Thank you to all of my supporters, with a special thank you to my awesome tear supporters: Jo Daviz, Antar Das, LegendaryWasabi, Ibuki Mioda, SvenGTX, Optimum Prime and Jack Schriner. I love you all.
yay, it's the first update of2022 for opening moves. hope you all had a good christmass and new year. Don't worry I haven't forgotten that I owe you all some cover art. I will be posting the preliminary sketches on as an exclusive for members today later today 0_0.
edit as I was weighting the note the artist sent me the line art so I will be posting that instead of the sketches!
Chapter 36 Justice Part 1
Harry stepped out of the floo and almost crashed into Professor McGonagall, causing Hermione and Fleur to laugh. Today was the trial that Sirius had called against Dumbledore, and Harry and Hermione both needed to be here, Harry as a part of Sirius's team and Hermione as a witness. Fleur had come to offer emotional support for Harry, as he was the one who would need the most support.
"Right, the first thing we need to do is register our wands and state our reason for visiting the Ministry," McGonagall told them as she turned and strode towards the visitors desk. Harry, Hermione, and Fleur were all familiar with the process, as the French ministry used a very similar system. Once their wands were checked and the visitor badges affixed to the front of their robes, they made their way down to the lifts and joined the crowd of people heading towards the Wizengamot. Unlike when Sirius had been on trial, this time there weren't any criminal charges; the accusation was being brought by the Warlock of House Black, meaning that this trial was going to be held in the Wizengamot chamber instead of one of the courtrooms. A trial of this nature was open to the public, and as Albus Dumbledore was the one being accused and the trial involved the Boy-Who-Lived, it drew a lot of public interest and a large crowd was queueing at the *lifts to go down to the public gallery. A few of the people recognised Harry and tried to question him, but Professor McGonagall intervened before Harry had had to say anything.
Harry met up with Sirius outside the hall that the Wizengamot used. Apparently, as Sirius's godson and the Heir to the House of Black Harry was expected to sit with Sirius in the Heir's seat. This was a little unusual, because as Harry was a Warlock himself he would normally sit in a section for visiting Warlocks, but as the House of Black had a hereditary seat in the Wizengamot the position as the Heir to the House was considered of higher status. As far as Harry was concerned, that just meant he got to sit with Sirius instead of having to sit on his own, as Fleur, Hermione, and Professor McGonagall all had to sit in the public gallery, though they were joined by Moony.
"Hey pup, you look like someone just told you that Hogwarts was serving flobberworm fritters for dinner tonight: queasy and a little sick," Sirius laughed, obviously trying to lighten the mood.
"Well, thanks to this little party of yours I have to tell everyone in the country things that I would much rather no one knew about, " Harry wasn't quite able to keep the bitter tone out of his voice.
Sirius put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "I understand Harry, more than you know and more than I would burden you with. However, the truth is this isn't only for you. If Dumbledore can mess up so badly with you, what about all the other young people in his care? Just look at your years at the school so far. Can you say you were the only one in danger because of Dumbledore?"
Harry thought about it. Dumbledore had been the one to hide the Philosopher's Stone in the school, and Voldemort had been there for a whole year, Merlin knows what else the shadow of a man did while in the school. Then the chamber of secrets in his second year, Dumbledore had had fifty years knowing that there was a monster in the school. Even if he legitimately hadn't found the chamber, how has the man not worked out it was a basilisk? Third year, Harry cut Dumbledore the most slack on it, as he had heard Dumbledore had tried to have the Dementors removed and had seen Director Bones try as well, but Fudge had been stubborn. And this year, while he and Hermione were the only ones forced into the tournament, were the other students in danger as well? What if the containment on the first task had broken and the fire golem had attacked the crowd, most of whom were students? Harry nodded to Sirius. He still didn't like it but Sirius had a point; it wasn't just about holding Dumbledore to account for sending Sirius to prison without a trial and sending him to the Dursleys without checking to make sure he was looked after. It was about stopping such things happening in future.
The Wizengamot and the public continued to file in until the room was packed. Although Sirius originally intended to go after all three of the people who had signed off on sending him to prison without a trial, the former Director of the D.M.L.E. Bartemius Crouch had been murdered recently, and the previous Minister for Magic Millicent Bagnold had moved out of the country, probably to avoid the Death Eaters that had avoided Azkaban. She had refused to return to Britain, and the Wizengamot had no way to force her back for a civil trial like this. So the entire trial was now just Sirius Black, notorious for being sent to Azkaban without a trial, vs. Albus Dumbledore, bigwig of the Wizengamot, International Confederation of Wix, and Hogwarts. Even between just the two of them, Harry didn't think there was a person in magical Britain that was uninterested in the case.
