Ah, unlucky thirteen... I apologize for the horrific delay in updating, but between various holiday things, the beginning of the new semester, and the spontaneous disintegration of my old computer (and the three-week delay before I got the new one), 'Metamorphosis' has received the short end of the writing stick.
Thank you to those of you brave and patient enough to stick with the working-on-two-years-now WIP :-). You are teh Good, yo.
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+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+
(Ovid)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
All was silent.
They stood in the narrow, chilly alley and listened. All they heard was the scrabbling of rats in the shadows, deafening in the unexpected quiet. It was, Harry thought, like waiting -- *something* hovered, an aura like malice or unfocused fury, like the air before a storm broke. The bit of Diagon Alley he could see was utterly still; not a soul moved in it, and aside from the rats there was no sound.
"Either they've gone to the Ministry, or have been scared indoors," Fortius said. He fished about in one capacious pocket and produced another portkey, a battered fedora this time, with an unpleasant-looking rind of green about the brim. Harry eyed it suspiciously. Catching Harry's expression, Fortius held up the fedora and said, "This'll take us as close as we can get to the Ministry -- there's no Portkeying in there, of course, but it'll be close enough – there's no good way to Apparate close enough, at least, not without setting off all kinds of alerts. And if there's trouble, I'll get us through."
Standing there in the cramped confines of the alley, Harry was forcibly reminded of sitting next to Fortius in the carriage ride up from the docks to Azkaban. Even still and silent as he habitually was, Fortius radiated an air of harnessed physical power – the kind that could crush Harry Potter like a tin can, with or without a wand. Glancing upward he saw masked anger in Fortius' dark eyes, an anger that mirrored that in Lavender's, and he wondered how close Fortius was to letting that power slip.
"Are you ready, Harry?" Lavender asked. Her words broke into his reflection, but not harshly, for behind the anger and determination in her expression there was an unexpected kindness.
Harry thought suddenly of unexpected allies. Luna and Ginny and Neville, all three of them unlikely compatriots in his early days… and now it seemed he was to have two more breaking the rules with him, a serious-faced woman he'd known from school days and the other a giant of a man – and both, despite their initial hostility and his taciturnity, were very nearly not only allies, but friends.
/You can say the same thing about Draco, can you not?/
Draco – never an ally, no never that, but a friend… and maybe more, if fate was kind.
Harry placed both hands on the fedora.
* * *
When they arrived at the Ministry much later – for Fortius' idea of 'close' meant a twenty-minute, desperate run with Harry's leg pounding in agony – it was to chaos.
The half-giants and their allies had been by, for several streetlamps were bent, a few already-battered cars overturned, and windows smashed through. Deep, foot-shaped gouges marked the asphalt, where something huge and heavy had gone stalking – "A grendel," Fortius observed, kneeling briefly to inspect the prints. "That would be Grim, at my guess."
Now, though, the giants were not visible. Harry wondered fearfully where they had gone, and if their destruction had spread any farther. He stared at the crowd surrounding the Ministry building, a huge and seething mass of cloaks and pointed hats, and more frightening than the size of the mob was the sound that went up from it – a discordant buzz that might have been formed of words, but now took on the quality of an incoherent, animalistic series of growls and shrieks. Through the mob moved Ministry wizards, their commands for order drowned by the angry swell of sound about them.
Papers scattered down the street, mixing with other debris. One, blown by the idle breeze, caught against Harry's ankle, and he knelt to pick it up.
"AUROR WEASLEY IMPRISONED FOR TREASON," the headline screamed.
In smaller, more subdued letters it added, "Fudge accuses war hero of espionage; former Death Eater Malfoy also charged. First in a series."
"He works quickly," Lavender said, looking over Harry's shoulder at the article. There was a desperate lightness in her voice that did little to disguise the relief. She looked back to Fortius and said, in a voice so utterly different that it nearly chilled Harry's blood to hear, "We'll need your help now."
Fortius wordlessly pushed past Harry. His black robe flowed about him like fluttering shadows, like ravens' wings, and he seemed to grow even taller, as though willing himself to overmaster the angry crush of people between himself and the Ministry door.
Lavender pulled Harry into motion and mouthed, "Stay with me."
Harry nodded.
A few witches and wizards at the edge of the crowd seemed to take notice of Fortius, and they stepped aside hastily as he approached. From within the slowly-opening mass, Harry could see the beleaguered Ministry wizards exchanging looks and tentative half-smiles of relief. One gnarled, balding warlock took a few belligerent steps toward Fortius, his wand raised, but it needed only a glance from the huge man to send him stumbling back into anonymity.
One of the Ministry wizards, a tall and nondescript man, was coming up to Fortius now, and his relief was obvious. It was also obvious he hadn't yet seen Lavender or Harry; all his attention was on his massive savior. The crowd, awed into silence by Fortius' looming, ominous presence, listened raptly, and the quiet was become as the quiet of the alley – a storm abated, waiting.
"Fortius," the man said shakily, running a hand through sandy hair. He reached into a pocket and produced a checkered handkerchief which he rubbed over his face with a hand as unsteady as his voice. "Fortius," he said again, "am I glad to see you."
"Ambrose," Fortius replied, his voice absolutely without inflection.
"You'll never believe this," Ambrose continued, somewhat more strongly this time. He restored the handkerchief to his pocket. "Someone leaked the trial – we just got this huge mob, shown up on our doorstep, and it's been damn-all getting them to leave. There's been more arrests today, than… Well, I'll tell you later." The crowd buzzed with repressed anger, and Ambrose cut off abruptly. "Can I get you to help me out here?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to go in myself," Fortius said.
"Ah, er…" Ambrose blinked and licked his lips unhappily. Harry watched him fumble with the handkerchief again, but instead of swabbing his face, the man began to twist it around both hands. "Fortius, there's to be no one going in today – Fudge's orders and all. I'm sure you understand."
"I do understand," Fortius answered.
"Oh, good," Ambrose looked about ready to collapse with relief.
"But I'm going in anyway," Fortius added.
