WARNING: Chapters 40-46 contain things that could cause severe emotional upset. Also, Chapters 41-43, and Chapter 46, contain memories of child abuse. Please be cautious if you think this may be triggering for you.
Other than that, here we go, as the trial begins.
Chapter Forty: Descent and DissentHarry woke on the morning of November sixteenth to a cold slap on his cheek.
He blinked, half-expecting that Draco had opened the curtains and used a cold washcloth to hit him. Then he realized that the creature sitting on the pillow beside his face and staring at him was not Fawkes, though they were the same size and looked superficially similar, and sat up quickly.
The red-eyed bird opened its fanged jaws and laughed at him. It was just drawing back one talon, with which it'd stitched another pattern of icy cuts on Harry's right cheek. Harry lifted his fingers to them, and found them already freezing over. The bird moved its lizard-like tail as if that pleased it.
No one can see me but you, but everyone can see them. They are a mark. I feel like marking you. You acknowledge me too little.
Harry stared at the bird instead of attacking. If it had come through the wards on Hogwarts and the charms he used to guard his bed every night, then he doubted there was much he could do to hurt it. Besides, now he felt some sense of familiarity from the vicious, laughing voice.
It felt like his magic had, the summer after second year when it was just free from the phoenix web and surreptitiously trying to murder his parents—just as angry, and just as vicious.
"What are you?" he whispered. "Are you the magic of a powerful wizard trapped somewhere?"
The bird flexed its clawed wings and stalked towards him. Harry kept staring at it, watching it come, but called up his wandless magic when it got too close. The bird didn't seem frightened. It just paused, its head cocked to one side in a listening attitude. Then it hissed and folded its wings. If I must be tied to someone else, it said, seeming to drop the words into his mind, I suppose you are not the worst choice. At least you are powerful. Then it uttered another hiss, a mocking one, as though the idea amused it terribly.
"Tied?" Harry thought of his bond with Fawkes, but even he could not imagine that this thing was anything like a phoenix, accustomed as he was by now to trying to see beyond the surfaces of dangerous magical creatures. "What do you mean? Are you actually bonded to me, then?"
The bird-creature lashed its tail, which coiled around Harry's wrist with a sting like frostbite. Harry shook his hand free, and all the while, the thing's scarlet eyes considered him.
I am tied, said the creature at last. Against my will, since you forget about me so often. But things will fall out as they will. It may be that the tie will be severed at last, and I need not worry about you. Or it may be that I will find my home with you. It hissed again, and the teeth snapped an inch short of Harry's face; he'd jerked his head back just in time to prevent it taking an ear. A poor home that would be, and yet I would not mind it when the time came.
"You're making no sense," Harry told it, trying to keep his voice low. He wasn't sure if the soothing tone he'd used with magical creatures would work on one that seemed to be made of magic, but he might as well try it. "I can help you, if you'll just tell me what you mean."
You can't help me. You're as much a victim of this tie as I am, as he is, as all of us are. The bird-creature extended its wings and leaped up, hovering. We must wait for things to fall. Perhaps you will be pierced. I would like that.
It swooped at Harry, who ducked. When he looked up again, the creature had faded from sight entirely, just as it had when he met it in the sky above the Quidditch Pitch. At least he had some idea of why, now. If the creature was made of pure magic, then it could vanish at will. The body it wore was only a temporary construct, anyway, like the box that had imprisoned Harry's emotions in second year.
But when he tried to imagine why the creature would choose to appear as a bird, or who might have sent it, he wound up blank. He was bound to so many different people with so many different kinds of vows and alliance promises. It could be that one of his allies secretly resented him, or there might be someone bound alive and suffering whom Harry wasn't even aware of. The sentient nature of the magic would argue that, at least. Harry's own magic had gained intelligence only when it was tamped down by the phoenix web and prevented from having its freedom; it had become part of him when it was fully, and finally, freed.
The only thing Harry could find to be thankful for in all this was that he had seen the bird before he bound Henrietta, so he knew it couldn't be her.
