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 Two: Peering Beneath the Surface

As she closed yet another book and stood to place it with the other rejected volumes, Irma Pince gave her companion a sideways glance and timidly asked a question that had been preying on her mind for some time. "Severus, what sort of defense can Albus put forth for Minerva without this spell? Is there any evidence at all in her favor?"

Snape raised his eyes from the book he was examining and blinked to bring them into focus on the woman standing before him. With a sigh, he answered reluctantly, "The evidence that Albus can present is slight. He can, of course, be sure that Minerva's stellar reputation as a pillar of the community is spelled out for all to see, but that really proves nothing one way or the other. Other than that, all he can really do is try to cast doubt on the evidence that the prosecution puts forth. He can point out that the pensieve that seems to show Minerva committing this crime has apparently been tampered with, for instance."

An uneasy frown crossed his face, and he turned back to the book on the table in front of him. "Of course, without being able to explain just why it was tampered with or who did the tampering, that may not mean much. The visual evidence is so strong that simply not hearing the words of the spell probably won't seem that important to most people unless we can show them exactly why it matters."

Irma nodded and placing her book on the shelf that held a growing number of unhelpful volumes, she returned to her place at the table to take up the searching of another book. Unless they were successful at finding that spell, any explanation that was presented would be nothing but another theory, and so not of very much use.

"Isn't there anything else that Albus can mention? Anything at all?" she pleaded desperately.

Snape's hands tightened, his fingers digging into the worn dragonhide binding of the slim book in his grasp. "That fool Standish has already made inquiries into obtaining Minerva's estate if she is found guilty and executed. That fact certainly should raise some question as to his motive for coming forth with this evidence against her, and I'm certain that Albus will raise the point, if possible. It was rather careless of Standish not to wait until the trial was over, but the man is obviously becoming a bit desperate, and that could certainly work in Minerva's favor."

"Oh, I hope so," exclaimed Irma fervently. "Why would he be that desperate for money? Do you know? Does he have a large number of creditors after him?"

Snape's eyes gleamed and a small tic near his left temple began to jump rhythmically. He knew exactly why Ian Standish was so desperate for money, but he couldn't simply tell Pince the truth, no matter how tempting it was. She was completely ignorant of the existence of the Order of the Phoenix, and certainly had no idea that he or Standish had any connection to the Dark Lord, and it was important for him, at least, that she never find out.

"As a matter of fact, yes. He is in debt to a variety of creditors. I imagine that they have been making his life very difficult for some time. Minerva's money would go a long way towards getting them off his back."

Irma was appalled. "How horrid! How could anyone be so selfish and callous that they'd allow the death of an innocent person simply so they could obtain their money. Especially someone whom they were once married to. Someone they once, at least, pretended to care for. Ian Standish is a despicable man."

"Oh, yes, he is," murmured Snape in a soft, icy tone. "And no matter how this turns out, he'll pay for what he's done. I will promise you that."

Irma shivered at the cold certainty in Snape's voice. Suddenly, she found that she had absolutely no doubt that Ian Standish was living on borrowed time, and with a shock, she realized that that realization actually pleased her. With trembling hands and an unsettled heart, she turned back to her task and reached for the next book in her pile.

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"Did you love Minerva McGonagall when you married her, Mr. Standish?"

Albus Dumbledore rose to his feet and slowly approached the witness in his chair. Standish adjusted his position in the seat, and the glance that he now directed towards this new questioner was a wary one.

"Well, ours was an arranged marriage, as I believe I already mentioned. Our fathers had been good friends for many years. The families had been neighbors of long standing, and they had dearly wanted a uniting of our two bordering estates. However, I certainly didn't object. Minerva was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen. I'd been quite taken with her when I was growing up. She was intelligent, magically powerful, and she had an impeccable lineage besides. What more could I have asked for? I felt quite fortunate, and I certainly fell in love with her." Ian directed a smile towards the woman watching quietly from the defense table and was slightly surprised and disconcerted when she didn't look away but instead simply narrowed her eyes and stared defiantly back at him.

