Harry Potter and The Fate We Make
Chapter 18: Trials and Tribulations, Part 1
A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter.
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July 28, 1995
Harry spent the next few days mostly at Longbottom Manor, putting his head together with Augusta, Septimus, Ron, Hermione, Jeremiah ... and exceedingly nervous Hagrid. Jeremiah had recommended one of his partners for Hagrid, and since Hagrid's funds were as limited as the Weasleys', Harry had made it clear he'd pay the man's fees. Elbert Hartgrove looked, far and away, more the part of the lawyer than Jeremiah did. He was a touch on the portly side, and had the sharp, calculating look in his eyes Harry normally associated with Slytherins. That said, he, like Jeremiah, was honest and good-tempered.
On the other hand, Harry still wasn't quite sure what to make of Septimus Weasley. He was as unlike Arthur as two people could be and still be related. If Harry didn't know for a fact that every Weasley for uncountable generations had been a Gryffindor, Harry would have strongly suspected the man of being a Slytherin. The dangerous kind. The kind that truly embodied that House's standards. Ambition, cunning, determination, resourcefulness. Those traits coupled with Gryffindor courage and daring ... made Septimus Weasley a very, very, very scary man, and Harry made due mental note to never get on his bad side. Or Augusta's for that matter, though she was not quite as Slytherin as Septimus seemed to be. He kind of felt sorry for anyone who did, which was going to make the next few months as the pair went through the Wizengamot like a dose of salts all kinds of interesting. He wondered, idly, if Malfoy would survive the experience.
And so it was that a nigh-unrecognizable Hagrid walked into the courtroom the day of his much-delayed trial. His hair and beard were neatly combed and trimmed, and he was wearing, not the furry suit he'd used for Buckbeak's trial, but a set of plain black robes, shirt, and trousers. He looked almost nothing like the wild, rough gameskeeper ... which had been the point of the makeover.
Harry, Hermione and Ron, as potential witnesses for the defense, were sitting down in the row of seats closest to the floor and closest to where Hagrid and Hartgrove were sitting. Dumbledore was there as well, which pleased Harry. This particular screw-up, Harry did not place at Dumbledore's feet. Back then, he'd only been Transfiguration professor, and had not had any of his other titles ... yet. He'd not been able to do much of anything to help Hagrid the first time around. The only bad news in the trial was that Hagrid, being half-giant, was highly resistant to veritaserum, so there could be no quick cut-and-dry on the case.
Fudge called them to order, and then the trial began. It was, Harry quickly discovered, virtually identical to Muggle trials. Hartgrove and his opponent both got up and made their statements, Hartgrove of course saying he'd prove Hagrid innocent, while the other guy, whom Jeremiah had identified as man by the name of Gulmeier, claimed he'd prove Hagrid guilty. Harry rather thought the Gulmeier's heart wasn't really in it. There was a certain ... energy ... that was lacking, it seemed. Of course, it was just the opening statements, so who knew.
Hagrid was called to the stand first. Hatgrove got straight to the heart of the matter.
"Did you, Rubeus Hagrid, open the Chamber of Secrets while you were a student?"
Hagrid shook his head vehemently. "I never! I wouldn'ta never done that!"
"How then did you come to be accused?" Hartgrove wanted to know.
"It were Aragog. He's an acromantula, y'see. Wonderful beast. I had him as a pet then. Kept him in a crate. Riddle ... he were a prefect then ... found out about him an' when Myrtle died, he said Aragog were the monster. But Aragog never left his crate, see? I brought him rats and such to eat. But once Riddle said Aragog were the beast, that was it. M'da'd died before then, y'see, so I didn't have nobody to stand fer me, nor money to get a lawyer. Professor Dumbledore believed I were innocent, an' tried ta help me, but Headmaster Dippet wouldn't listen, an' before I knew what was goin' on, me wand'd been snapped."
Hartgrove just smiled. "I have transcripts of the incidents at the time, as well as a report on the cause of young Myrtle's death. Students were being petrified ... a power that acromantula do not possess. Myrtle wholly unmarked at the time of her death. Given that acromantula must bite their victims in order to inject their venom, it is not possible for Hagrid's pet to have been the creature from the chamber, nor for it to have been responsible for Myrtle's death."
That, of course, rather neatly cut one leg out from under the prosecution. Aragog wasn't the monster. Of course, Gulmeier wasn't completely without something to pursue.
"So this Aragog, the creature you were caught with and accused of setting on everyone, was not the fabled creature from the Chamber. The question of whether or not you opened the chamber and let another creature out has not yet been settled."
From there, things got a touch sticky, but with Hermione and Ron testifying as to what the creature actually was, and Dumbledore's sworn insistence Hagrid hadn't opened the Chamber, they were definitely weakening the prosecution's case. But Harry had a feeling it wasn't enough, which was confirmed when Hartgrove caught his eye and nodded.
And then it was his turn on the stand. He fought down the urge to rub his suddenly sweaty hands on his robe. Hartgrove asked him the same questions he'd asked Ron about the visit to Aragog, and then Harry took a deep breath. This had already got into the papers thanks to Malfoy, but ...