He touched the icy scabs on his cheek and closed his eyes, concentrating. He had studied a little more medical magic since the Woodhouse battle and the Blood Whip Curse, especially these last few days, when any distraction from the impending—thing—was welcome. He murmured the word "Integro," and felt the ice melt, as it had when Madam Pomfrey had healed the first set of cuts. Harry had the feeling she hadn't accepted his words about running into a tree as he flew too low on his broom, but at least these would just look like normal scabs now. In time, they would fade, and, if they followed the example of the first set of cuts, not leave scars behind.
"Harry? Are you all right?"
Does Draco have a set of senses attuned to my use of healing magic? Harry rolled his eyes as the curtains got yanked back. "Odd cut, but other than that, fine," he said dismissively, and climbed out of bed.
Draco followed him to the loo in silence. Harry ignored him, even though he knew that Draco had, like Harry, been excused attending his classes today so that he could go to the trial.
The trial.
Harry shivered, and tried to ignore the nervous flutter in his stomach. Today might be the only day of the trial, or it might cover several. It would depend on how many witnesses the prosecution called—though Harry wanted to think otherwise, he could not pretend to himself that the defense would be able to call many—what the Wizengamot had already seen, who believed what, and on other factors that Harry could not estimate or predict.
He did know that he would testify first, for neither prosecution nor defense, and that his information, though in theory purely factual, would also carry an emotional tone. That emotional tone might play a large part in condemning or saving his parents.
Harry felt his breath speed up. He ducked under the shower and let a flood of cold water sluice the back of his neck to try and calm himself down.
So you carry the responsibility for their lives in your hand. You've done that before, as when you planned the Woodhouse attack. You can do it now. If their future happiness is a small glass ball that must not be shattered, then you'll just have to make sure that you don't shatter it.
And that brought him into the realm of things he could control, estimate, and predict. Harry used his magic to run down to the roots of his hair while he considered his weapons.
Occlumency, of course. Slide all the inconvenient emotions into the pools, and leave the ones that might spare their lives near the top. If the Wizengamot sees only that you feel sorrow about their arrest and indifference to the events of your childhood, then you might well succeed in convincing them that the abuse wasn't that bad. How could it be, if it didn't leave that much of a mark?
Manipulation. You won't be testifying under Veritaserum. You can manipulate and lead the questions, respond in such a way that they ask you things you want to answer and not things you don't.
Sympathy and forgiveness. Repeat those as often as you can. Make them the theme of your arguments. And draw the Wizengamot's sympathy in the direction you want it to flow.
Harry had promised that he would not use his magic to force the issue, that he would not compel or coerce anyone to believe him. And he wouldn't. That was still true. But he had said nothing about testifying the way that Snape and Draco wanted him to, either. This was a battle, and he could not be certain of winning.
But he would struggle with all the weapons at his disposal. And this was a battle he intended to win, for all the good that would do him. Freedom for his parents might be a distant goal, but life need not be, even if it was a life spent in Tullianum Prison.
As they went down to breakfast, Harry opened his Occlumency pools and began sliding the inconvenient emotions in.
First went all the tangled mess of his contradictory hatred and love, of course. He would leave only such gentle, fond affection near the surface as might convince the Wizengamot that, yes, he cared a bit for his parents. They wouldn't understand if they saw the violence of his love. After all, as Harry could now parrot from numerous books on the subject, abused children weren't supposed to love their parents.
Well, he did. But they wouldn't see that. So away it went, and Harry summoned up an emotion as gentle and calm and pure as milk, and distributed it in a floating river over the surface of his mind.
Then he submerged the grief. He could not weep about the past during the trial. He would see the past, face it, but he could not weep over it. And he would see his parents, and he could not crack when he faced them, either. He drowned his sorrow deep, and attached stones to it so it couldn't rise again without a great deal of effort on his part.
He was trying to decide how much of his desire to see his parents free he should leave above the surface when Pansy sat down next to him and whispered, "Harry?"
Harry turned and looked at her, startled that she'd decided to address him by his first name, or indeed at all. Save when she wanted him to speak for her during classes, she'd been growing more and more silent the past few weeks, and sometimes used sign language before any words, as if she were forgetting how to speak aloud. He could see her eyes now, hazel like her mother's, staring at him intently from the depths of her hood.
