Disclaimer: None of the recognizable characters and settings belong to me. They are all the intellectual property of J.K. Rowling. I'm just playing around with them for the fun of it…no monetary gain is sought.
This story is dedicated to scatteredlogic for her cherished friendship and all her invaluable help.
Chapter Forty: Before the BattleDumbledore was passed into Minerva's cell by the guards quite early on Monday morning. The woman who waited for him within wasn't the woman he'd left there the evening before, however.
Minerva laughed grimly at the surprise on her friend's face as she stood up from her cot and smoothed down her pristine robes before crossing to stand beside him.
"I do look a bit different, don't I, Albus? You shouldn't be surprised, though. Minister Gallagher wouldn't want there to be even a trace of sympathy for me in the adoring crowd he plans to impress today. And, after all, an obviously beaten and mistreated older woman just might garner a few sympathetic glances. So they cleaned and pressed my robes and returned them to me this morning. The healers were here last night. There isn't so much as a bruise left anywhere on my body or on my face to attest to how I've really been treated during this last week. We wouldn't want the truth to confuse anyone, now would we, when we can eliminate all the evidence of ill treatment with the wave of a wand?"
Dumbledore sighed at the bitter tone of his friend's voice. "You're right, I should have anticipated this move on their part, but perhaps it's just as well. I was quite worried about all your injuries. They should have been attended to long before this."
Minerva snorted indelicately. "Yes, but then most of them shouldn't have been inflicted in the first place. If they were so concerned for my well being, I'd have been helped when the injuries were first incurred. Also, there'd someone at the prison with medical training, but apparently, the Ministry has never seen the need. This," she waved at herself, "was done purely for show, and to prevent the general public from knowing how badly even those only accused of a crime are really treated at Azkaban."
"I'm sorry, Minerva. I'm sorry that you've had to go through all this. It never should have happened."
She shook her head and sighed. "No, it shouldn't have, and it's largely my own fault for not coming to you in the first place. I was just trying to protect the school, but I wasn't thinking it through. Anyway, there's no point in going into all of that again now. You might be interested to know that the Aurors paid me a little visit last night as well. I haven't had so much company in ages. They examined me for an obliviation scar."
Dumbledore nodded with interest. "And did they tell you what they found?"
"Would you expect them to?" She raised her eyebrows in mild surprise. "No. They came in and told me what they were going to do. They did it, and then they left. I will say that they didn't look terribly happy when they left, so I imagine that they did see the scar. Since Severus told me it was there, I'd expect them to find it. Certainly, he knows an obliviation scar when he sees one."
"Well, that works in our favor, at least," Dumbledore said.
"Does it? Really? All it shows is that sometime in the past, I was obliviated by someone. There's no way to know who, or why, or what memories were removed."
"That's true," Dumbledore agreed. "But it will raise a doubt."
After a pause, Minerva spoke quietly. "A doubt… I suppose that's all that can be expected. A doubt won't count for much against that pensieve though, which I've still not been allowed to see, by the way. Nor will it count against my wand, with its incriminating spells just waiting to be called forth."
Dumbledore looked uncomfortable.
Noticing his expression, Minerva frowned. "What? Is there more evidence that you haven't told me about?"
"Two Aurors came to Hogwarts yesterday and searched through your things. They found the ring that you wore in the pensieve memories," he admitted.
Of course they would. Her heart sank a little further. She'd remembered when she first saw the memories that she still had that ring, hadn't she? Actually, it was a bit surprising that it took them this long to go looking for it.
"Well, that doesn't really surprise me," she said softly. "Though having the ring isn't any more damaging than watching me commit murder in a pensieve, is it?"
"We could try to suggest that you'd been placed under Imperius. There'd be no way to disprove that."
"There's no way to prove it either," she snapped.
Dumbledore continued, " I certainly intend to introduce the fact that Ian plans to benefit from your death and could have tampered with the evidence somehow. The fact that the pensieve has no sound is one thing that's highly suspicious."