"See, I know for a fact Hagrid couldn't have opened the Chamber, even if he'd wanted to. Ron and I figured out where the Chamber's opening was, and what was in there, pretty much the same day Ginny Weasley got dragged into the Chamber. We both ran to Lockhart, to tell him what we knew, but the git was completely useless. He was packing his stuff, getting ready to leave. So it was up to Ron and me to do something. We headed for the bathroom ... and that's when we found out that the Chamber could only be opened by a parselmouth."
There was more than a bit of an uproar. "So Hagrid couldn'tve. And it was a good thing I could, because I managed to get in there, kill the bloody basilisk and saved Ginny's life in the bargain." He was, of course, omitting the whole 'Lockhart obliviated himself' drama. And Fawkes, and the sword. They really didn't need to know that.
In the end, Hagrid was cleared, and reinstated as a wizard, allowed to own and use a wand again. He broke down in floods of jubilant tears, and it took their combined effort to steer him out of the room for the newsbite with the reporters.
Of course, they weren't satisfied with swarming Hagrid. They went after Harry too.
"Yes." He said. "I am a parselmouth. No, I am not the next dark lord. Being able to talk to snakes, despite popular opinion, is not, in and of itself, evil. It's just plain bad luck that V-" He thought better of saying the name, not wanting to start a near-riot "You-Know-Who is one, and has given the skill a bad name."
Harry had no illusions as to how his skill would be painted in the papers. His only comfort was that the smear campaign had all but stopped in the face of far juicier targets. Reporters do love scandals, and the whole innocents-in-Azkaban thing was meat and drink to them. And considering that Harry knew who Augusta and Septimus were going to deal with next in that regard, he knew his confirming he was a parselmouth would disappear into the mists like it had never happened.
Hagrid was a bit too overcome to get a new wand that day. Instead, everyone congregated at Hogwarts for a huge party. Everyone was thrilled for Hagrid, and most of the teachers (bar Snape, of course) offered to help Hagrid learn what he'd never had a chance to fifty years ago. Poor Hagrid couldn't seem to stop crying, at least not completely, though there was no mistaking the tears for grief, not with a grin wide enough to threaten to split his head in half in place.
Eventually, the rather exultant members of the Marauders (old and new) traipsed back to the manor. Harry especially was gleeful.
"First stop Hagrid, next stop Sirius!" He whooped.
The special evening edition of the Prophet, though, put some brakes on the mood. It wasn't the snarky commentary about Harry's ability to talk to snakes that worried everyone.
It was the fact that Fudge was wanting to push through an initiative to review anything and everything to do with Hogwarts with a fine-toothed comb. That in and of itself wouldn't have been worrisome if it had been anyone other than Fudge, who was still pretending Voldemort was dead and Dumbledore was after the minister's chair, was behind the effort.
"This doesn't sound very good." Sirius admitted, eyeing the paper. "I mean, some stuff needs changing, but I sincerely doubt that Fudge, of all people, is going to be doing this in an effort to make Hogwarts better and safer. He's just wanting to hamstring Dumbledore."
Harry had to agree with that assessment. "And make himself look better in the bargain, but spearheading improvements to the school." He added. Sirius nodded his agreement with that.
And that night, the pattern of the dream-visions changed somewhat.
The same dim room. A Death Eater meeting in progress. Not all of them. He had deliberately disincluded Severus from the meeting, suspicious of the man's loyalties after so long at Dumbledore's feet. If this raid went off as planned, with no interference, he would punish Severus as the traitor he clearly was. If the raid was intercepted again ... well, he would simply have to eliminate them one by one, would he not?
"Everything is ready, my lord."
"Excellent. Tomorrow night, we strike. Ahhh, Dumbledore, you old fool. You cannot protect them all. Tomorrow four of your students die. Lucius, you, Crabbe and Goyle shall visit the Creeveys. Avery and Wormtail shall pay a visit to the Dobbs, and Macnair and Nott shall visit the MacDonalds."
Somehow, Harry managed to jerk awake, despite the fact his scar hadn't so much as twinged. "Dumbledore. Gotta warn Dumbledore!" He gasped, and scrambled out of bed.
"Harry? Harry wait!"
Harry rushed down the stairs so fast he nearly ended up falling down them head over heels, heedless of the thunder of footsteps following him and Ron's strident demands for him to wait, to slow down, to answer him. Somehow, he got to the floo and yelled for Dumbledore's office. Too sleep-muddled and deeply rattled to remember how to floo properly, he sprawled all over the office floor in an ungainly heap. Half a second later, Ron came tumbling through as well. He'd finally stopped trying to get an answer out of Harry, and just helped him to his feet and pushed him into a chair.
A few moments later, Dumbledore, resplendent in pyjamas that were quite literally glowing in shades of blue, sleeping cap tucked down around his ears and his beard braided to keep it from getting tangled while he slept, walked in, looking startled and alarmed. "Harry?"
"Raid, tomorrow night. He kept Snape out of the meeting. Thinks he's spying. Going to kill some of last year's first-year muggleborns. Creevey, Dobbs, MacDonald." Harry all but chanted the information, his voice a horrified monotone. For just now, the chasm between them had ceased to exist. "I could hear what he was thinking!" There were not words enough to express Harry's horror. He wanted no part of seeing into Voldemort's depraved, maddened mind. No part at all.