"Yes?" he asked.
Pansy bit her lip, then said, "I wanted to tell you that I understand, now. I saw the vision of my own death on Halloween." She gave a deep shudder, and then said, "I understand that my father didn't perish in some ill-advised attempt to save you. He knew exactly what he was doing. Mother told me that, but I didn't know it. So, if you were still worrying about that, please know that I forgive you."
Harry blinked, and did feel a small grief in him ease. He hadn't done a great deal of thinking lately about Pansy, but at least she wasn't giving him extra stress and strain to carry into the trial. He nodded. "Thank you."
Pansy nodded one more time, paused as if she would say something, then stood and glided from the Great Hall. Harry watched her, for a moment thoroughly distracted from his own preoccupations. She's been carrying the knowledge of her own death for two weeks? And others' deaths, too? From what little Harry knew of necromancy, Halloween was the usual night for the initiation of the deeper sacrifices, and Walpurgis the night when a necromancer would complete all of them and finish his or her training. Harry didn't think Pansy could finish her training by the next Walpurgis, but she'd certainly gone further than he thought.
"Harry."
Harry jumped, and looked sideways to meet Draco's eyes. That was a mistake, and he knew it almost the moment he looked, but then he found himself unable to turn away. Draco gently slid a bowl of porridge in front of him.
"You weren't eating," he whispered.
Harry shrugged free of his strange preoccupation and picked up his spoon. "Pansy had to tell me something," he murmured.
Draco just nodded. Then he said, "I'll be right there for you, Harry, you know, if you need to lean on someone." He paused suggestively. "Or if you want to talk to me."
Harry said nothing. It was true that he hadn't mentioned the trial for the past few days, and snapped at Draco to stop every time he'd tried to bring the topic up. It was also true that he wasn't sorry for that. He'd had to dance a delicate dance. He couldn't lose control, but, on the other hand, if he'd started sinking his emotions into the Occlumency pools too early, then Draco or Snape would have noticed something was wrong and pressed more strongly.
He turned his eyes back to the porridge and started again on the emotional immersion. When he went into the courtroom, he would be calm. He was not a Lord, and he didn't intend to interfere in Scrimgeour's Ministry. He could lift his hand and just command his parents' chains to fly off, but he wouldn't. He would just try as hard as he could to triumph.
"Are you ready?"
Narcissa glanced up from her dressing table and smiled at him in the mirror as she fastened her earrings into place. "Really, Lucius. Intruding into a pureblood woman's bedroom before she finishes putting on her jewelry, and without even an endearment! Have you no manners at all?"
Lucius lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching his wife. Narcissa's long, pale fingers moved swiftly over the earrings, simple golden ornaments that wouldn't look like anything impressive to a quick glance. A more than quick glance would reveal them as scarab beetles. They would come alive at a command from Narcissa, animating to attack the genitals of an opponent.
Her blonde hair was wound up on her head today, revealing a long white neck that would probably distract attention from the golden torque coiled at her throat. That torque was a Black artifact, a snake with its tail in its mouth. It could also come to life at a quiet word, and stretch its jaws wide enough to eat someone alive.
Her dress shimmered red with small golden threads tucked here and there. Lucius wondered how many in the courtroom would recognize it as a battle-gown, not magical in and of itself, but declaring Narcissa's solemn intent to start a blood-feud with the Wizengamot members if justice didn't fall out and the Potter parents were freed.
"Going armed, my dear?" he asked.
"Yes." Narcissa's eyes met his in the mirror, and there was no humor at all in them. "You know why."
Lucius nodded, and entered, sliding his arms around her waist. Narcissa leaned back against him as she slipped her wand down her sleeve, then turned and gave him a fierce, hungry kiss that made Lucius wish they didn't have a trial to attend.
He looked at himself in the mirror, studying the edges of his face. It remained the perfect, cool mask he needed, though. He nodded. "We should leave," he said, and, stepping back, offered his wife his arm.