"What!" Ambrose dropped his handkerchief and took two steps back. Behind him, the other two Ministry wizards approached, drawn by their colleague's desperation. "Fortius, that isn't wise," Ambrose continued. "You know what happens if you disobey Fudge – and if you try, I'm going to have to arrest you for direct disobedience of a superior, and that means a summary two-week sentence in Azkaban."
"You are welcome to try to arrest me," Fortius said, unmoved by either Ambrose, the threat, or the two wizards moving to bracket him, "and you're certainly welcome to try to Stun me, or Full-Body Bind me, if you like. But there *is* a relatively angry crowd here right now… I don't think they'd appreciate you interfering with someone come to help Ronald Weasley, or someone who's escorting Harry Potter."
"Harry Potter?" The mob began to shift in a fit of agitation, and a hundred heads craned in Harry's direction.
"By Merlin, it *is* Harry Potter!"
"Harry Potter!"
"Harry Potter," Ambrose murmured faintly. His eyes, a pale fish-eye blue, fixed on Harry with stunned disbelief for a moment before flickering back up to Fortius, and then to the crowd which had begun to press dangerously close about them, kept away only by an occasionally menacing glance from Fortius.
"You're welcome to try to arrest him, too," Fortius said calmly, "but as Fudge placed him under house arrest – ineffectively – I don't think you're in a position to try it for yourself."
"This is treason," Ambrose mumbled, but he was not looking at Fortius, or Harry, or at anyone at all.
"What are we going to do, Ambrose?" one of the other wizards demanded. His Ministry badge glittered in the light, a symbol of an authority suddenly horrifically absent. He had his wand trained on Fortius, but his gaze darted between his target and his superior.
"Yes, what are you going to do, Ambrose?" Fortius asked.
"Shut up!" Ambrose thundered. "Anselm, Austin… stand down."
Both wizards stared at their superior in disbelief, their wands still out. Ambrose tore his gaze from Fortius long enough to glare wildly at the two wizards and shout, "I *told* you to stand down, damn it, and I meant it!"
The wizards lowered their wands suspiciously. "This is going to be our jobs," one of them said, "but you can bet I'm telling Fudge you let Fortius get away with this."
"We're going to be sacked anyway," Ambrose said, "and I'd rather not be sacked when I'm lying in St. Mungo's after being crushed to smithereens." He didn't get any argument from that, although the rebellious expressions of Anselm and Austin spoke volumes. "Okay," he said now to Fortius, "have it your way… but when they send you up to Azkaban I'll be laughing."
Fortius did not respond to that, but instead beckoned to Harry and Lavender over his shoulder. Lavender obediently sprang into action and Harry followed, and his hand automatically went to his wand as the crowd loomed about him. The angry, thunderous murmur had died, though, and in its place was a volley of questions in a dozen voices, tumbling over each other like rocks in a whirlpool. Hands reached out to him, and though they were friendly, Harry shrank away.
"Mr. Potter, what's going on?"
"They've got Ron Weasley in there! Are you helping him out?"
"What's with Malfoy? How's he mixed in this?"
"They said something about Severus Snape!"
On and on it went and Harry plowed resolutely through the sea of bodies. Lavender stayed next to him, immovable as a rock, as stern and stubborn in her own way as Fortius who strode on ahead. The mob parted around him like waves on a reef, but flowed in close again, and it was only the sight of Fortius' chest and head and shoulders looming above like a beacon that gave Harry any sense of where they went – it was that close and oppressive. Scent overwhelmed him, the breath of the crowd and the questions that breath carried. He passed through it, reaching down into himself –
-- and they were through the doors. Fortius ignored the drop-box, and three badges reading 'WEASLEY-MALFOY TRIAL' fell to the floor unacknowledged.
The main lobby of the Ministry building was silent and cool, echoing and strange in its quietness next to the chaos of the street. Fortius paused then to straighten his robes and stow his wand, then turned to them.
"I can only guess where they're holding the trial; it'll be in the lower levels, down where the trials were held in the last war."
"Makes sense," Harry said. He coughed and took two deep breaths, steadying himself against the memory of that room – it had not been the room of his childhood trial, but an altogether different place, with an older and deeper menace. "Fudge would want it there…it seems like him."
"In any case, we're going to have to be quick," Lavender added. "I wouldn't put it past Ambrose to actually think of somehow getting word to Fudge of what happened… and we'll need to be well on our way before Fudge can do something about preventing anyone from reaching the chambers."
/The chambers./ Harry shivered. How many times had he seen Death Eaters down there, some of them his own classmates, down in that echoing, forbidding room? /The accused stands in the center of the star, and his accusers ring him at the perimeter of the circle that contains the star. His defender, if he has one, may only enter the circle once to speak. If the accused is guilty, he is bound and transported immediately to Azkaban. If he is innocent, he is released to the custody of his defender./
Some had been grimly silent as their sentences had been read. Some had pleaded on their knees, had offered anything and everything for their release. Others proclaimed their guilt openly, and named other crimes of which they had not been convicted. Others had insisted upon their innocence, some bitterly and some desperately, and had said surely there had been some mistake, some conspiracy, some anything, for they were innocent.
/But the offender is never innocent; only the guilty are brought into the Court of the Star./
"I know the way," Harry said through a throat tight with fear and memory. "I've been down there before."
"Right," Lavender said softly. "Let's go then."
Through the silent passageways they went, through hallways in which the only sounds were their footsteps and anxious breaths, Harry's uneven dragging gait, Lavender's lighter tread, the heavy, grim footfalls of Fortius behind them. Harry felt his heart begin to match itself to Fortius' pace, slowing to that steady, even measure, and as it did so his breathing came easier, and then at last the clearing of his mind, so that he felt much as he did as he would fall from some high place – fall, and then, confident in his own power, change into his hawk-self and ride the wind.