"To us, perhaps. I'm not at all sure that most people would find it suspicious. I have a feeling that the Wizengemot as a whole aren't overly concerned about whether or not they can hear my voice in the pensieve since the images it holds are still fresh and clear. Oh, Albus, the plain truth is that you really have no case to present, isn't it? All you can do is parade a few witnesses in front of the court who can attest to my leading an exemplary life ever since my divorce, but what does that really prove? That I changed my ways? That I never killed again?"
Dumbledore frowned, and Minerva reached out to run a comforting hand down his arm before moving away.
"You can question the evidence, but you can't really refute any of it. All you can do is delay the inevitable and buy me a few more days of life. And to what end? So I can sit in my cell and think about it for a while longer? So I can have more nightmares and anticipate and experience the pain and fear of my impending death a few more times? I'm not sure that it's worth it," she whispered hollowly.
"What are you saying?"
She expelled a ragged sigh and turned away from her friend. A pang of guilt shot through her as she realized that she'd promised Severus that she wasn't simply going to quit, but fighting on in the face of certain defeat just seemed like such a waste. Maybe it would simply be best to get it over with quickly…for all of them.
"I guess I'm saying that I'm tired of living with the certain knowledge of my death. That perhaps I should simply plead guilty and just get it over with. Owning up to my crime would be the honorable thing to do, after all, wouldn't it?"
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A very disheveled Severus Snape paced back and forth across the length of his sitting room. His rumpled shirt was misbuttoned and partially untucked, and his hair was wildly disarrayed, as if he'd been running unsteady fingers through it for hours. Totally ignored, the candles on his mantel burned low and sputtered in their waxy remains, casting grotesque flickering shadows of his movements over the gray stone walls.
Despite spending the entire night pacing and thinking, he still hadn't come up with a truly satisfactory plan of action. That damned spell was out there. He should have realized that a place like Hogwarts, with its lack of tolerance for the Dark Arts, wouldn't be likely to have the answer within its collection, no matter how extensive it was. Too many years of associating with damned noble Gryffindors had obviously clouded his mind in this regard.
Any public, and he used the term loosely, collection that specialized in the Dark Arts would want to know what he was searching for if he asked for permission to search their library. He could lie, of course, but the stacks wouldn't be open regardless. He couldn't simply walk in and begin to browse. Those in charge of the collection would insist on bringing what he needed to him, and he'd have to choose correctly with very little to go on. So pursuing that course of action would be nothing but a waste of time.
What he really needed was the right private collection. One owned by someone who preferably owed him a favor or at least by someone he could bully into letting him look through it with no questions asked. The real problem was that he had to pick the right person the first time. There simply wasn't time to do this more than once. Minerva's trial would be starting at any moment, and with the strength of the evidence against her, it wasn't likely to last very long.
So whom should he choose? Stewart owed him a rather large favor and was quite easy to manipulate, but his collection wasn't likely to be top notch, and his interests tended more towards torture and blood sports than rather subtle spell work. Gardner might be a good choice. He had an extremely extensive Dark Arts collection, and no real connection to the Death Eaters. His wife was annoying though, always hovering and wanting to listen in on conversations. She was both a gossip and a flirt. The worst possible combination.
Snape stopped his pacing and considered a new possibility as it occurred to him. There was Burroughs. Yes, he was particularly interested in deception. Surely if a grimoire existed that contained this spell, he'd have it in his library. He'd used most of his wealth to accumulate his collection, and it was vast. Books were a passion with him.
Unfortunately, very little else was. Which made him a tough man to force into anything, and they'd never been particular friends. All of which might make it difficult to persuade him to allow an in-depth perusal of his collection, but it was still worth a try. If he couldn't get a look, he'd go to Gardner. Surely he could get rid of the wife, somehow. Chocolates laced with a sleeping draught should do the trick if necessary.
Having made a decision, he grabbed up his jacket, which was hanging crookedly from his desk chair, and began to slip it on. Before he could manage more than one sleeve however, a rather frantic knocking began on his door.
Still trying to shrug into the coat, he opened the door and glared out at whoever had a death wish and was surprised to find his gaze being met by the earnest and excited eyes of Irma Pince.