Dumbledore nodded solemnly and moved closer, and Standish returned his attention to him.

"Yes, an impeccable lineage indeed, with an impeccable inheritance as well," Dumbledore continued. "The McGonagall estate, which borders your own, as you said, is quite vast and very rich. Much more substantial and valuable than your own, I believe. A real prize."

"Not as much as the woman herself." Standish countered with a smile.

Dumbledore acknowledged that statement with a smile of his own. "Well, I would certainly agree with that statement, but I'm afraid that I find myself a bit skeptical of you making that claim. Especially in light of your recent attempts to acquire Minerva's estate for yourself in the event that you manage to get her convicted and executed for this crime that you uncovered."

Standish shifted uneasily in his seat to an accompanying chorus of excited mutterings from the watching crowd. "Don't be ridiculous," he protested.

"Am I being ridiculous? Somehow, I don't think so. I can name at least three people, all highly placed within the Ministry, who have been approached by you in the last three days, and who are all willing to testify to your interest in claiming Minerva's estate should she be convicted. Shall I do so, Mr. Standish? Do you deny making these inquiries?"

Standish's eyes shifted nervously away from his interrogator, and he licked his dry lips before answering. "No, I deny nothing. I did raise the question casually with a few of my close friends, yes, but it was simple curiosity, nothing more than that. Certainly there was no sinister hidden motive on my part. As you say, her estate borders my own. It would naturally be of interest to me to know what might happen to it if things go against Minerva in this trial. That's all there is to it."

"Yes, of great interest, indeed. Do you really expect this court to believe that there is nothing odd or suspicious in the fact that after having provided all the evidence that exists to accuse Minerva McGonagall of this crime, you then manage to profit handsomely from her conviction?" Disbelief was obvious in Dumbledore's scathing tone.

Standish shrugged. "I can't control what you might find suspicious, Dumbledore. You and Minerva would obviously see things differently than I might." The implication in his words was that he wasn't the only one with a possible a self-serving agenda.

The haughty man continued, "What happens to her estate is of interest to me. I certainly won't deny that, but I didn't create the evidence that accuses Minerva of this crime. All I did was find it, and quite accidentally at that. Surely you aren't implying that I shouldn't have turned it in to the Ministry once I'd found such a thing hidden away in her room? It was my duty to hand it over to the authorities, regardless of how I might feel about Minerva."

"Yes, it was indeed your duty to do so, Mr. Standish," agreed Dumbledore readily. "So I do find myself curious as to why you didn't do it?"

"I don't understand what you mean? I did turn in the pensieve, and the wand." Standish waved his hand emphatically towards the evidence table. "There they sit for everyone to see."

"Yes, you did turn them in, but not right away. In fact, you waited a fairly substantial length of time before doing your duty, didn't you, Mr. Standish?" The Headmaster's eyes glinted coldly behind his spectacles.

"Uh…well, yes, there was a slight delay, I suppose. I don't know that I'd call it substantial. I was shocked to find such a thing in my house. What I saw in that pensieve seemed totally unbelievable. I simply wanted to give Minerva a chance to explain first, that's all," he admitted reluctantly.

Dumbledore nodded. "Of course. A perfectly understandable reaction. You've known Minerva since you were children. You couldn't believe that she'd ever murder someone, no matter what that stone bowl showed you."

"Exactly." Standish grasped eagerly at the explanation handed to him. "It seemed so out of character for her, that I figured that there had to be a logical explanation for it. So I asked her first, and then when she apparently didn't have any explanation to give me, I felt I had no choice but to turn it all over to the authorities and let them sort it out."

"So you simply took the pensieve to Hogwarts, showed it to Minerva, and then when she said that she knew nothing about it, you turned it in?" asked Dumbledore.

"Well, not exactly." Standish hedged. "I didn't want anything to happen to the pensieve itself. They can be rather delicate, especially when filled with very old memories, so I made a copy of the memories it contained and took that to Minerva."