With unerring memory he led them, for he had walked these ways many times in the waking world, and many more times in the dreams that haunted the short years after the war. At the edges of his mind thoughts of Hermione and the Weasleys hovered, and Ron lying sick and helpless in his hospital bed, Draco pale, his fair hair like a guttering candle in the oppressive blackness of the prison hallway. He took those thoughts and fed them into the stern, quiet resolve growing within him.
/It's time,/ he told himself. /You can't run anymore./
They were heading downward now, down and down through winding stairways and twisting halls. The air about them became colder, heavy with the chill of the grave and of death. /Ron and I in the tunnel going to the Chamber of Secrets,/ Harry thought. Dust and cobwebs surrounded them, grey and clinging tendrils like the fingers of ghosts. /Two more turns to the left now, and right at the symbol of the scales./
He took the next two lefts, conscious of Lavender and Fortius behind him, and then he saw the rude carving of balance scales worked into the capstone of an arch. That was the last right, leading down a grey hallway lit by sputtering grey-lit torches, with a door at the end.
There were no protections placed on the door, Harry knew, not now. There had not been, back at the end of the second war; there probably had not been ever since whatever timelost wizards and witches who constructed the Court had wrought their magic there. The Court was its own protection, a place of magic poorly understood even by those who used it. Harry was no scholar, but he doubted Hermione understood it either.
/No magic can be worked in the Court, save the magic of the Court itself. It judges the guilty and sends him to his punishment. Nothing is hidden from the Court; in the center of the Star is the eye of justice, and the eye sees all./
They stopped halfway down the hall. Harry felt Lavender and Fortius at his back, both solid and reassuring presences. Lavender touched him on his shoulder, and he felt her lean close to speak into his ear.
"We can't go in with you; we'll need to be out here, to deal with anyone Fudge or Ambrose might bring to stop you," she whispered. Her breath was very warm in the chill, crypt-like air about them. "Remember, your wand won't work in there – it's other magic you'll need."
He turned back to look at her, puzzled. "Other magic?"
She smiled faintly. "The guilty is allowed one defender," she said simply. "In the past, no one would dare step forward for any of the Death Eaters – but that'll change now, I expect. Use it."
And her fingers twined, all unexpectedly, through his, and squeezed. He felt the heavy impact of Fortius' hand on his shoulder, and again the thought came to him that unexpected allies were perhaps the best kind.
"Good luck," Fortius said, and Lavender echoed him.
Harry nodded ands moved away. One step, two, three more, and then he was at the door to the Court, his hand upon the latch. He stared at it a moment, seeing how pale and fine-boned it was in the washed-out light, and noted distantly how it didn't shake.
The latch gave way beneath his touch, and the door opened smoothly on oiled hinges. He stepped through, gathering control around him as best he could, remembering the times he had stepped through this very door to see what he saw now, or something very like it.
Almost everything was just as he remembered. Five great pedestals loomed up, roughly carved and misshapen, and graven with symbols and signs whose meaning had been long devoured by oblivion. They ringed a circle that had been carved into the floor with astonishing smoothness and accuracy, considering the crudeness of the pedestals that stood about it, and drawn inside the circle with that same precision was a five-pointed star, and the pedestals were positioned at each of these points. The lines of star and circle pulsed with a faint radiance, a radiance that would have been warm and welcoming had not the Court been so forbidding.
And had not Ron Weasley stood in the center of the Star.
He stood, but barely, held up only by force of will. In the light, which was the same lifeless grey of the hall, his face seemed as the face of a spirit, or a face seen through a grey, translucent veil. Even from his place beyond the edge of the circle, Harry could see the shaking of limbs, the protestation of the body against the will, and the evidence of that will in the fever-bright, determined eyes that fixed on his chief accuser.
Cornelius Fudge sat atop one pedestal with his back to Harry, robed in deepest black. He was saying something now, in a tone of bitter regret.
"… and how is it, I ask the Court, that one of the brightest and most talented among us would be led astray?"
"A pertinent question." Harry recognized the voice, and then the owner, a slim woman with graying hair and calculating eyes. Sprenger, it was; he didn't know her first name.
"Indeed." Summers now, another familiar judge, although Harry couldn't see him.
"Who else among us was the brightest? The most talented?" Fudge asked. He paused a moment, and tension built around the answer. "*Voldemort*, my fellow judges, and none other. How easy must it have been for Draco Malfoy to corrupt a talented, ambitious mind? Who knows – perhaps Mr. Weasley was already deep in their councils by the time this plot came to light."
Sprenger tapped a long finger against her lip, and the silence drew out. "How do you respond, Mr. Weasley?"
Ron stood frozen a moment, and Harry felt himself gripped by the same immobility. And as his friend, whose eyes had seemed locked onto Fudge, looked away and turned to address Sprenger, his gaze caught on Harry – caught and held, and the expression on his face was at once gratitude, joy, disbelief, confusion, and fear.
"Harry!" he cried.
"Ron – "
Fudge and the four other judges whipped around on their pedestals. The Minister was pale with shock, but a dangerous redness leached up from his collar. His hands tightened on his robe, having nowhere else to go – a wand would be useless here. And there, like a vision, at the far edge of the circle was Minerva McGonagall, her hands gripping her skirts.
"Mr. Potter!" she said, a half-whisper strangled by surprise.
"*Potter*," Fudge spat. The name held a world of venom in it, poison and hatred and fury at being thwarted. The Minister seemed about to continue, but checked himself fiercely. "Mr. Potter," he continued, his words now a parody of civility, "you have been placed under close arrest. What are you doing out of it?"
"I've come to defend my friends," Harry said.
Fudge's small eyes glittered dangerously, and for a moment Harry felt a twinge of fear. /Don't,/ he told himself fiercely. /Don't ever fear this man./
"Defend, you say? There *is* no defense here – a hope for mercy only," Fudge replied. "I regret to say, then, that you will be imprisoned in Azkaban for nothing."
"Only if you have your way in this." Harry took a deep breath, and made himself look into the apoplectic, fury-engorged face of Cornelius Fudge. "And I intend to see that you won't."
