I felt really bad for the short chapter, so I decided to add another one. Here you go, chapter 2! Please keep in mind that I don't have a beta, and that I'm posting these as they come out, so I've only gone over them a couple times to find grammar mistakes. Spelling's probably horrible too.
Disclaimer: Nope.
Chapter 2: Ministry of Magic
Severus was thrown to the ground as the Portkey deposited them in the front hall of the Ministry of Magic. 'Miss' stood firmly on the ground, brushing non-existent dirt from her sleeves as if she had just come from the floo. Raising an eyebrow at his crumpled form, she rolled her eyes again and reached a hand down to help him up. "Do try to stay on your feet. We wouldn't want anyone to see that Severus Snape is human and vulnerable, would we? That would ruin your image." When he didn't take her hand, she grabbed his upper arm and pulled him up, a reminder to him of just how skinny he had become in his years in Azkaban.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience, Miss. It might just be better for both of us if I go curl up in a corner and die, would it not?" He gave her a rusty glare that had once had children and adults alike scurrying for cover. But she stood firm.
"Don't tempt me." She shook her head and grabbed his arm again, dragging him down the long toward an empty room with the hazy appearance of one with heavy wards surrounding it. She removed her wand from within the deep hiding place of her large robe sleeves. The long, slender stick reminded Severus of the girl currently pulling him. Strong and powerful.
She waved her wand gracefully and spoke a long, smooth word that to Severus sounded like Samananthaonoa. He quickly tried to decipher the spell, figuring it to be an ancient protection spell or something of the like.
Upon catching the confusion on his face, she chuckled, replacing her wand in the depths of her robe. "Password. Don't bother. It's gibberish. Safer that way, as long as you have the presence of mind to remember each and every syllable." And she pushed him into the room, pulling the door tightly behind her as she stepped into the brightly lit, small room.
With a quick look around, Severus saw that it was a scantily furnished room with two metal chairs with a small amount of padding at the back and seat of them. The table was flimsy and plastic with a shabby tablecloth thrown haphazardly over top of its surface. There was a single bookshelf in the back, filled with what appeared to be notebooks, journals and research material.
"My office," she said, gesturing around with a note of pride in her voice. Personally, he would not have been proud of a poor room like this, but he supposed after spending years in Azkaban, to insult her office would be poor form.
She sat carefully down in a chair, gesturing to the other chair with a wave of her hand. He hadn't sat down on a chair for a very, very long time, and it took him a minute to remember how. Awkwardly shifting back and forth in his seat, he looked up to find her eyes on him again.
"Would you just start the damned meeting and get this over with?" he snapped, impatient and embarrassed. That was twice, now, this girl had made him feel impatient in the span of forty-five minutes. All he knew at this point was, win or lose; he needed to get away from her.
"Fine. The prosecutor will be given ten minutes with you on the stand. I have requested to go afterward, to attempt to fix any damage that the no doubt completely competent prosecutor will do to anything you try to say. Whether or not I'll manage has yet to be seen. On that note, we should probably get what we're going to say straight—"
"What makes you think I'm innocent?" His voice had finally returned to its silky, dangerous tone, causing her to look up in surprise. Obviously she had not been expecting him to begin his recovery so quickly. She placed her lower lip in her mouth, thinking about it momentarily before pulling her lip out of her mouth with a popping noise.
Slowly, she began, "Well. Your behavior preceding that night is conflicting. It is known that you were playing either Dumbledore or Voldemort—"
He leaned forward, closer to her. "Any you imagine me to be the good guy in this scheme, playing the Dark Lord like an enchanted harp, do you not?"
Her eyes flashed, and she too, leaned forward to look him in the eye. "As I was saying, you were playing Dumbledore or Voldemort, but the fact that you did not harm Harry Potter afterward has always cast doubt upon your loyalty to Voldemort for any objective observer that views your case. Furthermore—"
"And how many, exactly, has that been?"
She stood up suddenly, anger flitting through her facial features. "Stop interrupting me, please! You will have your chance to speak!" She took a deep breath and sat back down, pulling her chair in and closing her eyes momentarily. He took the opportunity to look her over, trying to get a feel for his defense council. Something struck him that he hadn't noticed until now.
