Author's Note: It's been a long time since I've gotten this one going. This is, as originally intended, a story that overlaps with both Lady in Powder Blue and Gentlemen in Navy Blue. There was going to be a third story for it to overlap with, but recent revelations in the Royal Family have led me to ditch that story. Plus the general portrayal of Director Bones has led me to believe it wouldn't be believable. This particular story is currently slated to be four parts, but that is just an estimate as it is currently evolving.
Harry Potter stumbled as he came out of the pensieve. His legs were weak, and his face streaked with tears from watching Cedric's death and the appearance of his parent's ghosts among the many revealed during the effects the linking of brother wands. He found himself sitting back roughly on the same chair that he'd left to enter the pensive. Looking up, he could see that the Queen was serenely sitting back in hers, as if she'd never moved from it.
Her pointed questions as she moved around the memories had brought more to the fore of Harry's brain while they were in the pensieve. She seemed to know a lot more than Harry had expected of the monarch, when it came to Hogwarts and the Magical World. She reached down below the desk, retrieving her handbag. Her arm went down in it, showing that the bag wasn't quite as normal as it appeared. A deck of pentagonal shaped cards were in her hand when she pulled it out.
The Queen quickly flipped through them, pulling nine of them out, to place them facing him. They were chocolate frog cards, but it appeared that the names had been somehow obscured. "Mr. Potter, would you agree that these appear to be the Wizards that this so-called-Lord summoned to his side?" she asked.
Harry looked at the pictures. Having been told to pay close attention to the Death Eaters in the Pensive, he looked at them carefully. He slid two of them back. "I'm not sure about these two, ma'am. They might be, but I can't say I'm at all certain."
"Agreed," the Queen said. "I shall have to question them throughly. I do have one further question in our role as Queen. What do you recall in your previous encounter with the so called Lord Voldemort? I have heard that there may have been a serious miscarriage of justice in the matter of the attack of which you are the sole survivor, as well as the capture of who was believed responsible."
"Encounters, ma'am," Harry replied. "I don't remember much at all from the night my parents died. Just the green light and mum saying 'not Harry.' I also encountered Voldemort at the end of both my first and second year. The last time is when I found out that his real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle." Then after a few seconds pause, he went on, "I do know that Sirius Black was not my parent's secret keeper, and that he never got a trial."
"It seems that We shall have more to fix at the Wizengamot than expected," the Queen remarked. "I, however, seem to have worked though a meal this afternoon. As I have an evening engagement at the Royal Albert, I must ask if you would be willing to spend the night here at Windsor?"
"Ma'am, I never refuse a night away from the Dursleys," Harry replied.
"We shall have to talk further about that," the Queen said as her grandson re-entered the room, with her pizza, three slices instead of the one she'd asked for. "Thank you, William. Please see to Mr. Potter's overnight stay. Send your father in. Mr. Potter, we shall speak again in the morning."
Harry was not quite sure how he'd ended up sitting in the front seat of the Royal Rolls-Royce Phantom VI State car. In the back seat was the Queen and Prince William. Prince William had told him to drop the Prince and just call him William, after several rounds of Earl of Coventry with a deck of cards featuring which had William as the Jack of Hearts. They were quite worn, and apparent a gift from one of his classmates at Ludgrove shortly after he'd started attending the school. William had spent over a year deliberately not noticing his own picture.
They'd been traveling for just under a hour, when the state car pulled up next to the Admiralty Arch. The Queen exited first, aided by an admiral rather incongruencely in full mess dress who had seemly just appeared just as the car came to a stop. Harry quickly joined the Queen and Prince William, entering the ironwork gate under the arch, which as soon as the Queen had opened it had changed to reveal a downwards staircase.
As it was a new staircase to Harry, he counted the steps as he descended. It was something he'd done the past year, after Sirius had explained some of the steps required to make the Marauder's Map. One hundred and ninety-three steps, fifteen stories if Harry remembered the sign at the Covent Garden Tube station. He hadn't been allowed to take the lift, and barely managed to catch up with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia who had.
The stairs reached an ornate corridor which seemed to stretch out in both directions. The Queen turned left, as she was joined by two beefeaters to her right and left. The Admiral was now trailing behind Harry and William. There was a little space between Harry and William now, and the Admiral stepped up between them. William slowed, and Harry matched him, allowing the Admiral to pass.
"Charles says he should be in place in five minutes," the Admiral said, just loud enough to carry to the Queen's party.
"Very good, Philip," the Queen replied, coming to a stop at the lift door. "I shall head down to the Wizengamot alone, as is tradition. "With any luck, Minister Fudge will suffer my displeasure in silence. Greet Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in the International Flue Room, and make sure his axe is very sharp."
"You will be done, Your Majesty," the Admiral said. "Everything should be ready for you to take out your scepter when you enter the chamber."
The lift doors opened revealing an empty compartment. "Make sure William is in the gallery. By the time I start making judgement." The Queen stepped in, and the doors closed behind her.
"Come, Wils, we have a Saudi executioner prince to greet, Mister Potter, join us as well," the Admiral said.
"Yes Grandfather," William said.
"I believe this will be the first time you've met someone in an equivalent position," the Admiral that Harry now identified as the Duke of Edinburgh said. "As Second Deputy Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, he is likely to become Crown Prince when either the King or Crown Prince dies. They use agnatic seniority there. Mister Potter, I believe you are aware of your fame in the Wizarding side of the street. The Saud family is in the know about Wizards, just like the Windsor family, though not blessed with the magic of the land like we are."
Harry nodded. He was sure that some wizards who had not had the pleasure of listening to Hermione Granger's rant about what was missed in History of Magic, where about to get a big surprise.