Trials, Part 1
A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter
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September 24, Wizengamot
Courtroom ten was packed to the rafters. Everyone who could possibly come up with an excuse, and many who probably couldn't, but had come anyway were here, anticipating the trials of the eight death eaters. Two of whom had surrendered on the field of battle. There were four different sets of journalists that Amelia could see inside the room, and probably twice that many outside. The sheer level of noise as people vied for the best seats and gossiped was almost deafening.
"Order! Order!" She called out. For all the good it did. So she did it again, this time using a sonorous to ensure her voice carried. Even with that aid, it took a minute for everyone to quiet and settle into their seats. She nodded to Kingsley, who was acting as head of the DMLE until the vote next month. "Bring in the accused."
Kingsley turned and disappeared through a door, then came out moments later with one of the six Death Eaters caught in the Ministry purge and two additional aurors acting as guards. The man was escorted to the chair in the center of the room and secured in place with chains, and the two guards took up spots on either side of the chair to further discourage any shenanigans on the part of the accused.
The next few hours were tense ones, as the six Ministry personnel were interrogated. They had to resort to threatening the use of veritaserum to get anything out of four of them, as they'd clammed up. And then followed through on the threat to be sure what they were being told under duress was the truth. One of them, rather like Bellatrix had done many years ago, bragged about what they'd done, what they'd been willing to do, how they'd do it all again, and that Voldemort (despite all evidence, now confirmed, to the contrary) would return. In all five cases, they were wholly unrepentant.
The challenge came with the sixth man, Nott Sr. From the moment he was brought out, he was different from the others. The other five had all been either smug, visibly unrepentant, just plain blank-faced, or just this side of visibly barking mad. Nott came in with his head down and shoulders slumped, looking wholly ashamed. While Amelia, nor anyone else, if expressions were anything to go by, was willing to quite believe his apparent repentance and shame, it made for a nice change. He didn't clam up, made no attempt to claim he was anything but a death eater, but he claimed he'd been forced into it both by his father and circumstances. Once in, he'd been horrified, and promptly done as little as he could manage to get away with, since attempting to defect was a rather good way to commit suicide. Once Voldemort had gone, he'd done what he could to keep his son from following in his footsteps.
That his son had been one of the Slytherin children to fight to defend Hogwarts went far to legitimize his claims. That he showed honest remorse, or was one of the best actors Amelia had ever seen, which, she admitted to herself, was not impossible, also helped. That he submitted to veritaserum without demure, and repeated the same story when questioned cemented it. Debate raged amongst the Wizengamot for a solid three hours as they hashed out what to do. The first five were rather swiftly sentenced to death, having been guilty of numerous atrocities that turned everyone's stomach. Nott, though, was a more difficult case. That the times had doubtlessly put a lot of pressure on everyone was not debated. That most Slytherins, almost all of whom were from pureblood families, would have felt the pressure the most keenly, was not debated either. What was debated was what exactly Nott had done when he 'joined and kept his head down', compared to the other five's outright enjoyment and one-upsmanship of atrocities.
In the end, they went back and interrogated all of them with veritaserum again, asking specifically after who was at each event, and who did what. Nott was absent or standing around as opposed to participating in fully half of the events, and the times he did participate, he at least attempted to do the least amount of damage possible. Eventually, after further debate, it was decided to spare Nott's life, instead incarcerating him for life in Azkaban. He had still perpetrated crimes, after all. He was simply a bit better off than the rest as he recognized that what he had done was wrong, and regretted it.
After that, the real circus began. Goyle and Malfoy Sr., the sole survivors of the attack on Hogwarts.
Amelia wasn't the only one having a hard time not cracking up (many actually failed to keep straight faces) when Lucius almost immediately tried to claim Imperius. Like he really thought that trick would work twice? Actually, come to think of it, if Fudge had still been Minister, it would have. Despite the fact that it was completely impossible to fight at all effectively under Imperius. Throw a single hex, yes. Maybe even two or three. Survive the mayhem that had been the battle at Hogwarts? Not a chance. Which rather frightened Amelia, and made her glad Fudge was out of power. And due for his own trial tomorrow, on charges of just about everything save being a marked Death Eater.
As they went through the evidence against Lucius, she was not quite prepared to see Narcissa Malfoy standing witness against her own husband. After a bit of further consideration, she decided that it really shouldn't have surprised her. Narcissa was, after all, both a Slytherin and a Black. There was no way someone like that would go down if there was any way to prevent it.
The entirety of the courtroom listened in horrified awe as Narcissa enumerated her husband's many crimes, the least of which were bribing and/or blackmailing an elected official (the Minister, no less). It just got worse from there. Inevitably, the question had to be asked.
"If you were aware of all this, why did you not speak out?" Amelia asked.
"And when would I have done that?" Narcissa wanted to know. "When Voldemort was alive and would murder me for it? After he was dead, when Crouch and Fudge were in Lucius' back pocket and Lucius would have bought his way free of any attempt to bring charges against him, then turn his wrath on myself and my son? No, Madam Minister, there was no chance for me to speak out without myself and my son suffering dire consequences." An expression of very real anger crossed her face. "I very nearly killed Lucius myself when I discovered what he'd done Draco's second year. Loosing a monster on a schoolful of children, with no control over it? Draco could have been a victim as easily as any other child!" She shook her head. "Perhaps if there had been a Lord Black, I could have applied for aid and sanctuary for myself and my son and been able to survive the fallout, but there was none. Thanks in large part to the people Lucius was paying to turn a blind eye to his illegal activities."
