Harry saw the disgust on her face, and wished he had some way of knowing what was the bigotry he wanted to combat and what was contempt for a criminal.

"We thought Minister Riddle was conducting research into time magic in the Department of Mysteries. We had to stop him. He could have won the war forever if he could go back and kidnap or kill key people, like Professor Dumbledore."

Another mutter swept the courtroom. Harry glanced from face to face as subtly as he could, without moving his head, but it was hard to tell what the members of the Wizengamot believed or didn't.

Madam Malfoy only stood there as if she was made of stone, which from what Tom had said was her usual way of doing things. "And what proof of this did you have?" she asked.

Ron was the one who answered this time. "Professor Dumbledore said so. He had spies in the Department of Mysteries who told him they were working on time magic."

Tom's hand clenched behind his back, but Harry was the only one who had a clear view of his back, so he supposed that was okay. The bond lashed between them like a writhing snake, and Harry swallowed. He resisted the temptation to reach out and touch Tom, though. It would probably hurt more than it would help right now.

"Have you cleaned up these spies in the Department of Mysteries, Minister?" demanded Black.

"Yes," Tom said, his voice without inflection, but that was enough to make Black blanch and sit down. "Continue asking your questions, Madam Malfoy."

"How did you ascertain that the purpose of the time magic was for going back in time and unleashing a genocidal war or destroying Professor Dumbledore, instead of what the Minister stated it was for?" Madam Malfoy asked. Her voice was a different kind of blank lack of inflection from Tom's.

"What purpose was it stated to be for?" Hermione sounded bewildered. Harry studied her face for a second, without letting her see him looking, and decided she was genuinely puzzled.

"For visiting certain points in history and recovering artifacts reported as lost," Tom said. "Or bringing important people forwards in time who were identified as disappearing or dying of an unknown disease so that they could be either rewarded with a second chance in the future or perhaps cured."

Hermione snorted. "That's what you say, but we know what it was really for."

Tom let out a careful sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. Harry wondered for a second how he had learned to be so perfectly manipulative, but of course the answer was obvious. He'd grown up in Slytherin House with a lot of people thinking he was a Muggleborn at first.

And watching Dumbledore taught me much, Tom's thoughts murmured to him.

You never said that.

You have much to learn about me, Tom said, and ended the mental communication, the way Harry had noticed they needed to do when one of them was speaking aloud. "How did you learn what it was 'really' for?"

"Professor Dumbledore told us."

"And is there any way that you might disbelieve him or that someone else could even falsify the premises of his argument?" Tom asked, letting more emotion leak into his voice.

"Why would we disbelieve the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever seen?" Ron demanded.

Tom sighed and looked at the ceiling. "You realize that the Headmaster of Hogwarts is not normally a political position?"

"It doesn't matter. It became political because he needed to counter you." Hermione's eyes were afire. Harry stared at her in silence and thought that he had never seen her like this before. He could only hope that he would still judge her reactions accurately. "What matters is that he held meetings with us where he laid out all the proof we'll ever need about who you are."

Tom shook his head and turned to the members of the Wizengamot. "I suspect this diversion has gone on long enough, and we should proceed to the formal presentation of charges. Unless you have any other questions, Madam Malfoy?"

She took long enough to think it over that Harry thought she did, but then she shook her head and sat down.

Tom nodded and picked up the scroll of charges in front of him. "To wit: on the first charge of murder…"

Hermione clenched her hands in her lap as she watched Harry. It had been hard to take her eyes off Riddle while he was speaking, and she had hated the unsubtle magic of the Truth Crystals shoving and shoving and shoving at her. On the other hand, what did she have to worry about? It wasn't like she was ashamed of anything she was saying.

They were the ones who should be ashamed. But Harry, at least, was refusing to pay attention to them with the kind of shocked and horrified expression Hermione had expected to see on his face when the charges were read. To accuse her and Ron of murder missed the whole point. There was no such thing as a true murder charge or a fair trial under a dictatorship.

Then Hermione shook her head sharply. She had to stop thinking of Harry as their friend. She had to remember the realization she had come to half an hour ago, that Harry had ceased to be their friend when he became the Minister's soulmate.

Ron tensed next to her. Hermione tapped her fingers sharply on the arm of her chair. They still had something they could do, but she wanted to wait for the sentencing. It wasn't impossible that someone might speak up for them to be spared Azkaban, especially once they heard about the compromise she and Ron were prepared to offer. Hermione didn't want to give away their main advantage if they didn't have to.

Ron nodded to her with a sheepish look, and their bond briefly broadcast a feeling of jumping on a trampoline, which was his usual apology. Hermione smiled at him and turned back to face the front. She supposed she should have been paying attention to the list of charges, but honestly, she knew what they were, she knew what the Ministry said they were, and she knew why Riddle was convinced she and Ron were wrong.

It didn't mean they were wrong, or that she and Ron would ever agree with Riddle and Harry.

"Your defense," Riddle said, and Hermione nodded. Ron would add facts only if absolutely necessary; they had agreed she would handle this.

"First, I want you to know that I can see through you," she said, staring at Riddle. No one else in the Wizengamot might pay attention to this, and she had lost hope for getting Harry to come back to their side. But she needed to say it because defiance against a dictator was important, and there were people among the Aurors here who might be Order sympathizers if not Order spies.

"See through me?" Riddle asked softly.