"That is a large claim," said the fourth judge who sat to Fudge's left. He too had greying hair, but it was thick and fell below his shoulders like the mane of a grey lion. Harry looked up at him, deliberately ignoring Fudge's hiss of frustration, and into the seamed, pale face. "I am Richard Kramer, Mr. Potter. I trust you have some evidence to prove yourself? Otherwise I fear it will go very much as the Minister says."
"I do," Harry said. He reached into his robes and found the journals stowed safely in their inner pocket. He knew them well now, the creases in the leather binding, the roughness of cheaply-cut parchment. They were not large volumes – they were rather small, for Severus Snape had little been in the habit of recording his thoughts or feelings – but they seemed suddenly very heavy, carrying perhaps far more than Severus had originally thought they might.
He told Kramer about them as he handed them up, about why they were written and by whom – Kramer's eyebrows rose a bit at that – and at the last, how they had come into his possession, and what interest Fudge had taken in them.
"He was within his rights," Kramer said absently, thumbing through one journal. "Under wizarding law, any document naming an individual as a Death Eater can be used as evidence in trial."
"But what if it *wasn't*?" Harry persisted. He glanced appealingly at Minerva, cursing that he could not properly say what he wished.
And his old Professor, brilliant, clever Minerva, picked it up. "I believe what Mr. Potter means is, these were intended to be used as evidence, but not in trial – rather for summary imprisonment," she said, staring with cold hostility at Fudge. "And this, *honored* judges—" in Minerva's mouth, 'honored' became like a whip "—is directly against our laws. Against *Ministry* laws, laws made to prevent us from becoming like those who persecuted us."
"I can't believe it," Ron murmured. He seemed frail, lost and alone, ringed by menacing spikes of rock. He looked up at Fudge. "Was that what it was for? Truly?"
"What else?" Fudge said, waving a hand dismissively. "Did you think I was honestly interested in it for any other reason? What would meaning would the outpouring of Severus Snape's blighted heart have for me otherwise?" He turned back to Harry. "As for that, you'll notice I have been kind enough to grant trials to your friend and Malfoy."
"Perhaps because you could not be assured of Mr. Potter's silence – or mine," Minerva said from across the circle.
"Fortius and Lavender will be willing to confirm what I've told you," Harry said to Kramer. "They had originally been part of what Fudge – I mean the Minister – had been planning."
"They were your old colleagues?" This was a dark-haired man, on Fudge's right this time.
"Yes, sir," Ron said faintly. "Old friends."
"They were assigned to… ah, keep watch on Mr. Potter, is that correct?"
"Apparently… I wouldn't know." Ron stared bitterly at Fudge. "That arrangement was made without my knowledge."
"A change of heart, then," the dark-haired man murmured thoughtfully. "I wonder what brought that on."
"Friendship, sir." The word jolted out of Harry before he knew he had spoken it.
"You say friendship?" The dark judge turned to him, and the smile upon his face was faint and inscrutable. "I would be interested to hear that defense, Mr. Potter."
"I suppose the court would say it *is* no defense," Harry said. He met Ron's gaze, longing to go to him although he knew he could not enter the circle, not now. "But friendship… I was once told by friend that a friend is always worth it. I know Fortius and Lavender consider Ron a friend, and whatever they've done for him and will do for him will be justified in their eyes. And in mine, sir."
"If we could acquit on the basis of noble sentiment," Sprenger said briskly, "we would have dismissed this long ago, Dominic. But as it is, I am extremely reluctant to prosecute a former hero of the war. Do these journals name him? Is he connected with the Death Eaters in any other way?"
"He was caught consorting with Draco Malfoy!" Fudge snapped. "He has refused to reveal the nature of his communications, the content of correspondence exchanged with him, and admits that off-duty time was spent in his company – knowing, my fellow judges, that to associate with a known Death Eater is punishable by termination and imprisonment."
"The Minister is correct," Dominic told Ron. The tone was kindly but stern as stone, and Harry sensed that this man – a man whom a moment ago Harry would have thought had been persuaded by the invocation of friendship, or perhaps some deeper awareness to go against Fudge – was not to be moved by pleading or platitudes. "You have so far not answered these questions to our satisfaction; answer them truthfully and it will turn out the better for you."
"I…" Ron swallowed and turned to Harry, desperation on his face.
Harry's first instinct was to demand Ron not say a word – /Not a thing about it, Ron, please don't say a word – don't you *dare* speak of it!/ – and he very nearly acted on it. He wanted to keep that secret close, hidden away as something rare and precious, untouched by Fudge's distrust or the opinion of the world – it was possessiveness and fear both, the unwillingness to acknowledge what lay between himself and Draco, for it was this that lay at the heart of Ron's actions.
/Stop being selfish./
The thought was like a slap, sharp and bracing, or cold air. He remembered Ron's pale, weary face on a dirty hospital pillow, the dank and oppressive stench that spoke not of healing but of death. And he remembered Ron's eyes closing, the weary smile, and the absent words – perhaps not so absent now, spoken to remind Harry of a truth so basic he had forgotten what it was.
/Knight to H3./
"You're always worth it, Ron," he said hoarsely. "Go on… tell them."
And so Ron did.
tbc.
Notes:
It's not really important, but the three Ministry wizards, Ambrose, Anselm, and Austin, are all named after early medieval theologians; 'Austin' is the typical shortened form of 'Augustine.'
The court in which the trial takes place bears little relation to the chambers in which Harry was tried in OotP, I know, but the divergence is on the grounds of attempting to convey a certain ominous quality to wizarding judicial ceremonies, especially the one Fudge is attempting to carry out. Instead, it's loosely based on the Court of the Star, one of the courts established in England to try suspected heretics.
The judges' names are taken from various prominent figures in the long, proud, and distinguished tradtion of witch-hunting and inquisition. Dominic is from St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order which eventually became one of the early monastic orders to participate in the Inquisition. Kramer and Sprenger are named after the co-authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum' ('The Hammer of Witches'), a tract explaining how to hunt, find, capture, try, and execute a suspected witch. Summers is named after Rev. Montague Summers, who translated the 'Malleus Maleficarum' into English in response to what he saw as the looming diabolical threat posed by Communism in the early 20th century.
