32
Pushing for a trial…
00000
Matt entered his study and sat in the armchair before leaning all the way back as a tired sigh escaped his mouth. He rubbed his eyes, relishing the peace and quiet that he got from being in this room when the door opened and Ann walked in.
He looked at her and smiled before noticing the envelope in her hand and raised a brow.
"This came in while you were out today," she said handing him the envelope. It was from Augusta Longbottom. He opened the letter and saw that it was an official agreement of their recently formed alliance. "I guess others will know about it soon," Ann said.
"Sometimes it's necessary to take a side," Matt said as Ann sat in his lap and the two hugged before she kissed him lightly on the lips. He chuckled with his eyes closed as she began to play with his hair. "I wonder what my father would've done."
"He would've done the same thing," Ann said. "He also cared for his family above anything else. Although, I have to say that I am not a fan of the way we approached Augusta for the alliance. It's like we exploited the debt which the Longbottoms owed to us."
"Everything happens for a reason," Matt said as he sat up straight and looked out the window. "If Lady Augusta hadn't accepted your offer of helping Frank and Alice, we probably wouldn't have her as our ally today. We need it, especially now that we've made an enemy with the Notts'."
"And what about the other thing?" Ann asked. Matt looked at her tiredly as she smiled. "Well, we saw it coming, didn't we? I know it's going to be hard, especially for you but we need to give him a chance."
"Can I be mean to him?" Matt asked.
"No, you may not," Ann said. "Also, if we get on Harry's good side then maybe the Potter house can also become our ally. You remember how powerful that family was back in the day when Charlus Potter was alive?"
Matt smirked. "You're letting your Slytherin side talk," he said to his wife. "Being good to Harry just so you can convince him to be our ally? Isn't that taking advantage of a naïve boy who barely knows how the politics work in our world?"
"Well, Daphne did mention him growing up with his muggle relatives with no idea that he was a wizard or that his parents were magical," Ann said. "Do you think he knows?"
"It's hard to say," Matt said. "The Potter family is one of the oldest pureblood families in the magical world. If stories are to be believed then their ancestry is tied to the Peverells. But of course that can't be true because the Peverells are just a made-up name in a children's book. Some even tie the Potters to the family line of Godric Gryffindor."
"Well, all the Potters have been sorted in the Gryffindor house," Ann said.
Matt chuckled. "Going by that logic a lot of pureblood families are descendants of Salazar Slytherin then," he said.
"Maybe Harry is," Ann said. "He did use parseltongue during the first challenge of the tournament. It's an ability that is known to exist only in Salazar's family line."
"We are deviating from the topic," Matt said.
"You started it," Ann said rolling her eyes. "So, what are we going to do about it?"
Matt sighed. "Helping Black get a trial will definitely put us in his good graces," he said.
"Who is the Black family head right now?" Ann asked. "Last I heard it was Sirius' mother Walburga who became the proxy head after Sirius' father's death. With her gone and Sirius incarcerated – even though he is on the run – does that family have any head?"
"Technically it should be under the Malfoys considering Narcissa is a Black," Matt said. "However, with Sirius still alive that wouldn't happen so the Wizengamot seat of the Blacks has been put on hold from participating in any of the voting processes."
"So, if Sirius becomes a free man what happens to the old allies of the Black family?" Ann asked. "I don't think he likes any of them."
"I guess he will break ties with them," Matt said. "He is nothing like the rest of his family or for what they stood for. If Black is proven innocent and he becomes the head of his family then Walburga will definitely lose her mind. I hear her portrait still hangs on the entrance at the Grimmauld Place. I once heard Lucius talk about it when he went to visit the place, hoping to renovate it. Poor man had to leave the house before he went deaf from her screaming."
Ann smiled before looking out the window. "This isn't going to be easy, is it?" she said slowly. She then looked at Matt.
"I'm afraid not," he said, "but we'll do our best to get through with it."
Ann smiled before kissing him. This is why she loved him. He never made her feel alone in any situation. She knew that after breaking their ties with the Notts they had made a dangerous enemy of them. They also knew that their daughters were also in more danger than before at Hogwarts but for some reason she felt that they could get through these problems.
00000
(A few days later…)
As the elevator came to a stop Amelia Bones – head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement – stepped out of it and headed towards her office. Opening the door she walked into the outer chamber of her office when her secretary stood up. She stopped and looked at him as he picked up an envelope and handed it to her.
"This came for you in the morning mail, ma'am," Jackson, the secretary said.
Amelia saw that the letter was from Matthias Greengrass. He had recently formed an alliance with the Longbottom house which had come as a surprise to everyone who was in the Wizengamot including Amelia. For a house that had stood as a neutral body since the early days it was definitely shocking to see it take a side. It was even more shocking that Augusta had accepted their request for alliance.
The Greengrass family had finally chosen a side – this is how everyone was interpreting the alliance and they weren't wrong in many ways. However, knowing the family's history Amelia knew that there was definitely some serious reason because of which Matthias Greengrass had made such a move. She looked at the letter thinking that she might get some answers from it as she nodded at Jackson before walking into her office and closed the door behind her.
She sat in her chair and looked at the letter for a moment before finally opening it. She wondered why the head of the Greengrass family would write to her. As she began to read the letter her eyes widened in surprise before Amelia called for Jackson.
