we have a court chapter here, and well, you'll see. to anyone that is reading, this is a 4 chapter update, so... i hope everyone's ready for that.

Little Glass Houses

Chapter Nineteen

Hanford Is Interested

"Let's go over the cake tasting," Hanford cleared his throat. "How did the victim appear to you that day?"

Bill wished he could leave the stand, that they could call up someone else instead for Merlin's sake—he wasn't even there for half the events that Hanford wanted to talk to him about. "Anxious," he explained.

"Anxious," Hanford echoed, unimpressed. "Is that normal behaviour for someone that's going to a cake tasting?" he turned to the jury, but like he was proving anything with this charade of his. "Your father said that 'this isn't a court hearing; this is a cake tasting' as a way to…comfort the victim," He paused. "That implies to me that he seems to feel guilty more than anxious—"

"Objection!" Anais' hand was shaking. "Speculation!"

"Hanford, you can't infer such things from the family's statements," the Chief Warlock told him, sounding bored. "If Mr Weasley did not specifically say that he the victim seemed guilty, you cannot suggest he did just to fix up whatever complicated agenda you have with the victim." He said a little tensely. "Proceed."

Hanford didn't look offended by the Chief Warlock's statement about him. "The victim has a very interesting relationship with the Dreamless Sleep potion it seems," Hanford decided to say, raising an eyebrow. "It's rather questionable to me, this…regular use of potions to induce sleep. Considering that you, as the victim's brother, were concerned about the victim at the time, did you approach to him about this excessive use of sleeping potions?" he asked carefully. "And not to mention the heavy prescription pain killers that he takes that nobody else seems to know about beyond the defendant."

"There was a war. He lost his brother. He lost his son," Bill's blood was boiling. "Why was it surprising that he couldn't sleep without the use of a potion?"

"It just puts into question the…validity of the victim's statements or actions," Hanford just shrugged. "Can anyone really trust what the victim thought that he saw, or believed?"

Bill knew he was just doing what Hanford wanted but he didn't know how not to. "What do you mean?"

"It sounds like he's a very paranoid character. And I didn't need a psychiatric healer to conclude that—although I did get a court-ordered psychiatric healer to preview my notes with me and she has agreed." He pointed towards the stack of paperwork on his desk. Bloody sick arsehole. "Of course, losing a child and a brother in that close of a gap is a very traumatic thing, especially when he didn't exactly have the family support that most people would for such a horrible event, but being anxious during a cake tasting is not normal behaviour. Knocking one's self out with Dreamless Sleep in the middle of the day is not normal behaviour. Letting the defendant plan a whole wedding that he did not want to be a part of is not normal behaviour either. It seems that your brother has a very…strange pattern of behaviours."

Bill didn't understand what Hanford was trying to do. They were the golden family when it suited him, and they were this damaged, sick family when he needed it to be.

"Do you disagree, Mr Weasley?" Hanford asked, batting his eyelashes at him. "Yes or no."

"No," Bill couldn't exactly say that Percy was the most normal bloke he'd ever met.

"Speaking of abnormal behaviour patterns," Hanford looked back at his clipboard. "As the court already knows, we don't allow people with delirium or certain levels of dementia make their own decisions because they're not oriented to what is going on around them. I believe the same can be said for our victim!" did he just imply that Percy was delirious? "Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I question whether or not our victim had the capacity to make any decision for the very same reason."

"Percy was not demented," Bill felt his shoulders tense. "Percy wasn't delirious—"

"Of course not!" Hanford looked disgusted that Bill had even come to that conclusion. "But I'd like to mention the fact that the victim had a breakdown regarding your dead brother, Fred, on that very same day of that cake tasting. One of your other brothers said it was like the first time that he's ever heard that your brother had died, but from my understanding, it's been a year," Bill's jaw tightened. "Is that correct?"

"Yes," Bill dropped his shoulder. "He…I don't think emotionally, he felt like Fred was gone."