Hermione nodded. "All that nonsense about using time magic to fetch people or artifacts from the past? You know it's nonsense as well as I do. You're committed to a war against Muggleborns and Muggles because you hate us as a group and Professor Dumbledore personally. It's a wonder that you've managed to fool this many people for so long. You might as well know it doesn't fool us."

Riddle's face was blank. "Your defense against the charges of murder?"

Hermione shrugged. "It's twofold. First, those people were working for you. They deliberately chose to undertake dangerous and unethical research because they believed in your goals. People who work for you aren't innocents. They're willingly serving a dictator. And 'I was just following orders' has never been a defense."

A muscle twitched in the side of Riddle's face, but he said only, "The second part."

"There's never been a war that was stopped without violence. We were that violence." Hermione turned and looked around the room, at the silent Wizengamot. Their faces were disgusted as they watched her, but who knew? Maybe the truth and the passion of her words would touch someone here. "We willingly took on the burden of killing, of potentially splitting our souls, for you. So that other people didn't have to do it."

"Your defense against the charges of attempted murder?"

"The same as before."

Riddle waited, but Hermione had said all she was going to say. He nodded. "The charges of damaging Ministry property?"

"It's what you should have expected, sir, when you committed the Ministry to the cause of genocide."

"The charges of terrorist violence?"

"The Order of the Phoenix is only a terrorist group in the propaganda you've put out to convince people to follow you," Hermione said. She was strong now and soaring, thinking of the way she had once seen Fawkes spread his wings in Headmaster Dumbledore's office. She wanted to fly like that. She was an agent of fate as much as any other. "We're a resistance group."

"Against what?"

"Your terrorism against Muggles and Muggleborns."

"Tell me, Ms. Granger," said Riddle, looking bored and academic in a way Hermione loathed, "what open acts of terrorism have I committed? What raids comparable to the ones your Order has carried out? What murders and what attempted murders?"

"You've passed laws that could impact them!"

"I asked you about raids and attempted murders, Ms. Granger, not laws. You care little for laws yourself, seeing as how you've broken them."

"You're not the government that represents us," Hermione pointed out. "Violence against you is permissible."

"And what government would represent you?"

"Professor Dumbledore in the Minister's seat." Honestly, did Riddle think he could trip her up with questions this simple?

"Which he has repeatedly refused, along with membership in the Wizengamot, even when members of the Wizengamot offered to sponsor him." Riddle leaned forwards. "Who would you see in my place who is not a currently accused criminal and terrorist leader?"

"Anyone would be better."

Riddle leaned back and said, "The Ministry has no more questions to put to the defendants. Do any of the members of this august body have questions for the defendants?"

Hermione turned in a slow circle, and watched as people stared at her and coughed and mumbled among themselves. She shook her head as she turned back to Riddle. "No one does because of how indoctrinated they are and how much they fear you." She ignored the protests that followed that. They knew it was the truth. If they hadn't been so indoctrinated, they would have joined the Order of the Phoenix already.

"You are a fine one to talk about indoctrination," Riddle said quietly.

Hermione stared at him, not knowing what he meant, not really caring. She had made the best case she had, and it was for the people in the audience who might listen to her, not Riddle. He had probably gone beyond listening the day he decided to kill children who had hurt him.

Riddle's smile cramped as if he could read her thoughts from this distance with his Legilimency. Well, let him. Hermione lifted her chin and sat down again, where the chains shot across her arms and held her.

Ron smiled at her. Hermione smiled back. She had done the best she could.

I thought she was mad. But it's worse than that. She's just sealed herself away from the world in a way that means there's no argument that can reach her. She thinks arguing back is a sign that someone's mad themselves.

Harry rubbed his forehead with one hand. He didn't know what he should do next.

You need do nothing, Tom's voice murmured in his head, and then Tom turned to the members of the Wizengamot and said, "There are two sentences available for crimes such as they are charged with: execution and life in Azkaban. Keep that in mind as you vote. Guilty or not guilty?"

There was a wave of wands around the room, and Harry nearly flinched before he realized that they were merely firing sparks into the air, not curses. Then he wanted to flinch anyway. The sparks were almost uniformly black, not silver, the color of innocence.

You knew it would come to this.

Harry said nothing, but let the emotional bond speak for him. Tom's hand out of sight twitched this time as if he wanted to reach out and touch Harry. But Harry knew why he couldn't, and he simply waited until the sparks died.

"Guilty," Tom said quietly. "Now, black for execution and silver for Azkaban."

This time, the sparks were much more mixed, but silver dominated. Harry closed his eyes. He wondered if he should feel relieved or not. His friends wouldn't die, but Azkaban might as well be death in many ways. And if he couldn't persuade Tom to pass the prison reforms that he wanted soon, there might be…

No way for them to survive as the people he had known.

Did you ever really know them, with the lies you told them and the ones they told you?

Harry opened his eyes and stared bleakly at Ron and Hermione. Ron was pale enough that his freckles stood out. He was staring around the room with wide, betrayed eyes, as if he had thought not even the Wizengamot could turn against them with an argument as supposedly sound as Hermione's.

Hermione's face gleamed with shock, but then she shook her head and turned towards Ron. She extended her hand, and he extended his, and they clasped wrists. It should have been a simple sign of togetherness in the face of a horrible fate.

But Harry had known them in some way, whatever Tom wanted to imply, for years, and he saw how their gazes locked, how the air around them began to tremble as if they were launching silver sparks of their own.

His alarm reached Tom, who whipped around, at the same moment as silver fire burst out around Ron and Hermione, towards the ceiling and the floor and the walls—

And all of the parts of the room lifted away from each other.