Uncharacteristically, she didn't take it. She stared into his eyes instead, and said, "How badly do you think it will turn out?"
Lucius sighed. Narcissa spoke of more than one thing. "The trial should go as well as can be expected," he murmured. The Daily Prophet had been carrying reports of Albus Dumbledore's mind-compelling spell for the past two weeks, and most wizards and witches Lucius knew were shocked and angry, even if they hadn't paid much attention to the trial before. And there was the endless evidence on the side of the prosecution. "About the other matter—"
"I think we should tell Harry," Narcissa interrupted.
Lucius frowned. "Not yet, Narcissa. The name of Yaxley will mean little to him until he meets her in battle. And you know the reason we held off. Our Potter will have little chance of concentrating on anything else with the trial proceeding. When it is done, and his parents safely gone, either in Tullianum or to death, then we can tell him, and warn him about her."
Narcissa bit her lip, but, at last, yielded to his advice as she had for the past week, and took his arm. Lucius guided her towards the door of the Manor. They would be Apparating to London once they were past the outer wards, then approaching the Ministry on foot. The recent Death Eater activity had the Department of Magical Law Enforcement paranoid about anyone coming closer than that by Apparition, not that Lucius could blame them.
As they walked, his mind ran grimly on news he'd never thought to hear. It was true that, during the First War, the Dark Lord had had a Yaxley Death Eater. But that one hadn't gone to Azkaban, and Lucius had assumed, at most, that he would rejoin Voldemort when the Dark Lord arose again. One more Death Eater wand was not much of a concern.
Instead of simply torturing Yaxley for not showing him loyalty during the years he was gone, however, Voldemort had done something worse: called in a debt of honor to the entire family. There was no Dark pureblood family more obsessed with honor than Yaxley. They'd put themselves at Voldemort's service.
And he'd chosen to take Indigena Yaxley, the Thorn Bitch, into his service.
That was bad. It was very bad. Indigena was what Bellatrix Lestrange might have been if she were sane and ten times more dangerous.
Lucius knew that he had to tell their Potter the Thorn Bitch was a Death Eater, but it would only put more pressure on him now. Let it lie, until the trial is done.
He didn't want to acknowledge how close he thought Harry was to breaking.
Augustus Starrise added the final bell, and stepped away from his mirror with a nod that made the bells sway in his hair. There. Now he looked like a war wizard capable of killing someone.
Not a bad entrance to his first political activity in more than a year, if he did say so himself.
He whirled away from the mirror, hearing the bells ring softly around him, and picked up his wand and his staff, which was carved with white oak and banded with gold. It pulsed gently in his hand as he spun it. Augustus felt a smile curve his lips as he ran his fingers over the end of the staff. He knew it was a wistful, too-gentle smile, but that was all right. There was no one in the bedroom to see.
Alba had helped him add the final band of gold to the staff, a few days before the Death Eaters took her. Her loving presence, and some of her magic, lingered in it still. Augustus closed his eyes, and imagined his twin sister standing before him, as tall as death and twice as lovely.
"Perhaps soon, Alba," he whispered, "you'll have your justice. I know it must pain you, looking down on the world, seeing your murderers go unpunished and one of your sons run wild. But I think this plan should work."
A knock sounded on the door. Augustus smoothed his face stern, and then opened it. It was Pharos, of course, his nephew and heir, Alba's younger boy, bowing nervously to his uncle.
"It's time to go?" he murmured. Augustus nodded in approval. Though Pharos still had trouble controlling his expression—and he was such an openhearted, honest young man, that was no surprise—his voice was cool and calm.
"It is," said Augustus, and swept towards the Portkey room of his house. The portraits on the walls, showing past Starrises in dignified stances, nodded and sometimes bowed to him, depending on how much reverence they felt for the current head of the family. The windows blazed, open on the sunlight of a perfectly beautiful fall day. Augustus was glad the Potters' trial was occurring after October, so that he might attend it without fear of the Sunset Accords lopping off one of his limbs.