Dumbledore came sweeping into the room, but instead of taking the seat of the Chief Warlock like he had during the winter solstice meeting, he sat with the members of the Wizengamot who were appointed for winning an Order of Merlin, First Class. The Chief Warlock seat was soon filled by Madam Longbottom (no, Harry thought, here at the Wizengamot he had to call her Regent Longbottom), and he was a little surprised that the Wizengamot had chosen Neville's grandmother to temporarily hold the seat of the chief warlock.
After a few minutes of shuffling around and everyone getting ready, Chief Warlock Longbottom called the Wizengamot to order. "I hereby declare this emergency session of the Wizengamot, arbitration between the House of Black and the House of Dumbledore into session…" There was a lot more waffle about times and dates, both today's and when the arbitration was called for, and a summary of some of the less common rules used in the Wizengamot that were specific to cases of arbitration. Harry was starting to wonder if the Wizengamot would actually have any time left to address the issue once they finished going over the mountain of procedure that was apparently necessary, when finally Sirius was asked to stand up and speak his grievance.
Sirius stood up and addressed the Wizengamot from his seat amongst them. "Warlocks of The Wizard government. I stand before you a wronged man, wronged by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Warlock of the House of Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wix, currently suspended Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and Order of Merlin first class. I allege that he did knowingly and with full knowledge of the illegality of his actions withhold my right of trial from me after my arrest in the early hours of November 1st 1981. ..." The very formal way that Sirius was talking was very different from the Sirius that Harry had come to know.
"...That he hid evidence that provided my innocence by sealing the wills of James and Lily Potter despite the law requiring such wills to be read no than 84 days after the death of the writer of the will. That he did with full knowledge of the law kidnap my heir and godson Harry James Potter. That he illegally bypassed the Department of Wizarding Children's Welfare and placed my godson in an unsuitable and unsafe home. And that Albus Dumbledore failed to perform even a single welfare check on my godson despite having abused his position as Chief Warlock to have himself named as the magical guardian. In short, the suspended Chief Warlock has abused every single position of authority he holds in this country to systematically attack me, my House, and my heir, and I request censorship and compensation from the House of Dumbledore." Sirius finished speaking and after a quick nod at the Acting Chief Warlock returned to his seat.
Harry looked around the room and took in the reactions of the crowd. They were mixed, some of them looked with predatory glee at Dumbledore like sharks that tasted blood in the water while others looked shocked and almost betrayed. It seemed like Dumbledore was rather like marmite as a political figure, you either loved him or hated him. Dumbledore did still seem to have a few people on his side, as they were staring at Sirius and him with angry expressions. Harry looked up to the public gallery to see Hermione and Fleur sitting with Professor McGonagalland watching him. When they saw him look at them, they both shot him reassuring smiles.
Next, Dumbledore was given the right to reply in his defence. He stood up and addressed the Wizengamot, his smiling grandfatherly persona out in force. "Ladies and gentlemen of The Wizengamot…" Harry was sure from the way Sirius had spoken and the few looks that were sent Dumbledore's way from other members of the Wizengamot that it was a breach of protocol to refer to the Warlocks, the Heads of their Houses, as anything other than "Warlock" in this setting. "...I can understand the anger of young Mr. Black. He has suffered far more than he deserves, but he is laying the blame for his incarceration at the feet of the wrong man. It was others who decided to not give him a trial, I was only one vote of three. As to the charge of kidnap, I placed the boy with his closest relatives, his mother's sister. Was this against the wills of Lily and James? Maybe, I never read them." There was an intake of breath as a few people were surprised by that, who would seal a will without reading it?
Dumbledore continued. "However, given that they had just been betrayed by a person they trusted with the secret of their hidden home, then I turned to the only people I knew could not be affiliated with Voldemort," nearly everyone in the hall flinched at Dumbledore's use of the name, "Lily's muggle sister and her completely muggle family. Did I follow all the red tape to do so? No, but such things take time and let information leak out, and had it reached the wrong ears it could have had fatal consequences for young Mr. Potter. There were no good options available, so I did the least wrong thing that I could, and Mr. Potter, it must be noted, did return to us at the age of 11 when he came to Hogwarts whole and unmarred." Dumbledore returned to his seat after his opening speech.