It didn't take long to convict a nearly apoplectic Lucius and sentence him to death. Goyle, rather like Nott, proved to be a slight bit trickier. He was a fairly simple man, prone to just following orders and not giving any great thought to whether what he was doing was right or wrong or even legal. It became fairly obvious early on that Lucius had taken ruthless advantage of Goyle's lack of discernment . How he and his son got into Slytherin, of all Houses, would forever remain a mystery to Amelia. The decision was made, eventually, to spare Goyle's life. He, like Nott, would be spending the rest of his days in Azkaban.
All eight were stripped of the majority of their assets. Their wives and children were left a home to live in and enough money to live on, but everything else was confiscated, to be redistributed amongst their surviving victims and the government's coffers, to fund the rebuilding that would be necessary. The court session broke up and everyone headed out after the convicts were escorted out of the room. Goyle and Nott were put back in the holding cells until they could be transferred to Azkaban later that day. The others were immediately escorted to the Veil. Amelia somewhat regretted not getting a chance to toss one of them through herself, but ultimately decided that whatever brief moment of pleasure she'd have gotten wouldn't have been worth it in the end.
September 24, Hogwarts
The day of the trials might have been causing mayhem in the larger wizarding world, but in Hogwarts, it marked the re-starting of the 'normal' school year. Heh. Normal. If you wanted to call it that.
History of Magic, it was swiftly decided by everyone, had never been more fun. Sirius had a natural flair for the dramatic, and watching him stalk around the front of the room, hands waving and in many cases acting bits out (with voices, even), was at the very least a heck of a lot more entertaining than Binns had ever been. And definitely a good deal more memorable, too.
The real shock, for Harry, had been Potions. Always, that had been the greatest trial of all his classes, with Snape breathing down his neck. There hadn't really been much in the way of classes after Umbridge, what with preparing for the coming fight and everyone being so busy and/or distracted, so Harry was caught by surprise when Snape didn't even sneer at him, nevermind verbally rip him a new one.
The real shock, though, was when Neville (yet again) completely messed up the potion they were supposed to be doing within the first two steps. When Snape swooped down on Neville, everyone braced for Snape's usual vitriol.
"Mr. Longbottom." Snape purred. "I would be interested in discovering what, precisely, your difficulty in my class is. You are, apparently, quite a gifted herbologist, yet here, that knowledge and ability seems to utterly evade you."
Harry wasn't the only one blinking slightly at Snape, because unless he'd completely misread what Snape had just said, which, given it was Snape they were talking about, was so very, painfully possible, Snape was slightly obliquely offering to help not just a Gryffindor, but one of his worst and most often targeted for nasty commentary, students. And unless Harry was much mistaken, there was even a compliment in there somewhere.
Neville's slightly gobsmacked look faded into a vaguely stuttered. "I ... just get nervous."
This confession seemed to amuse the hell out of Snape, who just had to be aware of what, exactly, Neville's problem was. There was just no way in heck Snape hadn't heard about Neville's boggart. Not with half the student body laughing their asses off at 'Snape in a vulture hat and dress' for a good week afterward. "Surely, Mr. Longbottom, the young man who was capable of beating Bellatrix Lestrange unconscious with his bare hands has nothing to fear from a mere teacher?" Snape asked.
Now the entirety of the class was staring, because that sounded an awful lot like Snape teasing Neville. Harry was beginning to think he might need to send for Xander if this kept up. It was more than slightly unnerving, seeing Snape be almost ... human. The rest of the class just took a turn for the surreal.
Snape spent the entire rest of the class doing something he hadn't done in the last four years ... actually teaching. Oh, he was still sarcastic, snappish and really strict, but the put-downs and completely biased favoritism were just ... gone. He pointed out the especially tricky bits of the potion, gave pointers on the prep ... just, everything he'd never done before. By the end of class, everyone had managed to produce a serviceable (if not perfect) potion, and Harry was wondering if it was actually someone polyjuiced as Snape, rather than the actual man, because the entire class had just been that odd.
Escaping to DADA was a relief. Divination had been cancelled for pretty much everyone. Harry didn't think anyone had made the cut as an actual 'seer' for Trelawney to train up. Extra DADA classes had been scheduled to fill the gap, a very real necessity for pretty much everyone in the castle given the previous crappy instruction in the subject. The 'extra' class turned out to have more than one year attending, and, since Hagrid had returned and was able to take over the CoMC classes again, Xander had apparently elected to assist Remus with the extra classes.
They spent the entire class talking about some of the demons that had been seen in the battle, discussing their strengths, weaknesses, and a fair bit of how they worked among themselves, whether they were loners or worked in family groups or whatever. Xander announced that a friend of theirs, a demon from a peaceful species, would be coming in the next week to talk about some of the less aggressive species of demons. That caused a good bit of interest with pretty much everyone.
"And if you guys ask nicely, Spike might even do a class on vampires." Xander added with a grin. "And how vampiric society works, though you probably better take any tales he tells of me and my friends with a grain of salt. He likes to ... embellish ... just a bit."
That got a laugh, especially from Harry and Hermione, both of whom had heard Spike-tales before.