Chapter 36

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'So, you've heard from Hermione, how did it go?' Susan asked that night.

'I found out where she was staying and rang her. Neville was right! Some vindictive bitch gave her 'Wizarding Customs and Manners a Muggleborn's Guide' by Cecily Cuthbert, and Neville strongly suggested that I tell her to stop relying on it for advice before she said or did something so unacceptable that she couldn't recover from, so I gave her some better books since she wouldn't have taken my word for it. Luckily, she hadn't sent the congratulatory letter to Amelia yet,' Harry thought back wearily.

'What did she have to say about our betrothal?' Susan asked.

'She asked a lot of questions then said she was happy for me,' Harry replied.

'Did she mean it?' Susan asked.

'Yes, I think she did, or at least she wanted to be happy for us. She still thinks we're too young to make such a total commitment but I told her more about the bond and I think she's finally forgiven me for not asking her for help to unblock my magic. She finally understood why I couldn't do that with her and I think she's secretly glad not to be having to deal with the side effects of the bond. I told her about what happened the first Quidditch practice, and about the food problem,' Harry replied.

Susan laughed. 'Good call. Wait, you told her that her magic wasn't strong enough to unblock yours without being overwhelmed?'

'No, I meant that she couldn't have unblocked my magic and just moved on as if nothing had happened, when my best mate has a massive crush on her,' Harry explained.

'Oh, of course, that makes sense,' Susan replied.

'She said she wants to get to know you better, so I think she'll write to you soon,' Harry warned her.

'I want to get to know Hermione better too, she's been one of your best friends for six years for a reason,' Susan replied yawning.

Harry chuckled. 'Goodnight Susan.'

'Night Harry,' Susan replied. They stopped talking but kept their connection open enjoying the awareness of each other as they fell asleep.

-o0o-

Ameila finally thought she had enough information to bring Albus Dumbledore in for questioning. Even still she was unwilling to show her hand and asked him to come in himself and discuss his former potion's professor rather than having the Aurors bring him in.

Albus came willingly, and Amelia served him tea and lemon biscuits as if this was a social chat, to lull him into a sense of safety and hoping that he would volunteer some useful information before he had to be read his rights and interrogated.

"How much longer will you be keeping my potions master, he has many tasks to attend to in preparation for the start of the school year?" Albus asked.

"You will need to hire a new potions professor, Severus Snape will be charged and convicted of his crimes this time," Amelia said mildly.

"Severus has my absolute trust," Albus said calmly, as if that would be enough to have the charges dropped no matter how clear cut the evidence.

He was surprised when Amelia did not back down. "You are a fool to trust such a man and your trust is irrelevant in the face of the proof we have that he committed the crimes we're charging him with," Amelia replied bluntly.

"Severus has been pardoned for his actions in the last war, he was a spy for the side of the light and he remains one of my best sources of knowledge about Voldemort's activities, he cannot be tried for anything that occurred," Albus said looking at her disappointedly.

"Fortunately for us you're incorrect, I have seen his official records. Severus Snape was pardoned for being a Death Eater, and any and all misdemeanours he committed while undercover in You-Know-Who's ranks. He was not pardoned for the murders he committed during the last war and he definitely hasn't been pardoned for the deaths he's caused since that Halloween," Amelia replied.

"Murders, I assure you my dear that Severus has never murdered anyone," Albus said shaken.

"He has confessed to murdering entire families, under Veritaserum. Your trust has been misplaced, the only way to help him now would be to provide me with a detailed list of the names of the Death Eaters he informed you of and the dates he gave them to you, the attacks that he warned you about and the deaths he has prevented, with Veritaserum testimony to back them up. Even if he can avoid conviction, the testimony Severus has already provided proves he is not a suitable person to be teaching our children so you will need to find a new potions master," Amelia stated calmly. "I also question his usefulness as a spy after you announced that he was one in front of the Wizengamot at the end of the last war when we now know several Death Eaters were among the Wizengamot members."

Albus was shaken by her determination to ignore his wisdom and prosecute Severus. He wanted to protect his friend but he had too many secrets which needed to be protected for the greater good. He couldn't risk being questioned under Veritaserum. He tried to compromise. "I would be willing to swear an oath that what I testified was the truth."

"Not good enough," Amelia denied instantly.

"What have I done to make you distrust me so?" Albus said with his best hurt expression.

"You knew about the Horcruxes and you did nothing to search for them or to find a way of destroying them without killing yourself, not did you tell those who had expertise in tracking down those sort of treasures or breaking dark curses. You had access to someone who could name all the Death Eaters, and which of them were truly loyal to Voldemort and would work towards his resurrection or would return to follow him when he returned and did not report them to the DMLE or do anything to make sure they were held accountable for their crimes. You knew that Harry Potter was prophesied to be the one to vanquish him but not only didn't you train him to do so, you dissuaded others from training him with vague promises you were teaching him everything he needed to know, left him with abusive relatives with no oversight other than a tracking charm to make sure that you'd know about it if they actually killed the boy, and now you're trying to shelter a murderer. You talk about being the leader of the Light but if you were being judged purely on your actions one would easily think you were a supporter of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Even the most charitable conclusion I could make for you treatment of Harry Potter was that you were setting him up to die," Amelia said her tone of voice betraying how disappointed in the man she was.