Next: Draco.
Thank you to those of you brave and patient enough to stick with the working-on-two-years-now WIP :-). You are teh Good, yo.
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+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+
(Ovid)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
All was silent.
They stood in the narrow, chilly alley and listened. All they heard was the scrabbling of rats in the shadows, deafening in the unexpected quiet. It was, Harry thought, like waiting -- *something* hovered, an aura like malice or unfocused fury, like the air before a storm broke. The bit of Diagon Alley he could see was utterly still; not a soul moved in it, and aside from the rats there was no sound.
"Either they've gone to the Ministry, or have been scared indoors," Fortius said. He fished about in one capacious pocket and produced another portkey, a battered fedora this time, with an unpleasant-looking rind of green about the brim. Harry eyed it suspiciously. Catching Harry's expression, Fortius held up the fedora and said, "This'll take us as close as we can get to the Ministry -- there's no Portkeying in there, of course, but it'll be close enough – there's no good way to Apparate close enough, at least, not without setting off all kinds of alerts. And if there's trouble, I'll get us through."
Standing there in the cramped confines of the alley, Harry was forcibly reminded of sitting next to Fortius in the carriage ride up from the docks to Azkaban. Even still and silent as he habitually was, Fortius radiated an air of harnessed physical power – the kind that could crush Harry Potter like a tin can, with or without a wand. Glancing upward he saw masked anger in Fortius' dark eyes, an anger that mirrored that in Lavender's, and he wondered how close Fortius was to letting that power slip.
"Are you ready, Harry?" Lavender asked. Her words broke into his reflection, but not harshly, for behind the anger and determination in her expression there was an unexpected kindness.
Harry thought suddenly of unexpected allies. Luna and Ginny and Neville, all three of them unlikely compatriots in his early days… and now it seemed he was to have two more breaking the rules with him, a serious-faced woman he'd known from school days and the other a giant of a man – and both, despite their initial hostility and his taciturnity, were very nearly not only allies, but friends.
/You can say the same thing about Draco, can you not?/
Draco – never an ally, no never that, but a friend… and maybe more, if fate was kind.
Harry placed both hands on the fedora.
* * *
When they arrived at the Ministry much later – for Fortius' idea of 'close' meant a twenty-minute, desperate run with Harry's leg pounding in agony – it was to chaos.
The half-giants and their allies had been by, for several streetlamps were bent, a few already-battered cars overturned, and windows smashed through. Deep, foot-shaped gouges marked the asphalt, where something huge and heavy had gone stalking – "A grendel," Fortius observed, kneeling briefly to inspect the prints. "That would be Grim, at my guess."
Now, though, the giants were not visible. Harry wondered fearfully where they had gone, and if their destruction had spread any farther. He stared at the crowd surrounding the Ministry building, a huge and seething mass of cloaks and pointed hats, and more frightening than the size of the mob was the sound that went up from it – a discordant buzz that might have been formed of words, but now took on the quality of an incoherent, animalistic series of growls and shrieks. Through the mob moved Ministry wizards, their commands for order drowned by the angry swell of sound about them.
Papers scattered down the street, mixing with other debris. One, blown by the idle breeze, caught against Harry's ankle, and he knelt to pick it up.
"AUROR WEASLEY IMPRISONED FOR TREASON," the headline screamed.
In smaller, more subdued letters it added, "Fudge accuses war hero of espionage; former Death Eater Malfoy also charged. First in a series."
"He works quickly," Lavender said, looking over Harry's shoulder at the article. There was a desperate lightness in her voice that did little to disguise the relief. She looked back to Fortius and said, in a voice so utterly different that it nearly chilled Harry's blood to hear, "We'll need your help now."
Fortius wordlessly pushed past Harry. His black robe flowed about him like fluttering shadows, like ravens' wings, and he seemed to grow even taller, as though willing himself to overmaster the angry crush of people between himself and the Ministry door.
Lavender pulled Harry into motion and mouthed, "Stay with me."
Harry nodded.
A few witches and wizards at the edge of the crowd seemed to take notice of Fortius, and they stepped aside hastily as he approached. From within the slowly-opening mass, Harry could see the beleaguered Ministry wizards exchanging looks and tentative half-smiles of relief. One gnarled, balding warlock took a few belligerent steps toward Fortius, his wand raised, but it needed only a glance from the huge man to send him stumbling back into anonymity.
One of the Ministry wizards, a tall and nondescript man, was coming up to Fortius now, and his relief was obvious. It was also obvious he hadn't yet seen Lavender or Harry; all his attention was on his massive savior. The crowd, awed into silence by Fortius' looming, ominous presence, listened raptly, and the quiet was become as the quiet of the alley – a storm abated, waiting.
"Fortius," the man said shakily, running a hand through sandy hair. He reached into a pocket and produced a checkered handkerchief which he rubbed over his face with a hand as unsteady as his voice. "Fortius," he said again, "am I glad to see you."
"Ambrose," Fortius replied, his voice absolutely without inflection.
"You'll never believe this," Ambrose continued, somewhat more strongly this time. He restored the handkerchief to his pocket. "Someone leaked the trial – we just got this huge mob, shown up on our doorstep, and it's been damn-all getting them to leave. There's been more arrests today, than… Well, I'll tell you later." The crowd buzzed with repressed anger, and Ambrose cut off abruptly. "Can I get you to help me out here?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to go in myself," Fortius said.
"Ah, er…" Ambrose blinked and licked his lips unhappily. Harry watched him fumble with the handkerchief again, but instead of swabbing his face, the man began to twist it around both hands. "Fortius, there's to be no one going in today – Fudge's orders and all. I'm sure you understand."
"I do understand," Fortius answered.
"Oh, good," Ambrose looked about ready to collapse with relief.
"But I'm going in anyway," Fortius added.