"I see. So you took this copy to Minerva, asked her about it and then turned the original in."

"Yes," Standish nodded emphatically.

"Immediately?" asked Dumbledore.

"Uh…"

"In fact, weren't you at Hogwarts for more than a week before you even brought the subject up with Minerva?"

Once more Standish shifted uneasily in his chair. "Well, it wasn't an easy subject to raise with anyone after all. So I took a little time approaching Minerva. I figured that since Grant had been dead for all these years, and no one even knew about it, that a few more days wouldn't matter much. There was a second reason that I was at Hogwarts as well. I'd been given a job to do by your Board of Governors, if you'll recall. I had an obligation to do that job, too." Standish's eyes gleamed, reminding Dumbledore that he still hadn't turned in his damaging or possibly helpful report.

Dumbledore's gaze turned cold. "So your contention is that you used your job to evaluate the school for the Board of Governors as a means of getting to Minerva so that you could ask her about the pensieve. It took you over a week to work up the courage to do so, and then when you did, Minerva denied all knowledge of the pensieve so you felt it was your duty to turn it in to the Ministry, which you immediately did. Is this correct, Mr. Standish?"

"Essentially, yes. I know that I probably shouldn't have even asked Minerva about the pensieve, but it simply seemed like the right thing to do." Standish stared levelly back.

"Yes, trying to establish the truth about that pensieve would be the right thing to do, but I don't believe that that was what you decided to do. In fact, I think that your version of events leaves out a few salient points. Isn't it true, Mr. Standish, that despite your claims of duty, once you had shown the memory record to Minerva, you offered to suppress it if she'd simply sign over her estate to you immediately? Then, when she didn't seem inclined to do so, you gave her several days to change her mind…or else?"

The murmurs from the watching crowd rose to a loud excited pitch, and the enchanted quills hovering in the press section all began to scratch furiously at their companion rolls of parchment.

"Certainly not! That's a vicious lie." The color in Standish's face rose alarmingly as did the intensity of his voice.

"Really? We've already established your interest in the fate of her estate. So it didn't seem that far-fetched to me. How are your finances at the moment, Mr. Standish?"

"No worse than those of many others." Standish looked wary again.

"You aren't in debt? You don't have people looking to you for money that was promised to them?"

When Standish hesitated instead of answering immediately, Dumbledore whirled around and paced back to the table where Minerva sat quietly watching. There he picked up a scroll of parchment. He returned to Standish's side and handed the scroll to him.

"This is a list of people who all say that you owe them money, Mr. Standish, along with the amounts that you owe. It adds up to a considerable sum. Do you deny these debts?"

Standish perused the list slowly. Relief flitted through his eyes as there was obviously no entry for the very worst of his creditors, and as he lifted his gaze to meet that of his accuser, he had an uneasy feeling that both of them realized that there was one very important name that had been omitted from the list.

"I deny nothing," Standish stated flatly. "I do owe money, and I will pay it off. I've had debts before; everyone does from time to time. That certainly doesn't mean that I would stoop to blackmail to attain the money I need, and if Minerva says differently, then she's the one who's lying. But then, she is in a rather difficult spot at the moment, isn't she?"

Dumbledore clasped his hands behind his back. "Yes, conveniently for you…she is."

Before Standish could react to that, he continued, "Let me ask you about the contents of that pensive."

Standish sat back and composed himself once more. "All right."

"When I viewed the contents of the pensieve, I noticed two things that seemed quite odd to me. I wonder if you noticed them as well."

A blank but polite look was his only response.

"Have you ever used a pensieve yourself, Mr. Standish? Or at least viewed the contents of one before? They aren't the most common of magical devices," asked Dumbledore.

"True, they aren't. But as it happens, I have used one myself," Standish admitted readily. "I actually learned a fair amount about pensieves in my youth. I trained for a time as an obliviator. An intensive study of memory is part of the training, naturally, as is the proper way to make use of a pensieve. That's how I knew how to go about making a copy of the contents of this one."