"Yes, ma'am?" he said walking into her chamber.
"I want you to get me the list of all the trials that took place in August of 1980," she said.
Jackson nodded without asking any question although he did wonder why Amelia was telling him to fetch the list. He left for the bottom level where the records' room was before returning half an hour later with a really thick file which he then gave to Amelia.
She looked at the file. It consisted of records of over a thousand trials that had taken place in the month of August, 1980. Knowing it would take her forever to find that particular name that she wanted to look for Amelia took out her wand and cast a spell which was meant to look for the specific file. However, nothing happened. She cast the spell again and again but still nothing. Confused, she opened the records' file by hand and flipped through the pages. It didn't help that she didn't know of the date of the trial that she was looking for otherwise she would've found it more quickly.
After flipping through the records for over an hour Amelia finally gave up as she leaned back in her chair and sighed tiredly. She couldn't find that trial's record in the file which made her wonder whether Matthias was correct about what he had written in the letter.
It could be possible, she thought. A lot of people had been incarcerated without a trial during that time because of how the ministry was handling the situation after the fall of you-know-who. As the aurors were rounding up hundreds of death eaters and other supporters of you-know-who every day, the ministry and the Wizengamot found it hard to set trial for every single one of them. It was possible that in their haste they forgot to set one for Sirius Black.
She had only become an auror following her two-year training when Amelia found out that Sirius Black had been caught outside Potters' residence at Godric's Hollow on the Halloween night when James and Lily were murdered. Evidence suggested that he was their secret keeper who had then betrayed the Potters by revealing their location to you-know-who following which the Potters were murdered by the dark wizard who was then mysteriously killed by an infant Harry Potter.
The aurors had found Black outside the Potters' residence screaming his guts out like a madman after he had supposedly blown up a pipeline which had ended up killing twelve muggles in the area along with Peter Pettigrew – a close friend of the Potters and Black.
Amelia had only heard about it the following day when news spread of you-know-who's defeat at the hands of Harry Potter. She had gone numb when she heard of what Sirius had done. She couldn't believe it. The man was like family to the Potters, a brother to James in every way but blood. It didn't make sense of him to betray them like that. It could be possible that he was tortured by you-know-who to reveal the Potters' location.
With that thought in mind she found the aurors who had arrested Sirius and asked them what had happened. When she wasn't convinced of their story one of them showed her their memory from the night when they had found Sirius on the burning street of Godric's Hollow with the ruins of Potter Cottage behind him and the bodies of the muggles lying around him on the street. The man was screaming 'It was my fault!' with guttural cries before the aurors apprehended him and brought him to the ministry.
It felt like the ground had vanished from under her feet as Amelia felt her whole body tremble in shock. She couldn't believe what had gone down. Not only had she lost two of her closest friends but she had also lost faith in Sirius who she had feelings for and was planning to confess it to him after the war was over.
Now she couldn't even bring herself to look at him.
She never went to visit him in Azkaban. When Sirius broke through the prison Cornelius Fudge, the minister of magic, was all over Amelia demanding that she caught the man and bring him back to Azkaban where his soul will be sucked out by the dementors. Coming directly from the Minister of Magic she had no choice but to accept the order. However, she assigned the case to her second-in-command, Kingsley Shacklebolt, as she wanted nothing to do with Sirius.
Unfortunately, Black had managed to slip out of their hands a second time and from then on he was an outlaw in hiding. Fudge had given Amelia hell for it, suspending her for an entire month with a warning to demote her. However, she completely ignored him and to her own surprise, actually felt relieved that Sirius had escaped a death sentence this time. It seemed her feelings for him hadn't gone away.
And now with Matthias' letter telling her that he could be innocent, it had Amelia hopeful for a future she once longed for to have with Sirius.
The Greengrass and Longbottom families were planning to push for Sirius' trial and they wanted her help in the matter. She had smiled realizing that Matthias hadn't asked her if she was willing to help them. He had simply told her of their plan as if already knowing that she would help them in the matter and she had to admit to herself that he was right.
It felt a bit weird with the Greengrass' involvement in the matter. That family had always stood alone, hated by both the dark and light side. While Amelia had mixed feelings about that family it was all pushed to the side by the simple possibility that aligning herself with the Greengrass and the Longbottom family could mean proving Sirius' innocence.
However, there was a problem and its name was Fudge. The man had made it his mission to bring Sirius to 'justice' thinking it would be good for his public image and more so as the minister of magic. Amelia knew that he wouldn't take the possibility of Sirius being innocent well which was a problem as even with the allies of the Longbottom family they didn't have enough Wizengamot members backing them up for Sirius' trial. In situations where a matter wasn't backed up by enough members to be listened in the Wizengamot its approval fell into the hands of the Minister of Magic which in this case was Fudge and Amelia barely had any confidence that the man would approve of Sirius' trial when he had publicly claimed his hatred for the man many times since he had been elected as the Minister of Magic.
This made Amelia realize why Matthias and Augusta wanted her help in the matter. They wanted her to somehow convince Fudge to approve of the trial and with that realization in mind she wondered if it would be possible to do so.
00000
Thanks for reading…