He could admit it: he'd felt chagrin last year when Scrimgeour had forced him out of the Ministry's arena, and again when Fudge was deposed, and again when he realized how Tybalt had run to Potter's side. But time had sleeted past him and mellowed his opposition, and then had come the news of Potter's abuse, and then Augustus had realized what an opportunity he had.
Several things had changed his mind on allying with the Potter boy. The first was the fact that he was powerful, and not completely lost to Dark magic. If he were Dark, Tybalt wouldn't have allied with him. Merlin knew the boy had gone wrong, but not that far wrong. He was no Death Eater, nor any other species of cringing follower to crouch at a Dark Lord's feet. So Potter must have some spark of Light in him, and Augustus might encourage that to grow if he did join the alliance.
The second was the news of the abuse. Augustus's hand tightened on the staff as he thought about it. That was sickening, the news of what the Potters had done to their own son. And James Potter came from a Light family, too. Augustus was hoping the Ministry would follow the ancient custom of allowing the whole crowd at the trial to spit on the condemned—for he had no doubt that James Potter would be condemned, as he deserved to be. Surely someone had spoken to Scrimgeour about that already, reminded him of the importance of tradition?
The third thing was the realization of just how many former Death Eaters Potter had gathered around him. Augustus loathed the thought of working beside them, but not so much the thought of fighting beside them.
And there was always the chance that he might find Alba's murderers among them, or learn information that would lead him to the guilty parties among those Death Eaters who'd stayed Death Eaters.
Augustus planned to make formal submission to Potter and offer him the assistance of the Starrise family coffers the moment the trial was done.
He did hope he would get to spit on James Potter first, though.
"Are you all right?"
Hawthorn started and turned around. Keen though her ears had been since Greyback had bitten her, Lupin had been a werewolf longer, and could still move with a silence that baffled all her attempts to hear him. "Fine," she said shortly.
Lupin looked at her with calm amber eyes. "You shouldn't try to lie to a packmate," he said quietly.
Hawthorn turned to face the wall again and didn't respond. She was already regretting her decision to accept Lupin's invitation and Portkey in to his quarters today before the trial began. It was too small a room to hold two werewolves, one of whom was upset.
"Harry will not hate you for testifying against his parents," Lupin told her back. "You do realize that, don't you?"
"And why shouldn't he?" Grateful, in a way, not to have to hide her emotions any longer, Hawthorn swung around and showed him her teeth, wishing she could lay her ears flat to her head. Wolfish gestures of anger were just so much more satisfying, somehow. "I know all about the memories, and I have to do it, but you know as well as I do that he wants his parents to go free."
Lupin's eyes shifted more towards amber. Hawthorn knew from his scent that he wasn't angry at her, though.
"There was a time when I would have agreed with him," said Lupin softly. "Before I knew about—all this. Now, I wish they would let James and Lily out in a wooded park where our pack might hunt them."
A shocked laugh escaped Hawthorn's lips before she could stop it. Then she rubbed her hand over her face. "Thank you," she said.
Lupin took a step nearer and rubbed his chin against her cheek. "Pack should cheer each other up," he said. "I wish we could go to Claudia right now, but that would only raise her cousin's suspicions. Perhaps we can get one of her other cousins to owl her for us, and arrange a meeting where we might run together?"
"Perhaps," said Hawthorn. She knew the suspicious Griffinsnest family, though, and didn't think it would work. Claudia had managed to keep her lycanthropy a secret from everyone but her parents, who'd been present when she was bitten and decided to support her. Meeting with at least one known and obvious werewolf—Lupin's signs were more obvious than others', if you knew what you were looking for, since he'd been bitten so young—would expose her irreversibly to her relatives.
Hawthorn would have thought the precautious acceptable, last year. This one, she felt more and more anger towards the wizards and witches who treated werewolves like beasts, even though she had been one of them until her first full moon.
The feelings combined and melded with her more personal worries over Harry. If he broke during the trial, then Hawthorn could only imagine how long it might take him to recover, and what his enemies would do in the meanwhile. She'd heard rumblings of factions in the Ministry getting ready to push for tougher anti-werewolf laws.
"We'll survive this," Lupin whispered into her ear.