"You're ten!" He exclaimed, earning himself a death glare from her.
"Sixteen thank you very much."
"The Ministry expects me to allow myself to be represented by a teenager?"
She crossed her arms in what he now saw as a child-like manner and sat back in her chair. "The Ministry expects nothing out of you except for you to receive the kiss in," she checked her watch, "One hour's time! I was the only one willing to take this case, Master Snape, because all others thought that it was impossible! I did myself until I received the owl meant for my mother. I am the only living person who gives half a rats arse about you in this world, and I suggest that you begin to show some form of gratitude for this!" She gave this entire monologue from her slouching position, but her voice contained passion and anger, and by the end, her face had become quite red. "Now, if you'd allow me to continue where I was at, many of the members of the Order of the Phoenix—"
"You've talked to members of the Order?"
She threw up her hands. "Yes! I've interviewed many people!" she waved her hand, and a large briefcase appeared on the table, causing it to sway dangerously. "I've talked to the Order members, former peers of yours on both sides of this war, which I still have scars from doing, Professors who remember teaching with you, students who you've taught, also on both sides of this war, and parents of students of yours. I have collected papers and information on everything having to do with this case since before it happened. I've researched every single method that I could approach this case from, and Merlindamnit, I intend to win if you'd just LET ME TALK."
He put his hands up in a surrendering motion and nodded as if to tell her to speak. She took another deep breath and expelled it quickly and loudly, shaking her head in the process.
"Now, as I was saying, the members of the Order expressed a lot of confusion at your betrayal, as at least a handful of them recall you doing everything possible to aide the Light and protect your students, as much contempt for them as you did show on a daily basis. One of them even said that they had previously thought that the day would come where Voldemort, or, well, they said 'You-know-who', would wear a pink dance outfit and attempt to serenade Dumbledore before you'd betray the Order. This came from a source of personal trust and as far as I know, there has been no serenading." She paused, sifting through her papers and glancing up at Severus, sighing. "You have a question, ask it."
He inwardly jumped at the sudden shift in spotlight, but outwardly keep what little composure he had, and drawled out in a bored voice, "and who, pray tell, did you speak to from my teaching years at Hogwarts?"
She glanced down at the paper and then back up at his face. Hesitating for a second, she placed the top sheet of paper on the table, turned it so it faced him and pushed it across the surface until it rested in front of him. As his eyes scanned the paper, he felt hers on him.
"You spoke to Minerva."
"Yes."
"And Lupin."
"Yes."
"And Potter."
"Yes."
"And Granger."
"Yes."
"Not the youngest male Weasley?"
"He's dead. As is Hermione, now. But at the time that I started the interviews, she wasn't. He was."
He glanced up violently. He hadn't been expecting this. "Potter's all that's left of the Golden Trio?" He had always wanted to break the Trio up, but not in this way. He had expected that they'd all make it through at least until the final battle.
"Yes." Her short answers had him confused. She had previously spoken in eloquent, if not overly long, sentences. And now her words were choppy and impatient. "Let me be frank with you Master Snape. The cards are stacked against us. The chances we have of both of us coming out of this unscathed are very, very slim, despite my optimism. If you are innocent, it would do us both well for you to tell me now before we go out there."
He pushed the paper back across the table with his index finger, his eyes never leaving hers. "I choose not to answer."
"If you're afraid of Voldemort, I assure you, we can figure something out to get you back into his ranks properly to spy."
"I choose not to answer, Miss. That's all there is to it. Please, do not push the subject anymore." He had put on his 'teacher' voice again, and she bristled.
"Do not speak that way to me, Master Snape. I can walk out of here now, declare that you are a traitor and watch without a problem as they drag you down to the dementor." She placed the paper back into her pile and shuffled through them again, taking another sheet out of the stack and placing it on the tabletop, then reaching into her briefcase to search for a newspaper. "Voldemort still believes you're on his side, and most of the people in the wizarding world are under the same impression. Do you have any idea what it's doing to my job opportunities by just sitting here? Not only am I missing class for this, which the Headmistress is already ready to kill me for, but I'm attempting to clear the name of a known Death Eater. I'm not even sure why I bothered anymore. Have fun losing what little soul you have, Master Snape." She began to clear up her belongings. "And I hope you rot in hell."
