Summary: When Harry made up his mind to do anything to destroy Voldemort, he had no idea it would include werewolves, elves, the Veil, the Chamber of Secrets, wandless magic, Azkaban, unimaginable power, his own army, and… a secret identity?
Disclaimer: I own nothing except for these few meager words.
Harry then started planning how he was going to get to London. He had twenty-four hours to think up an idea, and flying just happened to be banned in Muggle areas during the daylight…
Chapter 3: Trials and Tribulations
The day of Lupin's trial, Harry awoke at five-thirty and started preparing. He covered the few bruises that Vernon had given him with a notice-me-not charm and grabbed the old backpack. In it he put a large vial of the wolfsbane potion he had recently finished, his wand (just in case, he didn't want anyone to find out he could do wandless magic), his sneakscope, his invisibility cloak, some spare robes, and the mirror Sirius had given him. For some reason, Harry seemed drawn to the mirror by some bond, some invisible force that was pulling him towards it, urging him not to let it stray too far from his reach. He didn't know why, but he thought it best to take the mirror with him. After packing his stuff, Harry was ready to leave.
On the way out the door, however, it appeared that though he was ready to leave. A certain Uncle of his was not too keen on the idea…
"WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING BOY?"
"Out…" Harry responded innocently.
"I don't think so," Vernon said evilly, "you are going to stay right here and make breakfast."
"No, I am not. If you tell anyone about the little escapades I've been having in my room lately then I swear on my parent's grave I will tell anyone who will listen, including the police, about every miniscule thing you have done to me over these past years. The bruises, broken bones, insults… everything! You can do what you want; I can do what I want, just as long as we keep what goes on in this place quiet. And the 'I can do what I want' part includes me going out when I please, doing magic whenever I please, and yelling at you, SO THERE!"
And with that, Harry angrily slammed the door in Vernon's face, just in time to here him yell:
"Well you're still getting an extra-long list of chores when you get back!"
After that episode, Harry made his way to the Muggle bus stop. He didn't want to cause a scene on the Knight Bus…
"How close can you take me to London?" Harry asked the driver.
"'Bout ten miles to it," was the only response.
Harry nodded mutely and took a seat. He had no idea how he was going to get ten miles, find his way through London, and then sneak into the Ministry, but he figured it would work out… somehow.
As soon as the bus came to a halt, Harry jumped off and decided to find another stop. But before he could, he caught sight of a moving van…
"Stop with the 'are we there yet' nonsense already," the driver of the moving van yelled at the guy in the passenger seat, "you sound like some annoying little five-year-old; we only have ten more miles to London. Then you can use the toilets!"
"Perfect," thought Harry, "just perfect."
And while no one was looking, the Boy-Who-Lived stole away in the back of the moving van. The huge truck must not have had a very good driver, Harry suspected. For the second it started up again, he was being knocked around and slammed against piles of musty furniture, and to make it worse, he needed to go to use the toilets as well. He could see the headlines now:
Boy-Who-Lives Found Dead In A Moving Van Squashed By A Tacky Vintage Coach and Covered In His Own Piss
He bet Draco Malfoy would die laughing at that one.
Five minutes later, Harry jumped out of the back and onto a speeding car. He continued jumping from car to car until finally doing a kind of flip onto the pavement. Harry felt as though his brain was still doing flips in his head as he looked around dizzily to see that almost every passerby was staring at him incredulously.
"Er… hi," Harry managed to choke out before smiling weakly and dashing of into a nearby fast food joint to use the facilities.
As soon as he was done he located an ally and as soon as he was out of sight of the Muggles, Harry sat down and leaned against a dumpster, pondering his next move.
"I wish I could use my wand without being detected," he thought, "I might be able to do that 'point me' charm… wait a second!" Harry picked up a stick from off the ground, "point me!"
All of a sudden, the stuck started spinning. It got faster and faster until pointing towards the end of the ally. Harry started to run using the stick as his guide when he noticed a broken-down motor-scooter which he repaired with magic and charmed to go a hundred miles per hour, using this, he made it to the telephone booth with time to spare. Giving the scooter to some random Muggle kid on the street, he entered and pushed in the number combo (62442).
"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business," Came the cool female voice that filled the phone booth.
"The Boy-Who-Lived," Harry said sarcastically as humanly possible, "I'm here to attempt to assassinate Fudge and Umbridge."
"Thank you visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes."
A square, silver badge fell with a rattle from the place where returned coins usually appeared. On it were the words: The Boy-Who-Lived, Assassination Attempt on the Minister of Magic and his Senior Undersecretary.
Harry snorted and rolled his eyes, "no wonder an entire hoard of Death Eaters got in here…" he imagined a badge saying: Lord Voldemort, Attempt to Gain Top-Secret Ministry Information before Blowing the Whole Damned Place to Smithereens.