"Interesting, very interesting," Hanford wasn't bloody interested at all. All he cared about was how it looked like to the jury, that his brother looked about as mental as possible. "But you can imagine that it brings into account that the victim's state of mind is very questionable." He turned to the jury again. "This is someone that used to work constantly before the time of the war that has become disinterested in his job, become secluded from his family—who have mentioned it multiple times, who has had clearly abnormal behaviour, who has a questionable sex life, who seems to be very disconnected from reality."

Hanford paused. "Do you really believe that we can believe any of the statements this victim has made?"

"Objection!" Anais looked furious. "The victim's capacity to make decision was brought up prior to this hearing and it was concluded, by multiple point appointed psychiatric healers, that the victim had the ability to make decisions on the basis that he understood the implications of his choices! The victim suffered from very intense emotional, physical and sexual trauma for a decade of his life. Of course, his mental state was questionable at the time, but he never showed any violent tendencies, or tendencies to fabricate evidence. He has already been cleared from all of that. Multiple times over."

"No violent tendencies?" Hanford scoffed. "The man admitted that he wanted to throw his own child out of the window just a few hours before he'd passed—"

"Hanford," the Chief Warlock gave him a weary, tired gaze. "This is your last warning. Do not keep repeating 'evidence' that has already been dismissed before this trial has even began. Peter Arthur Weasley died of bacterial meningitis, as mentioned in the autopsy reports. He is not a part of this case discussion."

Bill felt himself calm when he'd realised that he'd stop talking about how mental Percy was.

"Do you know what else is interesting?" Hanford decided to say after a moment of silence. "One of the reasons that your sister thought that the defendant might be harming the victim was that she believed that the defendant talked down to the victim. In fact, she seemed rather angry at him and called him a 'spineless coward'." The way Hanford said it made it sound more amusing than degrading. "But from my understanding, from retellings of this story before, that you, as a family, have said worse."

"We have," Bill echoed. "But we're family," he emphasised. "She…she shouldn't have spoken to him like that. It was the tone that she used. It was a very…um…degrading tone." He even sounded unconvincing.

"Oh, of course," Hanford sounded almost like he was mocking Bill. "Because speaking to someone in a degrading tone makes me think of domestic abuse as well." He was sarcastic and it was obvious. "Who here hasn't spoken to their spouse in a 'degrading' or condescending tone?" he asked the courtroom and earned a few snickers. As if it was all a big fat joke.

"I haven't," Bill stiffly said, and he was under oath. "I've never talked to my wife like that. And I've had my face torn by a werewolf during the war. I have werewolf traits. I get…furious, and I've never talked to her like that in my life."

He was surprised at how many murmurs sounded out into the room, as if he'd said something right almost.

"Yes, well…" Hanford cleared his throat. "Moving on," Bill felt a swell of pride for a second that he'd said one thing that hadn't completely gone to shit. "As I remember, one of your many brothers has brought up a domestic abuse case during a family gathering." No, no, no, Bill had forgotten all about that! He'd forgotten.

"Yes," Bill nervously replied. "Ron mentioned a bloke that's claimed that he's been hit by his wife…"

"Claimed," Hanford echoed. "Interesting choice of words."

Hanford's favourite bloody word seemed to be interesting. He paled. Bill didn't want to play this game, because he didn't know whether or not that bloke's wife hit him. But if it had been a woman, he'd not exactly say that she 'claimed' that her husband had hit her, would he? It would sound like he was an arsehole.

"Well, I-I-I-I've never met him, or seen him," Bill stuttered. "I wouldn't have known." Not that he'd known with Percy.

Hanford nodded his head. "Yes, that's understandable," he paused. "But the second case that was mentioned—if I were to refresh your memory," Bill didn't want his memory refreshed. He remembered exactly what Ron had said, "A bloke that tried to file a domestic charge but couldn't remember the details of the crime. But refused to say that his girlfriend had raped him but maintained the fact that it wasn't consensual. He kept saying that he didn't want to but refused to say that it was rape. Remember?"

Bill nodded his head. "Yes," he whispered.

"And what was the general consensus around the table at the time?" Hanford asked. He knew exactly what to ask so that Bill had no choice but to answer him in a way that he didn't want to.