When she was a foot away from the door, a croaking voice called out to her. "What of my stuff. My house, my books?" She froze and turned back around eyeing him angrily.
"They all burned. Everything. The only thing you have left is the basement beneath the place. You put strong wards on that didn't you, Master Snape. No one, not even Harry Potter, could break them. What do you keep down there?" She slowly returned to her seat, never taking her eyes off of him.
"That is my secret."
She raised her eyebrows in annoyance. "What isn't your secret, Master Snape." She now pulled something out of her briefcase again, looking down at it with hesitation and fear in her voice. "There is… something else, too." She didn't give him the paper this time. "Her mother's gone, and if your name's cleared, you have legal rights to claim custody of her."
"Her?" He stood up so quickly the chair behind him flopped to the ground on its side pathetically. "Whatever anyone's told you is a lie. I have no urge to claim any 'her's."
She stood as well, the paper still in her hands as she watched his reaction. "You have a daughter, Master Snape."
As quickly as he could, so fast she didn't even see him until he was against her, he pushed her up against the hard wall of the room, his eyes flashing dangerously. "What do you mean by that?"
She did not seem alarmed by his sudden flash of anger at all. "And here I thought you were brilliant. Exactly as I said. You have a daughter." The paper had fallen out of her hands in the display, and she shoved him back gently and picked up the facedown, crumpled and yellowing sheet. She passed the paper over to him, where a dark-haired little girl stood waving frantically and grinning with a rider-less broom flying around wildly behind her. Every once and a while she'd glance behind her and see the broom, giggling at it, then turn around to face the camera again.
"H-how old?" Seeing the girl had shaken him up.
"She was six when this was taken." She took the picture back, leaning almost all of her upper body over the table to reach the crinkled photo.
"Six years? I've been in there six years?" He glanced around the room frantically, as if to see how the world had changed in six years.
She only shrugged, shoving the photo into her briefcase with a carelessness that seemed out of character for her. "Now, are you prepared to work with me, if only to meet the girl?
After cleaning him up and feeding him, they had five minutes before the case, and he had yet to honestly tell her if he was innocent or not. Somewhere deep down, she knew that he had killed Albus Dumbledore. It was the why that had her bothered. Why would a man kill the only one in the world who trusted him? Why would he kill the father figure in his life?
She remembered the one summer that her mother had insisted upon her taking a muggle psychology class. None of the reasons from those cases fit. Obviously it wasn't the Oedipus complex, since he wasn't his true father and Dumbledore had no wife for Severus to view as a mother. None of the others seemed to work either, and it puzzled her to the point that she kept sneaking glances at the dark man beside herself, trying to catch him with his walls down. It never happened.
As she led him into the large conference room that would serve as their courtroom today, she was shaken to note that everything was set up differently then the scenarios that she had read about and heard about from her research. The Wizengamot was standing along the outsides of the room, in a large circle. At the front of the room stood the tall, balding man in extravagant room that she recognized as the Chief Wizard. Bowing her head in respect, she led Snape over to the chair that he would sit in for the entire trial. She was almost relieved to see the bonds sneak out from the chair and tie him to the chair. At least something about this trial would be by the books.
Once Snape was secured in the seat, she approached the Chief Wizard, her head low. "Aradia Mya Granger Weasley defense council, brings Master Severus Tobias Snape for his trial." The Chief Wizard nodded, which prompted her to continue. "Master Snape was accused of murder and Death Eater activities, and I believe I have found sufficient evidence for a trial on his behalf. I filed an appeal—"
The Wizard nodded. "We know, child. You have been quite the hot topic among the Wizengamot. Now, if you would stand beside your client?" She bowed her head once more, and then stepped to the center of the room where Snape was still bound.
"You trust me, right?" She looked at him where he glared down at the straps binding his hands as if that would make them release.
"If I did not, it is a hell of a time to decide that, now isn't it?" He continued to glare down at the bounds, causing her to sigh.
The doors to the east swung open, and the prosecutor stepped in to the conference room. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched for Snape's reaction. She had been expecting this. He had not.
"Auror Harry Potter for Prosecution, your Honor."