"What!" Ambrose dropped his handkerchief and took two steps back. Behind him, the other two Ministry wizards approached, drawn by their colleague's desperation. "Fortius, that isn't wise," Ambrose continued. "You know what happens if you disobey Fudge – and if you try, I'm going to have to arrest you for direct disobedience of a superior, and that means a summary two-week sentence in Azkaban."
"You are welcome to try to arrest me," Fortius said, unmoved by either Ambrose, the threat, or the two wizards moving to bracket him, "and you're certainly welcome to try to Stun me, or Full-Body Bind me, if you like. But there *is* a relatively angry crowd here right now… I don't think they'd appreciate you interfering with someone come to help Ronald Weasley, or someone who's escorting Harry Potter."
"Harry Potter?" The mob began to shift in a fit of agitation, and a hundred heads craned in Harry's direction.
"By Merlin, it *is* Harry Potter!"
"Harry Potter!"
"Harry Potter," Ambrose murmured faintly. His eyes, a pale fish-eye blue, fixed on Harry with stunned disbelief for a moment before flickering back up to Fortius, and then to the crowd which had begun to press dangerously close about them, kept away only by an occasionally menacing glance from Fortius.
"You're welcome to try to arrest him, too," Fortius said calmly, "but as Fudge placed him under house arrest – ineffectively – I don't think you're in a position to try it for yourself."
"This is treason," Ambrose mumbled, but he was not looking at Fortius, or Harry, or at anyone at all.
"What are we going to do, Ambrose?" one of the other wizards demanded. His Ministry badge glittered in the light, a symbol of an authority suddenly horrifically absent. He had his wand trained on Fortius, but his gaze darted between his target and his superior.
"Yes, what are you going to do, Ambrose?" Fortius asked.
"Shut up!" Ambrose thundered. "Anselm, Austin… stand down."
Both wizards stared at their superior in disbelief, their wands still out. Ambrose tore his gaze from Fortius long enough to glare wildly at the two wizards and shout, "I *told* you to stand down, damn it, and I meant it!"
The wizards lowered their wands suspiciously. "This is going to be our jobs," one of them said, "but you can bet I'm telling Fudge you let Fortius get away with this."
"We're going to be sacked anyway," Ambrose said, "and I'd rather not be sacked when I'm lying in St. Mungo's after being crushed to smithereens." He didn't get any argument from that, although the rebellious expressions of Anselm and Austin spoke volumes. "Okay," he said now to Fortius, "have it your way… but when they send you up to Azkaban I'll be laughing."
Fortius did not respond to that, but instead beckoned to Harry and Lavender over his shoulder. Lavender obediently sprang into action and Harry followed, and his hand automatically went to his wand as the crowd loomed about him. The angry, thunderous murmur had died, though, and in its place was a volley of questions in a dozen voices, tumbling over each other like rocks in a whirlpool. Hands reached out to him, and though they were friendly, Harry shrank away.
"Mr. Potter, what's going on?"
"They've got Ron Weasley in there! Are you helping him out?"
"What's with Malfoy? How's he mixed in this?"
"They said something about Severus Snape!"
On and on it went and Harry plowed resolutely through the sea of bodies. Lavender stayed next to him, immovable as a rock, as stern and stubborn in her own way as Fortius who strode on ahead. The mob parted around him like waves on a reef, but flowed in close again, and it was only the sight of Fortius' chest and head and shoulders looming above like a beacon that gave Harry any sense of where they went – it was that close and oppressive. Scent overwhelmed him, the breath of the crowd and the questions that breath carried. He passed through it, reaching down into himself –
-- and they were through the doors. Fortius ignored the drop-box, and three badges reading 'WEASLEY-MALFOY TRIAL' fell to the floor unacknowledged.
The main lobby of the Ministry building was silent and cool, echoing and strange in its quietness next to the chaos of the street. Fortius paused then to straighten his robes and stow his wand, then turned to them.
"I can only guess where they're holding the trial; it'll be in the lower levels, down where the trials were held in the last war."
"Makes sense," Harry said. He coughed and took two deep breaths, steadying himself against the memory of that room – it had not been the room of his childhood trial, but an altogether different place, with an older and deeper menace. "Fudge would want it there…it seems like him."
"In any case, we're going to have to be quick," Lavender added. "I wouldn't put it past Ambrose to actually think of somehow getting word to Fudge of what happened… and we'll need to be well on our way before Fudge can do something about preventing anyone from reaching the chambers."
/The chambers./ Harry shivered. How many times had he seen Death Eaters down there, some of them his own classmates, down in that echoing, forbidding room? /The accused stands in the center of the star, and his accusers ring him at the perimeter of the circle that contains the star. His defender, if he has one, may only enter the circle once to speak. If the accused is guilty, he is bound and transported immediately to Azkaban. If he is innocent, he is released to the custody of his defender./
Some had been grimly silent as their sentences had been read. Some had pleaded on their knees, had offered anything and everything for their release. Others proclaimed their guilt openly, and named other crimes of which they had not been convicted. Others had insisted upon their innocence, some bitterly and some desperately, and had said surely there had been some mistake, some conspiracy, some anything, for they were innocent.
/But the offender is never innocent; only the guilty are brought into the Court of the Star./
"I know the way," Harry said through a throat tight with fear and memory. "I've been down there before."
"Right," Lavender said softly. "Let's go then."
Through the silent passageways they went, through hallways in which the only sounds were their footsteps and anxious breaths, Harry's uneven dragging gait, Lavender's lighter tread, the heavy, grim footfalls of Fortius behind them. Harry felt his heart begin to match itself to Fortius' pace, slowing to that steady, even measure, and as it did so his breathing came easier, and then at last the clearing of his mind, so that he felt much as he did as he would fall from some high place – fall, and then, confident in his own power, change into his hawk-self and ride the wind.
With unerring memory he led them, for he had walked these ways many times in the waking world, and many more times in the dreams that haunted the short years after the war. At the edges of his mind thoughts of Hermione and the Weasleys hovered, and Ron lying sick and helpless in his hospital bed, Draco pale, his fair hair like a guttering candle in the oppressive blackness of the prison hallway. He took those thoughts and fed them into the stern, quiet resolve growing within him.
