**Lo y'all! That's more like it! 10 reviews, so much better than three. Just 46 more and we'll have a hundred! C'mon, take pity! I'm addicted to reviews!
Evil Snapple Pie – You have a sense of humour too! Thanks!
Louie – How may exclamation marks d'you need mate?
Silver angel – you're not catching me out that way – I'm not telling you the ending! Mind you it prob'ly will be good if everyone reviews!
BumblebeeBucy – guess again! You need to wait till next chapter – didn't I say I liked to draw things out? I promise the next chap will be the one, and the one after that will prob'ly be the most exciting!
Selenay - thanks again! Sorry if I keep spelling your name wrong!
WeasleyTwinsLover1112 – I'm a lover too! I have obeyed!
Shrieking Beast - why does everyone always want Snape? **sigh** I guess I'll have to put him in eventually.
Amanda – Glad you care so much!
Hyperwriter – Thank you very much. **Giggles at the formality, but you were just as bad. **
All characters are property of J.K. Rowling (except Mr. Wattling and Marcus Porter and the tall man who doesn't have a name as yet) and I'm getting really really really really really sick of typing this up every single ****** ***** time.**
The Trial of Sirius Black - Chapter 9
At last. Dumbledore was smiling and Sirius had relaxed even more into the chair he was bound to.
"I call Remus Lupin!" said Dumbledore loudly. Lupin flashed them a grin as he wriggled his way off the bench that was so much like a church pew. He sat down in the chair that had been conjured for Fudge. No one argued.
"All right there, Padfoot old friend?" he asked Sirius.
"As well as can be expected, Moony," he replied.
Harry wondered for a moment why they were using their nicknames – was nothing sacred? – but then he realised that when this was over everyone would know about how Sirius, James and Peter had become animagi anyway.
"Professor Remus Jarrett Lupin, do you swear to tell me, this court and the whole world all the truth you possess?"
"I do," Lupin (Remus, Harry told himself) told the judge.
"On what do you swear?"
"I swear…" Remus Lupin thought about this for longer than anyone else. After a while he whispered something in the ear of the Ministry Wizard standing guard over the desk. The Wizard looked confused, so Remus repeated whatever he had said. The Wizard hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Remus took a deep breath.
"I swear on my honour and on the honour of Sirius Black."
Everyone in the room gasped as though they were a single being. The judge sniffed, his nostrils flared.
"You wish to swear on the honour of the accused?"
"I do." Very slowly, Wattling sat back in his chair. He nodded to Dumbledore, who began.
"Most of the wizarding community believe that Sirius Black is a murderer, and worse," he began. "There are, however, a selective few of us who believe otherwise. Remus, if you would care to relate to us your story – omitting nothing, if you please."
And Remus did. The story went on for a whole half an hour, several small details Harry had not heard before were added.
Harry was able, if only a few times, to tear his eyes away from Remus, Dumbledore and Sirius to look at the press and spectators who were listening with rapt concentration. He tried to discern from their faces what they believed about Remus' story, and what they did not.
Several of them looked afraid or ashamed. The majority were shaking they're heads, as though listening to a child try to explain where the jar of biscuits had disappeared to.
When Remus got to the point where they had revealed Peter Pettigrew in the Shrieking shack just over a year ago, nearly all of them frowned, a few suppressed giggles, as if they thought Remus might have lost a few marbles. A few people snorted every time he mentioned Harry's name.
Harry didn't really blame them. He, Ron and Hermione had thought the same at the time after all. But Harry knew Sirius. He knew that he would never do anything like the horrors the previous witnesses had described, whereas all of the surrounding witches and wizards believed Sirius to be simply a cold-blooded killer, someone with a heart of stone and a deranged mind from twelve years spent in Azkaban.
It didn't matter to them if Sirius was guilty. Goodbye and good riddance would be their watchwords, but if he got off, in their opinion, that put their family in danger, their homes at risk. It was safer not to believe the werewolf.
Remus ended the story with how Sirius had fled, but not in any great detail, returned and was now staying, in theory, with him.
Dumbledore thanked him with a smile and a nod, but a rather strained smile nonetheless. Harry suddenly hoped Dumbledore wasn't going to go in any detail about why Sirius had returned to Britain.
He didn't feel that it would be an incredibly good idea to mention Voldemort's return to power at a time like this, when almost everyone assembled was on the edge. They'd never get anyone to come back in.
Dumbledore, however, either didn't consider the time to be right, or, like Harry, considered the matter too delicate for anyone's ears at the moment.
Remus, his job over, grinned half-heartedly at Sirius, who smiled, and made his way back to the bench. "Well done," whispered Harry.
"I now call Ronald Arthur Weasley to the stand," called Dumbledore. Harry patted the now green-looking Ron on the back as he squeezed past.
Defiant to the end, Ron also sat down behind the minister's desk. No one had removed it after all, and it would be a shame just to leave it there and let witnesses just stand before the raised platform as Porter had done.
Besides, it made it easier for everyone to see. Ron wasn't going to throw away the chance of a bit of fame. Harry didn't begrudge him it.
"Master Ronald Arthur Weasley, do you swear to tell me, this court and the whole world all the truth you possess?"
"Um… yes."
"On what do you swear?"
"Er… on my honour…"
"C'mon Ron!" Hermione whispered frantically.
"And the honour of my Dad…"
Harry could hear Fred and George's whoops faintly from the balcony.
"…Arthur Weasley," Ron finished.
"We are told that Peter Pettigrew posed as your pet rat for many years," said Professor Dumbledore.
Ron snarled quietly. "Yeah," he said, "three years, before that he was my brother's."
Harry wondered whether Percy was having daymares about that in the balcony above. Or maybe not. Percy was the sort of person who wouldn't believe anyone about these things except those in highest authority, namely Cornelius Fudge.
"And you believe everything the previous witness recounted?"
"Yes."
"You saw your pet rat Scabbers return to his original shape as Peter Pettigrew."
"Yes."
"What would you say if I asked you whether Harry Potter was your best friend?"
Startled at the change of subject, Ron glanced briefly at Harry before replying:
"Yes."
"And you believed once, did you not, that Sirius Black was looking for Harry to take revenge for the Dark Lord's downfall?"
"Well, yeah I s'pose so," said Ron, confused by the tirade of questions everyone already knew the answer to.
"And then you discovered otherwise…?"
"Ron waited for a moment before realising Dumbledore was prompting him. "Yes, er… he faked his death again so it looked like Crookshanks, that's Hermione's cat, had eaten him. We found him again in Hagrid's house in the milk jug. Sirius knew where he was so he dragged me into the secret passage under the Whomping Willow. He broke my leg, but it was my fault really and Madam Pomfrey fixed it quick after we came back."
"How did you get back?"
"Pettigrew cursed me. I got knocked out. Next thing I knew I was in the hospital wing."
"Thank you," said Dumbledore in dismissal, and Ron nearly ran back to his seat beside Harry.
"Good on you," Harry told him. Ron was shaking.
"Hell, it's like having a staring contest with a basilisk," he said.
"He sees right through you. I don't think I've ever seen this side of
Dumbledore, the political side. He's nothing like himself."
"And if he were a basilisk, you'd be dead," Harry reminded him.
** I love Sundays! The only bad thing about them is that they are always preceded and followed by school days. Come on you lot, round it up to a hundred and I'll love you all for the rest of my life! Well, make it better than three anyway. I am so never going to forget that. Enjoy these chapters while you can, if I don't get an exceptional amount of reviews you might not see another one till next weekend at the earliest. And now I get to go and learn French verbs. Oh, the joys of homework on my only day off! **