Instead of putting the badge on his chest, Harry slipped it into his pocket as the elevator-like telephone booth sunk into the ground. While going down, Harry also donned his invisibility cloak and put a silencing charm on his sneakscope. When at his destination, he was able to maneuver through the throng of workers and ministry officials to the courtroom. (He took the stairs so he wouldn't run the risk of being stuck in a crowded elevator). There was really two floors of courtrooms; the one which Remus was held in was the one on the bottom most part. Harry stopped at the floor above, however, wondering if there were people outside the courtroom that could stop him from entering. He was at the point of wishing he could see through the floor, when, without prior notice:
"Holy crap!"
Harry leaped back in shock, he really was seeing through the floor. And underneath him was a whole assemblage of Order members and Ron and Hermione, who were apparently watching what was going on inside the courtroom by way of some sort of screen that greatly resembled Muggle TV, there was two guards at the door. Still gazing into the floor, Harry walked into the courtroom on his floor and found himself looking into the one below him. His eyes narrowed when he saw that Lupin was chained to the chair. He needed someway to get in there… but HOW?
Then, out of the blue, he knew. He had no idea how, but somehow he did. On intuition alone, Harry ran into a broom closet and lifted up a really badly worn rug. Sure enough, Harry found a trap door beneath it. He opened it up to reveal yet another broom closet that lead into the courtroom Remus was in. Harry listened through the door. He could just make out Fudges voice saying:
"Interrogators: Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister of Magic; Amelia Susan Bones, Head of Magical Law Enforcement; Dolores Jane Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Albus Percival Wulfric Brain Dumbledore," Fudge spat out the name and titles, "Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, International Confederation of Wizards member, and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has been banned from expressing his judgment today, he is here anyway, for," Fudge rolled his eyes as he read, "moral support. Court Scribe, Percy Ignatius Weasley"
"Witness for the Defence, Harry James Potter," was Harry's words as he actually broke the door of the broom closet off it's hinges, brushed a mop off his head, and dodged falling cleaner, "you guys really need to organize your closets better… it's a wonder the custodians can find anything."
Remus's eyes widened in shock, Dumbledore stood up so quickly he knocked his chair over, Umbridge glared, and Fudge looked as if he was about to go into cardiac arrest. In fact, a whole bunch of people looked as if they were suffering from heart failure. The rest could do nothing but gape in astonishment.
"H…how d… did you get here!" Fudge exclaimed in a would-be calm voice.
"What's it to you?" Harry retorted with a roll of the eyes.
"The Boy-Who-Lived just burst out of a broom closet!" some man said incredulously, as if he barely believed the fact himself, "what do you mean 'what's it to you?'."
"Not to mention it's dangerous for you to be out unaccompanied with Death Eaters and Voldemort," everyone in the courtroom but Harry and Lupin flinched at the name, "on the loose…"
"Leave it up to Dumbledore to bring that up…" thought Harry.
"I thought I told you not to express your opinion!" Fudge interrupted.
"Look people," an exasperated Harry cut in, "it's a long story involving a Muggle bus, a moving van, the tops of speeding cars, a broken-down motor-scooter, and a secret passageway. Let's just get on with this okay."
Harry felt strange, different, standing there in front of everyone. He felt, well… some way he'd never felt before… ever. He felt, for the first time in his life, confident… powerful… in control of things.
Umbridge made that annoying little sound, the 'heh, hem' one, and the one she makes every time she opens her trap (her voice), "And what, Mr. Potter, makes you think you are allowed to be in here?"
"One second." Harry turned to Remus, "Professor Lupin, do you mind if I act as your attorney?"
Lupin just shook his head no in disorientation.
"Why the fact that I'm Mr. Lupin's attorney of course!" Harry responded to Umbridge's question.
"You can't be an attorney! You're only fifteen!"
"Ahh, but I am."
"Says who?"
"Say's Professor Lupin."
"I cannot fathom why you call that bloody beast 'professor' as if his opinion actually matters…"
"HE IS NOT A BLOODY BEAST!" Harry's voice was raised now, and it echoed off the walls, "And his opinion does, in fact, matter. It states in the Book of Wizarding Law, page 232, section 5, paragraph 3," Harry could see Percy flipping madly through the courts Book of Wizarding Law, "that the defendant has a right to an attorney."
"He's correct," Percy spoke up from behind the gigantic volume.
"What! Give me that!" Umbridge grabbed the Book of Wizarding Law from the young Weasley and glared at the page as if willing the print to change shape and say 'the defendant has the right to an attorney as long as the defendant is not a werewolf and the attorney is not Harry Potter', but nothing happened, "But he is not even human! And he can't afford a lawyer!"