/It's time,/ he told himself. /You can't run anymore./
They were heading downward now, down and down through winding stairways and twisting halls. The air about them became colder, heavy with the chill of the grave and of death. /Ron and I in the tunnel going to the Chamber of Secrets,/ Harry thought. Dust and cobwebs surrounded them, grey and clinging tendrils like the fingers of ghosts. /Two more turns to the left now, and right at the symbol of the scales./
He took the next two lefts, conscious of Lavender and Fortius behind him, and then he saw the rude carving of balance scales worked into the capstone of an arch. That was the last right, leading down a grey hallway lit by sputtering grey-lit torches, with a door at the end.
There were no protections placed on the door, Harry knew, not now. There had not been, back at the end of the second war; there probably had not been ever since whatever timelost wizards and witches who constructed the Court had wrought their magic there. The Court was its own protection, a place of magic poorly understood even by those who used it. Harry was no scholar, but he doubted Hermione understood it either.
/No magic can be worked in the Court, save the magic of the Court itself. It judges the guilty and sends him to his punishment. Nothing is hidden from the Court; in the center of the Star is the eye of justice, and the eye sees all./
They stopped halfway down the hall. Harry felt Lavender and Fortius at his back, both solid and reassuring presences. Lavender touched him on his shoulder, and he felt her lean close to speak into his ear.
"We can't go in with you; we'll need to be out here, to deal with anyone Fudge or Ambrose might bring to stop you," she whispered. Her breath was very warm in the chill, crypt-like air about them. "Remember, your wand won't work in there – it's other magic you'll need."
He turned back to look at her, puzzled. "Other magic?"
She smiled faintly. "The guilty is allowed one defender," she said simply. "In the past, no one would dare step forward for any of the Death Eaters – but that'll change now, I expect. Use it."
And her fingers twined, all unexpectedly, through his, and squeezed. He felt the heavy impact of Fortius' hand on his shoulder, and again the thought came to him that unexpected allies were perhaps the best kind.
"Good luck," Fortius said, and Lavender echoed him.
Harry nodded ands moved away. One step, two, three more, and then he was at the door to the Court, his hand upon the latch. He stared at it a moment, seeing how pale and fine-boned it was in the washed-out light, and noted distantly how it didn't shake.
The latch gave way beneath his touch, and the door opened smoothly on oiled hinges. He stepped through, gathering control around him as best he could, remembering the times he had stepped through this very door to see what he saw now, or something very like it.
Almost everything was just as he remembered. Five great pedestals loomed up, roughly carved and misshapen, and graven with symbols and signs whose meaning had been long devoured by oblivion. They ringed a circle that had been carved into the floor with astonishing smoothness and accuracy, considering the crudeness of the pedestals that stood about it, and drawn inside the circle with that same precision was a five-pointed star, and the pedestals were positioned at each of these points. The lines of star and circle pulsed with a faint radiance, a radiance that would have been warm and welcoming had not the Court been so forbidding.
And had not Ron Weasley stood in the center of the Star.
He stood, but barely, held up only by force of will. In the light, which was the same lifeless grey of the hall, his face seemed as the face of a spirit, or a face seen through a grey, translucent veil. Even from his place beyond the edge of the circle, Harry could see the shaking of limbs, the protestation of the body against the will, and the evidence of that will in the fever-bright, determined eyes that fixed on his chief accuser.
Cornelius Fudge sat atop one pedestal with his back to Harry, robed in deepest black. He was saying something now, in a tone of bitter regret.
"… and how is it, I ask the Court, that one of the brightest and most talented among us would be led astray?"
"A pertinent question." Harry recognized the voice, and then the owner, a slim woman with graying hair and calculating eyes. Sprenger, it was; he didn't know her first name.
"Indeed." Summers now, another familiar judge, although Harry couldn't see him.
"Who else among us was the brightest? The most talented?" Fudge asked. He paused a moment, and tension built around the answer. "*Voldemort*, my fellow judges, and none other. How easy must it have been for Draco Malfoy to corrupt a talented, ambitious mind? Who knows – perhaps Mr. Weasley was already deep in their councils by the time this plot came to light."
Sprenger tapped a long finger against her lip, and the silence drew out. "How do you respond, Mr. Weasley?"
Ron stood frozen a moment, and Harry felt himself gripped by the same immobility. And as his friend, whose eyes had seemed locked onto Fudge, looked away and turned to address Sprenger, his gaze caught on Harry – caught and held, and the expression on his face was at once gratitude, joy, disbelief, confusion, and fear.
"Harry!" he cried.
"Ron – "
Fudge and the four other judges whipped around on their pedestals. The Minister was pale with shock, but a dangerous redness leached up from his collar. His hands tightened on his robe, having nowhere else to go – a wand would be useless here. And there, like a vision, at the far edge of the circle was Minerva McGonagall, her hands gripping her skirts.
"Mr. Potter!" she said, a half-whisper strangled by surprise.
"*Potter*," Fudge spat. The name held a world of venom in it, poison and hatred and fury at being thwarted. The Minister seemed about to continue, but checked himself fiercely. "Mr. Potter," he continued, his words now a parody of civility, "you have been placed under close arrest. What are you doing out of it?"
"I've come to defend my friends," Harry said.
Fudge's small eyes glittered dangerously, and for a moment Harry felt a twinge of fear. /Don't,/ he told himself fiercely. /Don't ever fear this man./
"Defend, you say? There *is* no defense here – a hope for mercy only," Fudge replied. "I regret to say, then, that you will be imprisoned in Azkaban for nothing."
"Only if you have your way in this." Harry took a deep breath, and made himself look into the apoplectic, fury-engorged face of Cornelius Fudge. "And I intend to see that you won't."
"That is a large claim," said the fourth judge who sat to Fudge's left. He too had greying hair, but it was thick and fell below his shoulders like the mane of a grey lion. Harry looked up at him, deliberately ignoring Fudge's hiss of frustration, and into the seamed, pale face. "I am Richard Kramer, Mr. Potter. I trust you have some evidence to prove yourself? Otherwise I fear it will go very much as the Minister says."