"What do you want?" he growled. "I don't have much time."
Irma was appalled at Snape's appearance. She'd never seen him look worse, and considering how horrid he'd looked yesterday, that was saying something. His skin was pasty and his hair was straggly and gave new meaning to the word disheveled, and he looked as if he'd spent several nights sleeping in his clothes and not at all comfortably. But then she imagined that she didn't exactly look her best either after tossing and turning all night trying to come up with an answer, so she had no right to talk. But she'd remembered something…something important, and he had to know about it!
"Severus!" she exclaimed in an excited voice. "I completely forgot about the storeroom. It's been here longer than I have, of course, so I suppose I could be forgiven, but it's not as if I didn't know it was there. I simply haven't been in there for ages, so I'd forgotten about it, but I think it might have what we need." She beamed excitedly at him.
He, in turn, having finally managed to shrug into his coat properly, simply glared down at her in utter confusion. "What on earth are you babbling about?"
"I know where we might be able to find the answers we've been looking for. There's another collection of books right here in the castle, and they're almost all specifically focused on the Dark Arts!"
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Snape had never seen Irma Pince move so fast. Even with his much longer legs, he was having a very difficult time keeping up with her as they hurried through the dungeons and swept up the staircase to the ground floor of the castle.
"So where are these forgotten books then?" Snape managed to ask after they'd attained level ground once more and were heading deeper into the castle.
Irma tossed the peevish Potions master a smile and kept walking. "The storeroom is in the base of the Green tower. Before you ask, I don't know why the books were stored there; they were already there when I came to Hogwarts. I looked through them briefly at the time they were first shown to me, but I didn't see anything that would have been proper or useful for the circulating collection, so I never went back to them again. Over the years, I'd quite forgotten their existence, but as I recall, the room was full of these books, some in horrible condition, others in languages that I didn't even recognize, but virtually all of them dealt with some aspect or other of the Dark Arts."
That sounded promising, so Snape frowned and refrained from pestering her with further questions. He'd know the truth of it soon enough. If the room was what she said it was, then it could certainly be just what they were looking for, if it was another dead end, then he could spend a few moments unleashing his frustrations on Pince before moving on with his original plan. Very little time would be lost in the long run and some much needed release of suppressed anger might be accomplished at the same time. Either way, it was worth a quick hike through the castle.
The two of them continued down one corridor after another, moving from the large expansive spaces of the castle proper to the smaller more intimate hallways of the less used areas. Not a soul seemed to be anywhere around. Although Albus might not approve, Snape had already cancelled his final classes of the term. The students were leaving for Christmas break on Wednesday anyway. He had much more important things to spend his time doing right now than babysitting them through their final hours of captivity when all they could think about was how close they were to going on holiday, and all he could think about was how Minerva's life depended on him.
Finally, Irma turned down a short narrow passage that ended with a stout wooden door protected by a large gate of wrought iron. Fishing a bulky set of keys from a pocket, the librarian unlocked first the gate, swinging it aside impatiently, and then the door itself. The hinges squealed out their displeasure at being put back into service after so many years of neglect, and then finally, Snape and Pince peered into the round room beyond.
The walls were lined with bookshelves, but the tomes that occupied them were not exactly arranged in an orderly fashion. Books were piled everywhere. On the shelves, on the floor, even on the stout wooden table and matching chairs that sat in the middle of the chamber.
Dust and webbing, both occupied and empty, covered every possible surface. Meager light drifted down through the thick atmosphere from several small grime encrusted windows set high in the walls, and there was the panicked sound of scurrying feet as whatever had been chewing on the contents of the room tried to find a safer place to hide.
Snape brushed by Irma Pince and stepped inside. The chamber was permeated with the tantalizing smell of ancient, dusty parchment and smoldering Dark Magic. It fairly crackled in the air. How such a room as this had been allowed to sit undisturbed at Hogwarts for all these years without his knowledge astonished him. He was obviously losing his touch if, in all his nightly prowls over every inch of this place, he'd still managed to miss discovering that this was here.