Hawthorn almost jumped again, but the pleasant relaxation she felt around anyone else of her pack prevented it. She didn't understand this change in attitude, either. Normally, anything that gratified her wolf was something she hated, and vice versa. But the warmth and confidence she felt with Lupin, Delilah and Claudia made her feel like more than herself, more even than a divided soul, large and eager and ready to take on the world. And with Lupin's help they were starting to heal, finally, the unexpected hole that Fergus's death had left in their world.
"We'll survive this," said Lupin. "And he will. And he may even free us, be our vates, too, who knows?" He lifted his arms and tucked them around her shoulders.
Hawthorn leaned into the embrace, and nodded, and tried not to think of the look she'd seen on Harry's face that morning when she observed him from behind a glamour in the Great Hall.
Harry dropped out of Apparition and glanced around once. He'd come with Draco, Snape, Regulus, and Peter to a designated Apparition point within a half mile of the Ministry, in a London alley most Muggles didn't pay much attention to. They didn't have far to walk.
Draco clung close to Harry's side as they stepped into the open, in the perfect position for Harry to lean on him if he needed to. Harry rolled his eyes. He was fine, with his Occlumency pools burying his emotions. The stares Snape and Regulus kept giving him were overkill. Peter, luckily, seemed to be keeping his eyes to himself.
Harry managed to relax a bit as they made their way to the deserted telephone box that would let them into the Ministry. There was no reason to be nervous. Only a few Muggles were around, and a simple Distraction Charm made each of them consider the wizards as nothing important.
They passed a second alley, and then Harry caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, at the same moment as the Many snake coiled around his throat, whom he hadn't been able to leave behind this time, uttered a sharp hiss.
Harry swung around, in time to see a vaguely familiar man step out of the alley and aim his wand straight at Draco.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Harry heard Mulciber's voice from last year drumming in his head. …no shield, no barrier can block the Killing Curse…
Harry turned sideways, wrapped his arms around Draco's waist, and bore him, spinning, to the ground. The Killing Curse sped over both their heads and chipped a bit of stone from a building. Harry heard a few Muggles gasp, but the Distraction Charm still seemed to be working.
That meant, though, that the attacker could go after the Muggles, and they wouldn't do anything to defend themselves.
Harry rolled away from Draco, though Draco was trying to cling to him, and rose hastily to his feet. Now he did recognize the man stalking towards him with a mad look in his eyes. It was Kingsley Shacklebolt, one of the Aurors who had questioned Harry when he'd taken Snape as his guardian in third year, and the first Auror to be sacked when Scrimgeour took office.
His eyes held a fanatic's fire, and Harry had no doubt that this desperate strike had come about because of his loyalty to Dumbledore.
Harry drew in a deep breath. "It's all right, Kingsley," he said, keeping his voice low and soothing, edging in front of Draco. "This trial is for my parents, not the Headmaster. If you could just—"
Kingsley swung his wand to orient on Snape. Harry could see the consequences that would follow like a catch of the Snitch in his mind's eye. Either Snape would die, or he himself would use the Killing Curse, and be lucky if he wasn't sent to Tullianum for wielding an Unforgivable.
Harry held out his hand. "Accio Kingsley's wand!"
The wand sped towards him, luckily before Kingsley could fire a Killing Curse. Harry had just started to breathe a sigh of relief when he saw Kingsley drawing another wand, and felt the deadness of the one in his hand.
This one was a blank wand, specially made for the task of killing. Kingsley still held his own.
Harry flung the blank wand down, and then Kingsley was pointing his own wand straight at him.
"Avada Kedavra," he said softly, and the blast of green fire that couldn't be stopped or turned aside came at Harry.
Harry rolled under it. He had to hope that Draco hadn't been just behind him, or Peter. He could see Regulus at Snape's shoulder, his own wand drawn, but he didn't know where the other two were.
No one cried out, but that didn't mean anything. The Killing Curse could strike too fast to leave someone time for a death scream. Harry didn't trust his own senses until he scrambled to his feet and turned, seeing no body behind him.