"I do," Harry said. He reached into his robes and found the journals stowed safely in their inner pocket. He knew them well now, the creases in the leather binding, the roughness of cheaply-cut parchment. They were not large volumes – they were rather small, for Severus Snape had little been in the habit of recording his thoughts or feelings – but they seemed suddenly very heavy, carrying perhaps far more than Severus had originally thought they might.
He told Kramer about them as he handed them up, about why they were written and by whom – Kramer's eyebrows rose a bit at that – and at the last, how they had come into his possession, and what interest Fudge had taken in them.
"He was within his rights," Kramer said absently, thumbing through one journal. "Under wizarding law, any document naming an individual as a Death Eater can be used as evidence in trial."
"But what if it *wasn't*?" Harry persisted. He glanced appealingly at Minerva, cursing that he could not properly say what he wished.
And his old Professor, brilliant, clever Minerva, picked it up. "I believe what Mr. Potter means is, these were intended to be used as evidence, but not in trial – rather for summary imprisonment," she said, staring with cold hostility at Fudge. "And this, *honored* judges—" in Minerva's mouth, 'honored' became like a whip "—is directly against our laws. Against *Ministry* laws, laws made to prevent us from becoming like those who persecuted us."
"I can't believe it," Ron murmured. He seemed frail, lost and alone, ringed by menacing spikes of rock. He looked up at Fudge. "Was that what it was for? Truly?"
"What else?" Fudge said, waving a hand dismissively. "Did you think I was honestly interested in it for any other reason? What would meaning would the outpouring of Severus Snape's blighted heart have for me otherwise?" He turned back to Harry. "As for that, you'll notice I have been kind enough to grant trials to your friend and Malfoy."
"Perhaps because you could not be assured of Mr. Potter's silence – or mine," Minerva said from across the circle.
"Fortius and Lavender will be willing to confirm what I've told you," Harry said to Kramer. "They had originally been part of what Fudge – I mean the Minister – had been planning."
"They were your old colleagues?" This was a dark-haired man, on Fudge's right this time.
"Yes, sir," Ron said faintly. "Old friends."
"They were assigned to… ah, keep watch on Mr. Potter, is that correct?"
"Apparently… I wouldn't know." Ron stared bitterly at Fudge. "That arrangement was made without my knowledge."
"A change of heart, then," the dark-haired man murmured thoughtfully. "I wonder what brought that on."
"Friendship, sir." The word jolted out of Harry before he knew he had spoken it.
"You say friendship?" The dark judge turned to him, and the smile upon his face was faint and inscrutable. "I would be interested to hear that defense, Mr. Potter."
"I suppose the court would say it *is* no defense," Harry said. He met Ron's gaze, longing to go to him although he knew he could not enter the circle, not now. "But friendship… I was once told by friend that a friend is always worth it. I know Fortius and Lavender consider Ron a friend, and whatever they've done for him and will do for him will be justified in their eyes. And in mine, sir."
"If we could acquit on the basis of noble sentiment," Sprenger said briskly, "we would have dismissed this long ago, Dominic. But as it is, I am extremely reluctant to prosecute a former hero of the war. Do these journals name him? Is he connected with the Death Eaters in any other way?"
"He was caught consorting with Draco Malfoy!" Fudge snapped. "He has refused to reveal the nature of his communications, the content of correspondence exchanged with him, and admits that off-duty time was spent in his company – knowing, my fellow judges, that to associate with a known Death Eater is punishable by termination and imprisonment."
"The Minister is correct," Dominic told Ron. The tone was kindly but stern as stone, and Harry sensed that this man – a man whom a moment ago Harry would have thought had been persuaded by the invocation of friendship, or perhaps some deeper awareness to go against Fudge – was not to be moved by pleading or platitudes. "You have so far not answered these questions to our satisfaction; answer them truthfully and it will turn out the better for you."
"I…" Ron swallowed and turned to Harry, desperation on his face.
Harry's first instinct was to demand Ron not say a word – /Not a thing about it, Ron, please don't say a word – don't you *dare* speak of it!/ – and he very nearly acted on it. He wanted to keep that secret close, hidden away as something rare and precious, untouched by Fudge's distrust or the opinion of the world – it was possessiveness and fear both, the unwillingness to acknowledge what lay between himself and Draco, for it was this that lay at the heart of Ron's actions.
/Stop being selfish./
The thought was like a slap, sharp and bracing, or cold air. He remembered Ron's pale, weary face on a dirty hospital pillow, the dank and oppressive stench that spoke not of healing but of death. And he remembered Ron's eyes closing, the weary smile, and the absent words – perhaps not so absent now, spoken to remind Harry of a truth so basic he had forgotten what it was.
/Knight to H3./
"You're always worth it, Ron," he said hoarsely. "Go on… tell them."
And so Ron did.
tbc.
Notes:
It's not really important, but the three Ministry wizards, Ambrose, Anselm, and Austin, are all named after early medieval theologians; 'Austin' is the typical shortened form of 'Augustine.'
The court in which the trial takes place bears little relation to the chambers in which Harry was tried in OotP, I know, but the divergence is on the grounds of attempting to convey a certain ominous quality to wizarding judicial ceremonies, especially the one Fudge is attempting to carry out. Instead, it's loosely based on the Court of the Star, one of the courts established in England to try suspected heretics.
The judges' names are taken from various prominent figures in the long, proud, and distinguished tradtion of witch-hunting and inquisition. Dominic is from St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order which eventually became one of the early monastic orders to participate in the Inquisition. Kramer and Sprenger are named after the co-authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum' ('The Hammer of Witches'), a tract explaining how to hunt, find, capture, try, and execute a suspected witch. Summers is named after Rev. Montague Summers, who translated the 'Malleus Maleficarum' into English in response to what he saw as the looming diabolical threat posed by Communism in the early 20th century.
Next: Draco.