One Day at a Time
The Trial
At my next day of trial, testimony was read from Harry describing what he had seen of me in the battle at Hogwarts. Harry was too busy to come to the courtroom, my lawyer said, but his testimony was to be the cornerstone of my case, the only evidence to stand contrary to my position as a captured Death Eater.
Despite my hopeful glancing at the audience members, Tarazet wasn't among them.
My lawyer was analyzing Harry's testimony, arguing that my saving Harry's life clearly showed I was on the "right" side, the Ministry's side, and releasing me would actually be beneficial to the cause.
Another day, and Tarazet still wasn't there.
The prosecuting lawyer was arguing that I could have confounded Harry, and that I could be taking credit for Seginus's death even if an Auror killed him. He argued that in such a dangerous time, the Ministry could not afford to let Death Eaters free if there was so much as a scrap of evidence against them.
Still no Tarazet.
Dumbledore was called as a character witness. He gave a brief speech about how I was certainly not on the Death Eater side, because I harbored nothing but positive feelings towards Muggles and Muggle-borns; he described my friendship with the Muggle-born witch Paige Collins while I was a student.
Still no one.
The prosecution retaliated by describing how my mother and father were both avowed pureblood supremacists, as were my two oldest brothers, while Deneb was currently on trial for being a Death Eater and Tarazet had donated large sums of counterfeited galleons to prominent Death Eaters. If this was my family, the prosecutor implied, who's to say I didn't share their beliefs? The judge said that it was my beliefs, not my family's beliefs, that mattered to the trial, but the jury was nodding along to the prosecutor and giving me shrewd judgmental looks.
.
The prosecutor tried another way to discredit Dumbledore's testimony, this time bringing in witnesses against Dumbledore's character. Dumbledore was too trusting, too optimistic, he saw the best of people even when it wasn't real, they argued. Quirrell, the host for The Dark Lord. Lupin, the werewolf. Barty Crouch Jr. disguised as Alastor Moody, never suspected for who he actually was. Who's to say Dumbledore wasn't also misjudging my character, they argued.
My lawyer brought in counter witnesses to counter the counter witnesses against Dumbledore's character. They pledged that Dumbledore was a wonderful judge of people's personalities, and that he always interpreted events and the motives behind them correctly.
The judge told the lawyers to stop focusing on Dumbledore's reliability and to get back to the point of the trial: me. The prosecution argued one final point about Dumbledore's testimony, saying that even Death Eaters could manage to be polite to Muggles and Muggleborns in day-to-day life.
The next day my lawyer brought in another witness, one who had been too busy to come earlier: Severus Snape. My eyes stayed glued to him the entire time, but he didn't so much as look in my direction. Instead, he intently stared at whoever was questioning him and informed them in an emotionless drawl of the night's events. My lawyer argued that Severus's version of events matched Harry's, and therefore they must be true.
The prosecution gave up on trying to prove Harry and Severus's testimonies to be wrong. Instead, they seized on the details of those testimonies. Both of the witnesses agreed that I had used the Cruciatus curse and Avada Kedavra on Seginus Colburn. Individually, each casting on an Unforgivable was worth a life sentence. Had the court forgotten that?
My lawyer argued that I had been using the Unforgivables for a good cause, on the side of the Ministry. Seginus had been a wanted criminal, anyway, and by using those I had saved Harry Potter's life, the Chosen one's life! Certainly that was not worth a prison sentence.
The prosecutor gave his closing argument. I was clearly a Death Eater; I had been discovered as such, and my use of the Unforgivables only proved how easily I used them. Who's to say I wouldn't use them on Aurors or innocent witches and wizards? I deserved a life sentence.
The jury had departed to make their decision and I was sitting in my holding cell. Soon I would either be released to go back home or I would be transferred to a permanent cell in Azkaban. I felt sick with nerves. In some room not too far away, a handful of people were deciding the course of the rest of my life. Suddenly, I felt rather attached to my holding cell. It was still a cell, but for one thing it was something sure, unlike the uncertainty now facing me. It also had, despite its small, dreary, grey environment, a relative sense of hope that I had never before appreciated—I had a possibility of leaving this dreadful place forever, unlike an Azkaban cell. I almost never wanted to leave the cell simply because of the sense of hope here that would not be present in Azkaban, even if there were no longer any Dementors. The guard informed me that my lawyer was stopping by for a visit, and so he was, bouncing into my holding cell rather cheerfully. "So how do you feel?" he greeted me.
I glowered in return. "I'm waiting for my prison sentence. How do you think I feel?"
"Ah, don't be so negative. I have a good feeling about this one. You had a strong case," he replied in an annoyingly perky tone.
"Juries seem to forget the whole 'innocent-until-proven-guilty' thing for Death Eaters," I refused to let his reasonless cheerfulness rub off on me.
"We'll find out soon enough, won't we? The jury's back in. I've come here to fetch you." Terror shot through my body and I reflexively grabbed onto the frame of the bed I was sitting on so tightly that my knuckles turned white. He seemed to have noticed this for he let out a good-natured laugh and said, "You'll have to loosen your grip eventually, and then we can go to the courtroom."
I stiffly stood up and walked towards the courtroom. During the course of the trial, I had been annoyed that it was taking several weeks to reach its conclusion, but now I almost wished that it had taken longer. The whole situation felt surreal; I don't know how somebody on the way to their execution feels, but I imagine they feel something like I did walking down that hall. I wanted to grasp onto every scrap of life that walked by, notice every sight, hear every sound.