Harry was bristling at Dumbledore's speech. He was hardly whole and unmarred, he was smaller than he should be and his back was covered in the evidence of the beatings his uncle had given him. And Dumbledore was the Chief Warlock, he could have raised a fuss and forced the trial of Sirius, not even on the grounds that Sirius deserved one but because none of the people from important pureblood families would be happy with the idea that they to could be sent to Azkaban without a trial. Even Bellatrix LeStrange had gotten a trial only a few days later, while she was busy spouting her love for Voldemort to even say anything in her defence.
From there acting chief warlock Longbottom took control again and listed out the incidents that were the centre of Sirius's grievance so that they could be tackled separately. They would take it one incident at a time, Sirius would make his case first, and he could call on anyone who was present to give testimony or Sirius could ask them questions. Then, once Sirius had made his case, Dumbledore could defend himself against the accusation by explaining his side and calling on others to give testimony or answer questions. The Wizengamot would then vote on who was right. Once every grievance had been gone over, the Wizengamot would decide what consequences, if any, were appropriate in the case. They were going to take the incidents in chronological order, as it was easier for everyone to follow that way, starting with the lack of a trial before he was sent to Azkaban. Sirius told the story from his point of view: how he had at first been afraid for his friend Peter Pettigrew who had been the secret keeper for James and Lily, and how he had rushed to the man's house expecting to find it trashed and Pettigrew either dead or suffering from the after effects of the information being tortured out of him.
Instead, Sirius found the man walking down the street completely fine; their group had been worried about a traitor for a while as that's why the Potters needed the Fidelius charm, but none of them had Peter. Sirius knew what he had to do at this point, he was an Auror and it was his job to capture the Death Eater and bring him in for a trial. Sirius had confronted Pettigrew, but the rat hit Sirius with an overpowered cheering charm, and then while Sirius was distracted trying to cast the counter spell Pettigrew had started shouting about how Sirius had betrayed James and Lily. He cast a blasting curse at the street behind him, killing a lot of people who had come to investigate the two men shouting in the street in the early hours of the morning, before cutting off a finger and transforming into his animagus form, a common brown rat, disappearing into the now exposed sewers.
"I was actually relieved when the Aurors turned up. I thought my backup had arrived and that after a quick reversal charm to keep me from laughing, we would pursue the man who had essentially killed the man who was closer to me than my own brother and his wife. But instead I was arrested, which surprised me but I couldn't say anything because it was difficult to speak around the mad laughter the overpowered cheering charm produced. I thought I would get a chance to explain when I was interrogated, or even at my trial, but they never came. I had to wait for the effects of the cheering charm to wear off by themselves, and by the time they had I was exhausted and fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in Azkaban." Sirius finished his recounting.
"Once I got out, I requested copies of all the paperwork that the Ministry had in respect to my illegal incarceration, and until the investigation was opened by Director Bones seven months ago there were only three documents. One was a fifty page report from the Department of Accidents and Catastrophes, a report on the aftermath of the explosion detailing Obliviations and cover stories given to the muggles. The next was a three page report on my arrest. The last was only a single page, the order to have me transferred to the maximum security wing in Azkaban, which was signed by the Minister of Magic Millicent Bagnold, the Head of the DMLE Bartemius Crouch, and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot Albus Too-Many-Names Dumbledore."
Sirius then called on Amelia Bones to answer a question. "Director Bones, you were an Auror at the time I was sent to Azkaban correct?" Sirius smiled a bit, he had been her partner at the time so he knew damn well she was, but he had to establish that fact in front of the Wizengamot.
"Yes I had recently been promoted to Senior Auror and you yourself were the rookie I was saddled with." That got a couple of chuckles from the public gallery.
"Then as a senior member of magical Britain's premier law enforcement force you would need to be more than passingly familiar with the law, correct?"
"Yes. That is part of the requirement to be an Auror, though generally we are less familiar with it than, say, law wizards."
"Tell me then, are you aware of any laws that allow the Ministry, in any of its capacities, to sentence a man to an indefinite term in prison without a trial?" Sirius asked.
"No, there was never such a law passed, no wix is to spend more than one month in Azkaban without a trial, and then only if they are too violent to be held in the DMLE holding cells before their trial can be held," Director Bones answered.
"So keeping me in Azkaban was illegal, and the people whose names are on this document..." Sirius held up a copy of the transfer order "...are responsible for that injustice, correct?"
"Yes."
Dumbledore was then given a chance to ask Director Bones some follow-up questions, but the old man declined the offer, saying he had no questions for her at this time.
Sirius called on a few more people asking about points of law or if people would personally like to live in a country where someone could, on a whim without looking for any evidence, decide that they should be given to the Dementors for the rest of their lives. The answer was of course no, but it took Harry a few minutes to realise that Sirius was asking someone from every faction in the Wizengamot. It wasn't subtle, Sirius was showing that this was something everyone on the Wizengamot could agree on.