His eager eyes caressed the crumbling tomes that covered every surface. The answer would be here, if it was anywhere; he was suddenly certain of that. The very real question was…would they be able to find it in time? Books such as these, so carefully warded and bespelled, didn't give up their secrets easily or quickly, but just thinking about all the arcane knowledge that sat here, ripe for the taking, stirred his blood in anticipation. He'd really have to be careful and not allow himself to get distracted from his task by all the fascinating possibilities that would be laying themselves before him and beckoning him to follow.
Irma stepped up next to him and touched his arm. "Well, what do you think? Is it worth looking through these?"
Snape turned and gazed down at her in silence for a moment before answering with a slow smile. "Oh, yes…without a doubt."
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Dumbledore stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his dearest friend, pulling her close against his chest and holding her tightly. He could feel her tremble slightly as she raised her arms and embraced him back.
"Standing up and admitting to having committed a crime would indeed be the honorable thing to do…if you were guilty. But confessing falsely is definitely not honorable," he stated softly.
Minerva pulled back a bit and looked up into his serious face, but he continued to speak before she could object.
"I do understand that it seems hopeless at the moment, Minerva. I know that we don't seem to have much of a case, and that the evidence against you is very strong. However, that doesn't mean that it's accurate. Although the evidence seems to have placed a strong doubt in your mind as to your guilt, if you dig down deeply into your heart, you have to know, as I do, that you're simply not capable of murdering anyone. It's not something you would ever do. So no matter how bad things look, there is an explanation out there, and we have to find it."
"I do want to believe that. I never would have thought myself capable of murder, but as hard as I've tried, I simply cannot come up with any other explanation. And if such an explanation exists, we've run out of time to find it," she stated simply.
"There are too many small things that don't add up. Why is the pensieve silent? The only explanation that makes sense is that it's silent because someone doesn't want anyone to hear what you and Mr. Grant actually said to each other in those stables all those years ago. This is the same reason that your remaining memories were obliviated. To prevent you from knowing what actually happened and revealing it in your defense. That means it's important."
Minerva nodded. "Yes, all that makes sense, but it still doesn't get us any further along towards knowing what did happen. Then there's still the matter of my wand, which proves that the spells cast were exactly what everyone thinks they are."
"There must be an explanation for that as well."
Pulling out of his arms, Minerva turned and paced across her small cell before turning back with an expression of bewilderment on her tired face. "But what could that explanation be?" she asked without any real hope of answer.
Dumbledore hesitated. If he told her of Severus' suspicions, it would give her an explanation, and perhaps a hope to cling to, but if the frantically searching wizard couldn't find the spell in time then the weight of having failed her would fall on his head.
Giving Minerva false hope and then the knowledge that Severus had not been able to help her when she needed him most would crush her. It would be bad enough for Severus if he didn't manage to find the spell in time. He'd blame himself forever for her death. There was no need to make things worse by letting Minerva know that Severus might hold the key to saving her life. Just in case, he failed.
Dumbledore drew himself up impressively and smiled an encouraging smile. "Minerva, you are innocent of this crime. There is no evidence that the court can present that cannot be doubted because nothing is irrefutable. We can show that the timing of the discovery of this evidence is highly suspicious, and that the person who discovered it had much to gain personally by presenting it to the court. We can show that the evidence itself most likely has been tampered with, and we can prove that your mind has been tampered with as well. So, please, do not give in to fear. We have an excellent chance of winning this case and forcing the court to admit that it simply doesn't know what really happened to Henry Grant, if you'll fight beside me. Will you?" He held out his hand.
She stared at it for a long moment, then years and years of standing and fighting even when the odds were against her clicked into gear once more, and she straightened her spine and crossed the room again to clasp his hand firmly in hers.
"All right, Albus. I won't give up. I'll fight with you until the very end…whatever that turns out to be."
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Next Chapter: Minerva's trial begins. (I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has given me feedback on this story. I have appreciated hearing from all of you and have been very pleased that you could find a SS/MM story to be interesting enough to keep you reading. Thank you. I have still found it impossible to use the preview/edit feature.)
