The Greatest Weapon, Chapter 7
"Sirius?" Harry's voice echoed through the empty house. "Are you there?"
For a moment, the old house was totally silent; then there sounded the pounding of feet. "Hey, pup," Sirius said, sounding surprised. "How's it going? Are you ok? I read the Prophet; did that ministry bitch really use a blood quill on you? Is Snivellus causing you any problems?"
"I-no, Sirius, I'm fine," Harry told him. "I just wanted to ask you a few questions; my friends and I are feeding Rita Skeeter information, and we're hoping we can get your name cleared!
Sirius stared at him, grey eyes wide. Finally, when Harry was starting to worry, a slow smile began to spread all over his face. "That is an amazing idea, pup!" he said. "I'll help any way I can."
"Then...did you take the traditional vows when you became my godfather?"
"Yes pup, I did. Why- ohhh." He started to nod. "Yes, if I had actually betrayed you I would have both died and lost my magic."
"So...I know all this, but for the record: Peter was a Death Muncher?"
"Yes."
"And obviously you're not."
"Oh, hell no!"
"Who cast the Secret Keeper spell?"
"Dumbledore cast it on me and then James switched it from me to Pettigrew after he was gone. The idea about me being a decoy was Lily's, but she wanted the actual Secret Keeper to be Remmy. James thought that Remus wasn't a good choice because I guess he was the obvious traitor, being a werewolf." He barked a bitter laugh.
Harry blinked several times in rapid succession as a mote of soot got in his eye. He was, after all, sitting in a fireplace. "Ok. Did they check your wand when they brought you in for questioning?"
Sirius hesitated. Then some sort of dam seemed to break within him and he began to talk. And talk. "I can barely remember that day; I was in shock. I- oh, yes, I remember...they dragged me into the ministry and they broke my wand in front of me when I didn't talk; I just kept laughing because it was little Peter Pettigrew who had done it, the one whom we had to tutor just to pass his OWL's, the one who we never thought would betray us... They didn't use priori incantem or anything, just broke it. They didn't use veritaserum, either. It hurt so much, too, because I had gone through the auror training program with all these guys, but they didn't hesitate to believe the worst of me. I didn't even get an official questioning for the record, not even a false trial. I just got railroaded to Azkaban and left there for twelve horrible years. Do you know how it feels to be in a place without hot food, without clean clothes, without firewhiskey, without hope? All I could think was that I was innocent and that if I gave up and died Peter would have won."
Harry nodded, understanding. "Why do you think Crouch railroaded you?"
"I don't know. Maybe because he thought with me out of the way he could make you a ward of the Ministry. Maybe because he thought he could seize the Black fortune. Maybe because he was trying to blow things out of proportion so that people wouldn't notice that his kid was a closet Death Muncher. Maybe he was just overeager..."
He frowned, then subsided. "Does that help, pup?"
"Yeah, thank you so much!" He grinned. "I'm gonna go unleash hell!"
"Good luck, pup!"
Harry nodded and withdrew his head from the fire, then turned to his friends. "Guys, I got a way to spin this."
That evening, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville were in The Three Broomsticks, in a corner booth. With them was Rita, with a fruity cocktail and an ordinary (non-charmed) dictaquill.
"So what do you have for me?" she said, adjusted her rhinestone glasses.
"You know how I asked you for files on Sirius Black?" Harry asked.
"Yes..." was her cautious answer.
"Well I have a story for you, and I invite you to do as much as you possibly can to discredit Fudge and Crouch."
"Yes?" she was beginning to wiggle in her seat, as if she sensed how big this story was. A hint of anticipation and excitement bled into her voice.
Harry smirked and drew a muggle folder stuffed with papers and two vials filled with silvery memories out of his featherlight bag. "Ok, here's the deal: Peter Pettigrew is an illegal rat animagus and faked his own death. Sirus Black is innocent of all charges and was framed by Pettigrew. I discovered this in my second year at Hogwarts, but Fudge brushed it under the rug and assumed that I and my friends Ron and Hermione were all confounded...even though Siri had no wand and couldn't cast anything from years in Azkaban."
Rita looked like she wanted to kiss him as she took the papers and vials.
The next morning, Daily Prophets began to shower down into dishes of bacon and bowls of porridge. The hall reverberated with breakfast-table discussions, as everyone snatched for the same copies, having grown used to groundbreaking headlines.
Harry noticed with interest that Dumbledore seemed relieved that the article was not about his mistakes. The relief seemed to rapidly melt away, however, as he began to read the article.
"Hey Harry!"
Harry, who had been taking more notes in his journal, hurriedly looked up. "What is it, Hermione?"
"Rita outdid herself," Hermione responded, shoving the paper into his hand.
Fudge is Corrupt! Sirius Black Framed! screamed the headlines.
Sirius Black, the traitor who supposedly gave his best friends, the Potters, to You-Know-Who, in a shocking turn of events, was discovered to be innocent. Yes, innocent! Framed by his friend Pettigrew, the real Secret Keeper, Mr. Black spent twelve years in Azkaban, the most terrible Wizarding prison in the world, without ever having been given a trial!
Mr. Black was apprehended, after the first war, after a confrontation with Mr. Pettigrew, who allegedly screamed "Sirius, how could you!" before being blown up, along with thirteen muggles. However, the Department of Magical Forensics never cast a corpus locator to find his body; they only collected his finger to send it back to his mother. Meanwhile, the aurors who took Mr. Black into custody denied him basic Wizarding rights: his wand was never checked, nor was he allowed questioning under veritaserum, nor was he legillimized, nor was his arm checked for the Dark Mark. What kind of ministry would railroad a member of an Ancient and Noble family to Azkaban! What could they possibly hope to get out of that? Mr. Black suggests that they did it to seize the Black fortune; he even insinuates that they might have done it to get their hands on his godson, the Boy-Who-Lived. Does the Ministry have a response to this heinous accusation?
It is even more worth mentioning that the aurors who took Mr. Black in were his friends; but rather than being lenient, or even doing their jobs, they went out of their way to trample on his rights.
This, however, brings up another point: Mr. Black was sworn godfather to the Boy-Who-Lived, with all pureblood oaths that that entails. He would have died on the spot if he had betrayed the Potters! So why did no one come forward about this? Who is trying to cover up such a horrible injustice? Well, the answer is our own minister! Cornelius Fudge was given the opportunity to expunge this horrible blot on our ministry's history three years ago, when Harry Potter and his friends apprehended Peter Pettigrew on the Hogwarts grounds. (Disturbingly, he had been posing as a pet for one of the students; one wonders why the headmaster didn't have anti-animagi wards, or even just animagus detection wards, since one could argue that anti-animagi wards could prove problematic for the famous Transfiguration teacher Minerva Mcgonagall.) However, instead of making sure justice was done or even just opening the case again, Fudge completely ignored the evidence, even going so far as to accuse our boy hero of being confounded. (Never mind that Black had no wand and was unable to cast anything). Worse still, it isn't as though Fudge has not done other things like this, like having Barty Crouch kissed before he could testify to being a Death Eater and trying to put the innocent groundskeeper of Hogwarts in Azkaban (because a basilisk that had been under the school for years due to Dumbledore's negligence got out and attacked students) either.
If justice is no longer carried out by our minister, aren't we obligated to call for a vote to remove us? How many innocent people have to go to Azkaban before the public takes matters into their own hands! And are our children safe if an illegal rat animagus can masquerade as a pet at Hogwarts for ten years without being caught?