He faced Kingsley again as Snape cast a Blasting Curse. It bounced neatly off Kingsley's cloak. Harry felt his own face tighten. Kingsley's clothes were strengthened with a powerful Shield Charm, then.
He had to do something before one of the people he loved died or decided to use the Killing Curse. He was not losing Regulus, Peter, or Snape to Tullianum, damnit! He was close enough to that with his own parents.
He saw a small flash of movement crossing the ground between him and Kingsley, and then the former Auror shrieked and kicked. Harry saw a gray rat clinging fiercely to his ankle, biting for all he was worth. Peter had done that to Dumbledore once, too, to save Harry from his anger.
It gave Harry time to decide what to do. The Muggles were staring at them, now, the ones who hadn't fled screaming. The Ministry would undoubtedly be here in a moment—this close, wards could sense use of the Unforgivables—but Harry couldn't depend on them being in time to save everyone.
And now Kingsley was aiming his wand at Peter, the distance so close that Harry knew he wouldn't be able to put anything in between, as if anything would stop the Killing Curse but another body.
The thought passed fleetingly across his mind and was gone. No. He'd survived the green fire from Voldemort, but that was a unique occurrence that wouldn't happen again.
He didn't think he could use Legilimency on Kingsley without eye contact, and the Shield Charm's strength was unknown, and Harry didn't want to use Dark Arts this close to the Ministry.
That left Light spells that would take Kingsley out.
"Incito cordiem," he murmured.
The spell reached into Kingsley's chest, past the cloak, like the spells that Rosier had used on Harry which burned his blood or his heart. This was an incantation that Harry had heard of before, but never cast. He was hoping desperately that it would work.
It seemed to. He could feel Kingsley's heartbeat in his ears beside his own, and it began to quicken as he listened, pumping blood more and more frantically, going faster and faster.
Kingsley's wand fell from his hand. Peter scampered to safety. Kingsley knelt, shuddering, arms wrapped around himself, and Harry heard the heart pick up speed.
He knew this spell could kill someone. Force the heart to beat fast enough, and it would burst. Harry didn't want that to happen. He wanted to hand Kingsley over to the Aurors he could hear Apparating in.
"Finite Incantatem," he said, and then watched as Kingsley scurried for his wand again. This time, though, an Auror bound his hands, which swung free of the cloak, with a silvery rope, and others stepped in to remove the cloak and then capture him in a Body-Bind. Harry let out a long sigh and turned to check on the others.
Peter was staying a rat for the moment, obviously unwilling to transform back in front of the Aurors. Harry had doubts, then, that the Ministry's questioning had actually revealed Peter as an unregistered Animagus. Regulus and Snape were staring at Kingsley with similarly frozen expressions that said he should be glad he was in Ministry custody. Draco was hurrying up to Harry.
"Are you all right?" he whispered, wrapping him in a tight hug.
"Of course," said Harry with a murmur, hugging him back, though he kept his eyes on Kingsley.
The attack had had an odd effect on him. Of course he'd been horribly afraid that the Killing Curse would hit someone before he could stop Kingsley, and he'd been worried about what spell he would use, but it was as though this had forced him past the last stresses and strains dangling in his mind, and forced him to ignore whatever of his own anger and hatred remained outside the Occlumency pools.
It's best for everyone concerned when no one has to die. And when someone attacks like this, because of misguided loyalty, it's more pitiful than anything else. The same thing happened to my parents. They're ultimately pathetic.
If I can stop Kingsley like this, shouldn't I be able to spare my parents death? It shouldn't be that hard, and this first part of the trial all depends on me. Harry felt himself relax further. Yes, I can do this.
"Mr. Potter?" Harry glanced up, and saw an Auror he didn't know standing over him, frowning. "My name is Auror Wilmot. I'll be escorting you the rest of the way to the Ministry."
Harry nodded, and turned to walk in the Auror's custody, trusting the rest of them, or other Ministry people, to take care of Kingsley and the Muggles. His mind was still clear, as though he'd taken a great gulp of fresh air.
I can do this. I don't know what I was worried about. Let's go. He felt a genuine smile widening across his face. Even seeing my parents shouldn't be hard when I'm feeling this good.