Dumbledore smiled faintly. "Would you qualify yourself as an expert on the subject?"

"Not at all. Merely, an enlightened amateur." Standish returned the smile equally faintly.

"Then didn't it strike you as odd that this pensieve is entirely without sound? Any pensieve that I've ever used reproduces memories in their entirety, including a very exact duplication of all sounds incorporated in the memory."

A puzzled frown crossed Standish's brow, and he nodded in agreement. "Yes, I did notice that. However, the pensieve in question is rather old. Fifty years is a long time to hold a memory and keep it fresh. Most people don't store their memories in pensieves indefinitely, after all. I just assumed that the magical mechanism had failed somehow."

"I suppose that's possible. Have you ever known it to happen before?" asked Dumbledore.

"No, but then, I'm not an expert on pensieves. It didn't seem that important to me since the images that the pensieve contained remained quite clear and vivid."

"Ah, do they? You see that was the other odd thing I noticed. Have you ever seen anyone perform the killing curse, Mr. Standish?"

"Certainly not. It's an unforgivable curse." Standish did a very good job at looking both shocked and faintly insulted.

"Yes, it is, and for good reason. However, surely you know something about the spell. All school children are taught to recognize it. Although you didn't give it that name, from your description of what occurred in the pensieve, that is the spell that you are accusing Minerva McGonagall of having employed to kill Mr. Grant, are you not?"

"Well, yes. I suppose so," Standish admitted reluctantly.

"What color is the flash of magic that accompanies the Avada Kadavra?" Dumbledore stared hard at Standish.

Standish blinked and looked blank for a moment. "Uh…green…ish?"

"The killing curse produces a brilliant emerald green flash when it's cast. It's quite unmistakable and very vivid. No other curse produces a flash of light quite that exact color. Is that the color that Minerva's wand produced in the memories in the pensieve?"

"Uh…well, I'm not sure. I guess I didn't really notice. I think it was green." Standish's eyes flitted away from his questioner, and he began to nervously stroke his goatee with quivering fingers.

"Would you like to view it again, Mr. Standish? To refresh your memory?" A solicitous question.

Standish shook his head and sat straighter. "No. It was green. A green flash."

Dumbledore nodded in contemplation, and then he turned to the bench and addressed Madam Bones. "Madam Bones, you viewed the pensieve memories as well. Since we cannot show the contents to the audience, who are relying on us to enlighten them in this matter, I will ask you as well. Was the flash that was produced by Minerva's wand when Grant was attacked the brilliant emerald green of the Avada Kadavra?"

Amelia Bones frowned and looked speculatively down at Dumbledore. "As I recall, the flash was indeed green, but not the usual bright green that I'd expect. It was actually a rather washed out color, more a greenish blue than a true green."

"Yes," agreed Dumbledore. "That was my impression as well. The flash was a greenish blue. Not an emerald at all. How would you explain that?"

"I assumed that it had simply faded a bit with time," answered Bones.

"Did the other colors in the memories seem faded?" Dumbledore asked sharply.

Bones frowned once more. "No. Not really, but that still seemed the most logical explanation that I could come up with."

Dumbledore straightened up to his full impressive height and addressed the court in full. "Perhaps that is the explanation, but perhaps it is not. We don't seem to be able to be sure either way. So let me be clear about this. Here we find ourselves accusing Minerva McGonagall of the crime of murder, for which you have decided that the penalty shall be death, and to make the determination as to the veracity of this accusation, we are relying almost solely on a device whose reliability has been called into question not once but twice.

"The pensieve has no sound when it should, and yet no one has an adequate explanation as to why it doesn't. The flash of a well known spell is not the color it should be, yet once again, no one is concerned, nor has an adequate explanation for the discrepancy been put forth. The device is simply too old and has begun to fail. That seems to be what you're all saying, and I say that if indeed, this device no longer functions properly, then what business do we have letting what it contains determine whether or not a woman lives or dies?"

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Next Chapter: Dumbledore calls another witness…and Irma Pince makes a discovery.