And then the walk was over and I was sitting in the court room, feeling as though any moment I was liable to pass out because I kept forgetting to breath. "How do you find the defendant?" I jumped slightly at the judge's booming question with no preamble.
"For disrupting the peace and for using Unforgivables on Aurors we find her: non-guilty. For the use of the Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra curse on Seginus Colburn, we find her guilty on both accounts," the head juror snapped out each word in a dry, business-like tone.
"Very well, and what is the sentence?" the Judge replied in an equally business-like manner.
"We sentence her to five years in Azkaban." I took in a sharp breath of air. What surreal sounding words.
"Hey, five years! Not bad! I thought you were going to get life," my lawyer cheerfully clapped me on the back.
"You were just telling me that I stood a good chance!" I turned towards him, surprised at his reversal.
"Well of course I'm going to say that," he explained in a tone as though he was talking to a child. "Five years? That's nothing. Take it one day at a time and it'll go by like that," he snapped his fingers. "The Ministry thinks this war is going to be wrapped up within five years, so they're probably just being overly cautious by sending you to prison."
Five years was much better than life, but it still seemed to me like a rather long stretch of time. "So what now?"
"Now? You go to the holding cells near the port to Azkaban," he explained with a dismissive gesture of the hand, as though it was a small matter.
As I found out, they had not changed the holding cells nearby the port since the last time I had been here fifteen years ago, when I had intended to visit Tarazet. The smell of salt still hung in the air, and the perpetual humidity from the ocean breaking against the rocks led to moss covering the walls and the metal of the cell bars slowly corroding. Because this cell was only for the twelve hours before departure there was no bed, only a simple wooden plank attached to the stone wall that was intended to serve as a chair. As to be expected, there was nothing to do in the cell. All I could do was stare at the patterns of moss on the walls, sadly reflect on my memories, or feel claustrophobic that I was enclosed in such a small place.
One patch of moss looked a bit like a snitch if I turned my head to the right and squinted my eyes, but if I turned my head a bit to left, it looked more like a Dementor's hood. I was noticing this, when the guard brusquely informed me that I had a visitor. I looked up at him, shocked. "I know, I'm surprised, too," the guard chuckled in a surprisingly understanding way. "Just about no one knows that visits are allowed to these holding cells. People miss the chance to see their loved ones one last time because they just don't know." I continued giving him a surprised look. Who would be visiting me right before I left for Azkaban? I couldn't imagine that my lawyer would care enough to visit after the trial was finished, but nobody else had visited in quite some time.
A few minutes later the visitor strode into my line of vision. My jaw dropped while the corners of my mouth turned up into a large smile. "Tarazet!" I exclaimed in joyous, disbelieving voice.
My youngest brother greeted me with a half-smile tainted with sadness. "I wanted to say…'Hello' before the start of your sentence. I…I heard about the results of your trial."
"Five years isn't too bad," I almost pleaded, half trying to convince myself.
"No. No, it isn't really," he sadly shrugged his shoulders and seemed as though he was, likewise, trying to convince himself. "There aren't even Dementors there, anymore."
I nodded, and we silently stood on opposite sides of the cell bars for a few moments. A memory flashed in front of my eyes—I, free, and Tarazet behind the cell bars. I had not shown my face, and yet Tarazet had come to visit. I had killed one of our brothers, and he was still here.
"I'm sorry!" my mouth suddenly blurt out. A look of surprise appeared on his features, but I continued before he could say anything. "I'm sorry I didn't show my face before you were taken to Azkaban. I'm sorry I was mad at you and ashamed of you and I'm sorry that I was so petty, and immature, and cowardly and I'm sorry I was so rude to you when you found me again at Hogwarts."
My youngest brother had the look of mild surprise on his features a moment longer before he let out a small laugh. He replied in a tone which indicated he thought what he was saying was so obvious, that it was almost a waste of breath to actually say it. "Liseli, we're friends. You don't have to apologize. I admit, I was quite irate about those things for a while, but of course I'm going to forgive you. What else are friends for?"
I breathed a deep sigh and felt relief course throughout my body. "Really?"
"Of course," he continued in the same obvious tone.
I said my next words quickly, as though afraid I would lose the resolve to say them or that he might interrupt me. "I also want you to know that—that I regret killing Seginus. I don't know what I would do if I was in that situation again, but I don't want you to think that I feel completely guiltless about what I did."
He said in a quieter voice, "I'll get over it, eventually. I'm still mad at you right now—I mean, Merlin, Liseli, he was our brother—but I'm not going to disown you, or completely stop talking to you, or something ridiculous like that."
I closed my eyes and nodded. It felt as though a thousand kilogram weight had just been lifted from my being, as though I had been redeemed. "What's it like?" I quietly asked. "Prison?"
"It'll pass by. And then it'll be over and you can start your life again," he honestly replied. He wasn't going to exaggerate like my lawyer and say that a prison sentence would just fly by. What did my lawyer know? My lawyer had never been imprisoned, I was sure.
"And you'll still be there when I get out?"
A small smile lit up Tarazet's face. "What are friends for?"
…
A/N: So I'm sure at this point you're probably wondering where Snape has been, but no fear! He shall be returning next chapter. Also (heh heh) anyone notice my not-so-subtle reference to the title of the story? And does Tarazet seem to be acting reasonably?
Anyways, thanks so much to tibys, Mark Darcy, angelofire, Leslie, tat1312 and PollyWantCookie for reviewing!