"HE IS TOO! And even if he wasn't, it says defendant, not human defendant. Not to mention I'm doing this free of charge…"
Umbridge opened her mouth to rebuttal, but before she could…
"I believe Mr. Potter is right," an angry female voice interrupted from a seat just near Umbridge's, "I suggest we just let him do whatever, unless, of course, you wish to change the law. That could take months, and like Dumbledore said, the Dark Lord is back. In case I'm very much mistaken, the Ministry has better things to do then spend countless hours arguing over a moot point just because some overgrown toad is too stubbornly prejudiced to just let a small, inconsequential thing go!"
"I don't appreciate that comment; you'd do paramount to respect your betters you little bitch!"
"Oh, so now I'm the bitch."
Both women were standing now. The woman arguing with Umbridge was quite pretty. She gave the impression of being in her mid-thirties, had dark chocolate-brown eyes, brown hair with natural blond highlights, and it looked by her tan that she had recently been somewhere with an awful lot of sun.
Fudge cleared his throat, "Dolores, Madame Lafina (A/N pronounced la-fee-na), if you'd just take you seats… Thank you."
"Well then, let's get started," Harry exclaimed a little too enthusiastically for the liking of both Fudge and Umbridge, Dumbledore had retained his calm and placid manner and was now looking extremely amused, Madame Lafina was leaning forward, her face twisted into an interested appearance, completely giving away how enormously intrigued she was with the legendary Boy-Who-Lived, "My first point being that there is absolutely NO rationale in even having this ridiculous trial. Not to mention the defendant is actually allowed to SPEAK IN THEIR OWN DEFENCE. It says so on page 345, section 7, paragraph 2 in the Book of Wizarding Law."
"Correct again. How does he do that?" a bewildered Percy Weasley announced looking up once again from the Book of Wizarding Law.
"Give me that!" An enraged Umbridge grabbed the book from Percy, and, after whacking him on head with it, stared at page 345 as if she wished to tear it out of the book.
Harry had to use a lot of self-control to not just summon the gag from Professor Lupin's mouth with wandless magic. Somehow he managed to contain himself, however, and did it without magic. The silence that hung in the air was quite uncomfortable, everyone, with the exception of Percy who was currently rubbing his head and mouthing the word 'ouch', was either looking intently at Harry, a very cheesed off Fudge, or an even more cheesed off Umbridge.
"You okay Professor?" Harry asked Lupin as he took in a deep breath.
"Yes, Harry, thank you," was the response.
Lupin looked paler then Harry remembered, there was dark circles under his eyes and his graying hair looked a bit frazzled. It appeared Sirius's death had hit him just as hard as it had hit Harry (which was defiantly saying something as Harry was still having great difficulty with both eating and sleeping).
"You shouldn't be here," Lupin continued, "perhaps you should go wait outside…"
"And just leave you here? There's less chance of that then there is the chance of Hell freezing over."
Harry straitened up, "Right, now back to the first fact being of which this trial is pointless. The law saying that werewolves cannot acquire jobs which bring them within ten feet of other people, which, by the way, is also pointless, was not in affect at the time which my client, Mr. Remus J. Lupin, taught at the one Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"But he endangered lives!" shouted Umbridge.
"He did not endanger lives! Lycanthropes are not dangerous except on full moons. Despite what many here like to think, most are merely people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got bitten by a werewolf who accidentally got loose from wherever they had locked themselves up for the night. Werewolves are not evil, they are not dangerous, they don't deserve the heartless discrimination that you help put them through. I'm now going to question Mr. Lupin on what he did on the full moons while teaching," Harry turned to Remus, "tell me your routine."
"Well…" Remus started, "I would always take the wolfsbane potion a week proceeding the full moon. When t… the… the night came I'd lock myself in my office with a time lock. That way, no one could get in or… out until the next day after I'd transformed back into my… human state. I'd never go to classes on the day before or after the… full moon. Professor Dumbledore made the schedule so I wouldn't miss many of my classes."
Remus seemed to have to choke out many of the words with extreme difficulty. It was blatant that talking about his condition was not his favorite thing in the world. Madame Lafina was gazing at him intently, her 'I Hate Umbridge Level' shooting up at rapid speeds into a galaxy far, far away.
"At this time, I would like to attempt to put everyone here into my clients shoes, figuratively of course. First off, would you mind Professor Lupin, telling us how old you were when you were bitten?"
Lupin looked down at his feet, "I was four," he said, "I'd left my teddy bear outside, and well did what I guess most four-year-olds would have done, went outside to get it. Then… I was… it happened. I nearly died. Wasn't supposed to live past the age of sixteen. Before I went to Hogwarts, I used to sit around, waiting to die. Sometimes wanting to die…"
"I think the world would have been better off if you had died!" Umbridge spat.
Madame Lafina was standing again, "How can you say that! You are so heartless! You're also so lucky this trial isn't for me, because if it was, it would be for murdering you!"