"It sounded like a joke," Bill felt ill. "We were laughing about it." Percy was there. He heard Ron say that story and how everyone was laughing about what had happened, about what he'd done. How could he have told them what was happening to him if they were just sat there, laughing about it?

Hanford's lip upturned into sort-of-smile-but-not-really. "Your brother was talking about the victim—your brother—when he was discussing that case."

"Yes, we know that now," Bill replied quietly. He accidentally glanced up and saw Ron staring at him with a mortified expression, because they didn't tell him. How could they have told him? They weren't sick for Merlin's sake. They weren't going to tell his baby brother that he'd been talking about Percy.

"I'll remind you again, Mr Weasley," Hanford didn't need to remind him, "If you and your family took your own brother's case as a huge joke, then why should the jury take it seriously?" he asked.

Bill curled his hands up, which were clammy and cold.

They couldn't make Percy relax enough to really open up to them. They were getting there, but he'd shut up like a clam-shell when Ron had said what he did. How could he really sit there and tell them that he was the one that they were all laughing about? Making light conversation out of something that he'd done?

"Now, to go back to the task at hand…" Hanford was walking around, his hand into his pockets. "From my understanding, Mr Weasley, your little sister felt like she had to intervene into these wedding preparations. And her intervention into these wedding preparations had led to the incident occurring."

Bill nodded his head. "Yes," he whispered.

"From my understanding during my conversation with Ginevra was that he'd admitted to sleeping with her into his parents' bathroom, he'd said that she'd managed to talk him into having intercourse that night?"

"He didn't say that," Bill said a little stiffly. "She just assumed that he meant that she'd talked him into it."

"But despite that, he hadn't exactly said that it was sexual assault," Hanford stated. "And it was never established, at any point in time, by anyone in the family, that this was a domestic abuse case? Despite the fact that your mother and the defendant spend hours with each other, planning this wedding? And you saw the victims multiple times during this time, with behaviour that everyone could say is unusual?"

"No," Bill replied. If you didn't think anything was wrong, why should the jury believe it too? He knew that was what Hanford was getting across, very obviously, to the whole courtroom.

"Did the victim want to stop the wedding?" Hanford asked. "Did he explicitly say so?"

"No," Bill replied. Because he was terrified of her, he wanted to add on, but he knew that Hanford was going to mention that they didn't do anything when Percy had been telling them that he didn't want to go.

"So, your sister decided to stop the wedding—despite the victim never saying so," Hanford said aloud to the courtroom, making Ginny look a little questionable too. "On the account that she thought that the defendant was being awful to the victim, but nothing related to the accusations that are being made today against the defendant."

"Yes," Bill felt empty replying then. He'd been there for ages and was just mucking everything up.

"So, tell me exactly how your family reacted when your sister suggested that they stop the wedding? When she mentioned all these 'terrible things' that the defendant had done?" Hanford asked, and Bill was really sick of how this was going. He'd gone from making Percy seem like he was the mental one with a nice family to making Percy seem even worse with a mucked-up family. How did he do that? The jury had to notice that he just said whatever he could to defend Penelope, right? "What did your family say exactly?"

"They were upset," Bill didn't look at his family when he'd said this. His throat was swollen. "Because they felt like they must've loved each other, because they'd been together for so long. They were frustrated, because of how much the wedding cost and how long they'd been planning it. About…about how it was unfair that he'd been stringing her along. And how much that-that she's done for him."

"And what did the victim say?" Hanford asked. "How did he react to these allegations?"

Bill couldn't imagine how Percy must've looked like. "They all told me that he'd been panicking—looked like he was having a panic attack at the time," He explained. "That he said that she was going to kill him if he went back. That he didn't want to go alone."

Why didn't any of them go with him? Why didn't they?

Hanford nodded his head. "But you let him go alone."

"Yes. That was what happened." His parents, Charlie and Ginny might have blamed themselves for what happened that day, but Bill knew deep down that if he'd been there that morning, everything would've still happened the same way. And that killed him on the inside to know that there wasn't anyone that could've stopped it from happening.