Once it was Dumbledore's turn, he stood up and addressed the Wizengamot. "Esteemed colleagues, our unfortunate fellow has made a strong case for the illegality of his incarceration and it's not a point I can refute. However, during the war we were forced between bad choices on every side with a legal system that was in no way built for a war with our own citizens. Decisions were made that, while not legal, were considered necessary. A good example of this was when the Aurors were given the authority to use the Unforgivable curses when tackling Voldemort and his followers. This wasn't a legal move, but the Ministry of the time decided it was in the best interests of the public at large. I would also like to point out that there were three people who voted on whether to transfer Black to Azkaban without a trial, and the evidence was substantial. We had a man who everyone knew was the secret keeper for the Potters, something James and Lily told me themselves. We had Sirius confessing that it was, and I quote, 'all my fault!' while showing zero signs of remorse as he stood laughing over the corpses of a dozen people. Before you pass your judgment, I ask you to remember the chaos of the time. While we should always strive for justice, we were using a tool designed to govern a peacetime population, and as such our solutions were by their nature imperfect as well," Dumbledore finished and sat down.
Now it was open to deliberation by the Wizengamot. The process was simple but unorganised. The members of the Wizengamot got to ask any questions of Sirius, Dumbledore, or any of the called witnesses. However, most of the questioners seemed to be accepting of Dumbledore's explanation until Amelia Bones stood up and asked, "Warlock Dumbledore, you said that when you and the Ministry broke the law as part of the war efforts, it was because you were faced with choosing the lesser evil. Can you please explain to us all what evil you feared would come to pass by giving a then-captured and subdued man, without his wand, a trial before the Wizengamot?" That stumped Dumbledore, and once the crowd thought the implications through they started to turn cold looks at the long bearded old man.
The vote wasn't even close. No one wanted to be in the position that they could be thrown into Azkaban without a trial, and the fact that the vote was almost unanimous obviously shook Dumbledore, who had clearly expected more people to side with him just on his reputation.
-ϟϟϟ-
After the verdict on the first accusation was given, the Wizengamot broke for half an hour. It was mostly an opportunity for everyone to use the restrooms and to get a cup of tea if they wanted it, but Harry instead used it as an opportunity to speak to Hermione and Fleur. He and Sirius found the two girls and Professor McGonagall in the small canteen sipping on cups of tea. They had been watching the trial closely from the visitor's gallery, and the two of them were curious to see if the three women had noticed anything they hadn't.
"Well Harry, I don't know what you noticed, but no one seems to like the idea of not getting a trial," Hermione said when he asked.
"Well of course not Miss Granger, a number of them are only in those seats because they pleaded the Imperius at their trials at the end of the blood war," Professor McGonagall explained. "If any one would be terrified of a Ministry throwing suspected Death Eaters into prison without their writ of habeas corpus, it's them."
Sirius snorted in amusement at Professor McGonagall's statement. "Even if all it did was give them the opportunity to bribe their way out of Azkaban. No way He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wasted magic on Imperiusing people like Malfoy, Nott, or Parkinson, there was no need. The lot of them were chomping at the bit to join him." McGonagall pressed her lips together, and Harry got the feeling that she was not saying anything because she would get worked up and didn't want to do that before going back into the Wizengamot, where she would need to sit and concentrate for the next few hours.
"What do you think, Fleur?" Harry asked. He had been noticing recently that, when it wasn't just the three of them, Fleur had a tendency to hold herself back. She was always there, part of the group, and went along with whatever the group decided, but she rarely stepped up and said anything. Harry guessed that was because Fleur wasn't a Gryffindor and never would have been if she had come to Hogwarts. Now that he had noticed, though, he was going to make a conscious effort to include her a little more.
Fleur thought about it for a few moments before she said, "I would expect a much tougher time when you go back in. Mr. Dumbledore was confident before and was surprised when the votes were against him. He underestimated you last time, he won't make the same mistake again."
The silence hung in the air as they considered that. It was only broken when one of the Ministry employees came around and told everyone it was five minutes until they were expected back in the Wizengamot. Harry didn't really want to go back in there and talk about what Dumbledore's bad decisions had led to, but he didn't have much choice in the matter. So, after a quick hug from Hermione and a kiss on the cheek from Fleur, Harry straightened his robes and walked with Sirius back to their seats, muttering under his breath, "Gryffindors forward."
A/N
*lifts - Brits use the word lift, not elevator. Because you can be lifted down but you can't be elevated down and lifts go both ways.