"You know Madame Lafina," Harry grinned at her, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"I do believe so Mr. Potter."
"Call me Harry."
"Then call me Elaina."
"With pleasure. Now if everyone would just imagine they were in the same situation as Mr. Lupin, bitten by a werewolf at a very young age, discriminated against to the degree that you can barely get a job, then, someone gives you an offer. This offer not only includes pay, but the chance that most of the people you're working with won't find out about your condition. What would you do?"
"How should we know," it was Fudge who spoke this time, "We aren't werewolves!"
"But you could be."
"Preposterous!"
"Only for someone as single minded as you." Elaina butted in to the conversation.
Remus was perceptibly self-conscious just sitting there while others argued about his condition. A bit of color shown in his pale face and his eyes were still averted downward.
"Not to mention he was a great Professor," Harry interpolated quickly noticing Remus's discomfort, "at this time I would like to call in some witnesses."
"Witnesses?" Fudge asked, outwardly amused by what Harry had just said, "you can't have had time to gather witnesses."
"Wanna bet?" Harry provoked as he walked over to the door, "YO PEOPLE! EVERYONE WHO WAS TAUGHT BY PROFESSOR LUPIN IN HERE!"
The guards gave very disproving looks as Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Ginny entered the courtroom, all as bewildered as the next person. The girls threw their arms around Harry as they entered.
"Hermione, Ginny, you're strangling me! You guys! NOT HERE!"
The two finally let go of him and Harry could once again breath.
"You're lucky we didn't just strangle you," Ginny told him, "you practically put yourself in mortal danger to come here!"
"I brought my wand."
"I very much doubt," Dumbledore spoke up, "that an underage wizard with a wand would do much to fend off a gang of Death Eaters, and possibly even Voldemort."
"For your information, my wand and I have fended off plenty of Death Eaters and Voldemort in the past. And has it ever occurred to you I may just want Voldemort to find me!"
"You want Voldemort to find you?"
"I'd sure love to give him a piece of my mind."
"But Voldemort…"
"Has crossed the line, and he's kept crossing it. I'd say he's past it by a billion kilometers or so."
"I suggest you finish school first before you decide to go off to fight the most powerful dark wizard in the world."
"And how many people do you think will Voldemort have killed by then? I'm not just going to stand around while innocent people drop like flies. End of discussion."
"Harry…"
"I believe Fudge has ordered you not to express your opinion. I call Hermione Granger to the stand. Why don't you tell us about your third year DADA experience."
"Well…" Hermione started.
She was very pale as was everyone else in the courtroom. No one had ever argued with Professor Dumbledore so vehemently or said Voldemort's name aloud without showing any sign of fear. Even Dumbledore's eyes clouded when he said it. All Harry's eyes had shown was hatred, pure, unmistakable hatred. Even Harry shocked himself a bit.
Hermione continued, "Professor Lupin was a great teacher, we learned more in Defense Against the Dark Arts that year then we had with any other teacher. We had a lot of hands on experience with many different spells and creatures. The final exams were quite challenging. I was top in everything but Defense Against the Dark Arts that year."
Harry then continued to question Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George. After he had, Harry shocked everyone with a sixth witness.
"I would now like to call upon Percy Weasley. Can you, Percy, tell us your opinion on Professor Lupin's teaching?"
"H… he was a very good teacher," Percy answered trying very hard to avoid eye contact with Fudge and Umbridge, "but he still hid the truth about his condition…"
"Would it have made a difference if he hadn't been a lycanthrope?"
"Well… he still…"
"You aren't answering my question Percy."
"But I…"
Percy was looking from Fudge and Umbridge to Harry and Lupin.
"Okay, fine, so it wouldn't have made a difference. And you know what else? He was my favorite teacher, and Defense Against the Dark Arts was my favorite subject that year. Are you happy now?"
"Not really, would you mind elaborating on that."
"Well, Professor Lupin had this… way of connecting with you. If you had difficulties with something, he seemed to understand those difficulties. He gave everyone a chance, first and second ones. And he was patient, very, very patient."
"Wonderful. Well, I guess that's it. So in conclusion, Mr. Lupin did not break the law, endanger, or injure anyone during his short time teaching at Hogwarts. In fact, he was a wonderful Professor who gave everyone he taught a plethora of knowledge. I'll now let the jury take over from here."
"Very well," Fudge replied curtly to Harry's conclusion, "whoever believes that Remus J. Lupin should be cleared of all charges, please raise your hand…"
Next Chapter: We find out the result of the trial, Harry gets pissed at someone, the mirror goes haywire some more, and Elaina Lafina cordially invites us to her office for a spot of tea and a very intriguing proposition.
Includes:
The Department of Mystery's
Percy bashing
Dangerous flying teacups
Questions/Comments: Email me: (link on my author page)