Albus looked at her in total shock. "My dear, you cannot truly believe that!" he protested.

"I don't know what to believe, but those are the facts. You talk about being on the side of the light, you run an illegal vigilante group who all believe they're fighting Voldemort and his Death Eaters but they're far from effective in part because of the limitations you put on them not to cause permanent harm. Your actions after his first defeat did nothing to stop him from returning or restarting the war. You sentenced an innocent man to Azkaban for twelve years and did nothing to get him pardoned allowing him to live out his life in hiding as a wanted felon when you knew he was innocent. You condoned the abuse of a young child whose parents died because of their association with your Order. Even since his return you've done nothing to prevent his followers from recruiting, you haven't warned us of any attacks or helped the DMLE to prevent people from being slaughtered. Your actions are Dark, no matter how light you tell yourself your intentions are," Ameila said firmly.

"You will not stand in the way of justice this time Albus Dumbledore, you begged for leniency last time, asked us to give the Death Eaters the chance to repent. They did not repent and change their ways as you had hoped. and nearly all of them still able to, flocked back to follow Voldemort and begin killing again at the first opportunity. They do not deserve mercy or lenience again, in truth they didn't deserve it at the end of the last war. Their victims and the victim's families deserve justice," Amelia declared. "If you try to prevent the course of justice, I'll have you charged with obstruction."

Albus almost staggered at the weight of her disapproval, he made his excuses and floo'd back to his office where he barely reached the chamber pot before throwing up. How could the woman distrust him so thoroughly. Not only did she have a position of influence in the ministry and a reputation for being unbiased but she was the guardian of the girl Harry wanted to marry. He had to do something about it, or her attitude would hamper the efforts to defend against Voldemort next time he returned. Harry needed to trust him to be able to destroy the Horcruxes and defeat Voldemort for good.

In her office, Amelia sighed. She'd showed her hand and it had achieved nothing. Albus wouldn't willingly sit down for a conversation with her again and now he'd be on his guard about his interactions with all of the DMLE. She had confirmed that he was vulnerable to Veritaserum though, if she could find a legitimate way to give it to him and with Severus Snape locked up, she believed he didn't have access to whatever Snape had used to plan to counteract it. Another indication that Snape wasn't at all loyal to Dumbledore. He did have access to the former Professor's rooms in the castle but the purging potion had worked just fine against Snape. It would be humiliating for the elderly wizard but he brought that on himself by running away from her questions.

-o0o-

"What are you planning to do with all your free time next year?" Neville asked. He himself was looking forward to more private time with his fiancé and no doubt Harry would appreciate the freedom to be with Susan without worrying about the gossip putting her in danger but he'd been spending so much time training for so long that having nothing but schoolwork, quidditch and socialisation was likely to feel very odd.

I'm going to devote time to becoming an animagus. I put it off after taking the potion because my form wasn't going to be useful in a fight, or for spying but I really hope to be able to achieve that before I leave school.

"We can work on that together if you like. You never told me what your form was, does Susan have a form too?" Neville asked.

"Susan's a cat, a pretty little ginger kitten from what I saw in her memory of taking the potion. Good for spying but it would leave her pretty vulnerable due to her size," Harry replied.

"And you? Is it something really embarrassing? Because it's supposed to mirror your personality so I cant imagine you'd be something like a flobberworm or a sloth, I would predict you'd be something that flies, a really pretty butterfly would be embarrassing but I'd say something more of a predator, I would have guessed dragon but a creature that magical has got to be too impossible even for you," Neville asked.

Harry burst out laughing. "Being a dragon would be cool, though totally impractical. I'm a snowy owl."

Neville laughed too. "Hedwig will be delighted."

"She already sees me as her chick," Harry replied.

Neville howled with laughter. "I see why you didn't pursue it before now," he agreed.

"I'm too small to be useful in a fight, to noticeable to spy. They're not native to Britain and everyone knows I have a snowy owl but very few of the Death Eaters have actually seen Hedwig. They'd kill a snowy owl hanging about," Harry said.

"But now the war is over and you have the time to learn things just because you want to learn them," Neville replied.

"We don't know whether he could come back again or not. Amelia is doing her best to make it impossible, or at least to make sure he doesn't have an army waiting for him to come back to, but we may never know if we've succeeded in preventing him," Harry said softly.

"Does Susan know? Wait, silly question, she must know if her aunt is helping you," Neville said.

"Yeah, she knows. I would never have agreed to going public with our relationship and betrothal if she wasn't aware of the potential risks," Harry replied.

"Can you tell me the details? Are you allowed?" Neville asked diffidently.

"Dumbledore told me not to tell anyone but it's my personal horror story, I'm allowed to choose who knows. I wouldn't tell Ron because his ability to keep a secret disappears if he gets angry enough, and he doesn't pay attention to who else is around him loses his temper," Harry retorted.

"Hermione isn't going to like having to keep something secret from Ron," Neville commented.

"That means I shouldn't trust her to know either," Harry said sighing. "Just you and Susan then, and perhaps Luna, we might benefit from her unique insights, and I wouldn't want you to have to keep secrets from her."

"It means a lot to know that you trust her," Neville said seriously.

"Luna has always seen the world slightly differently than the rest of us, but she's never been untrustworthy. If anything she's too trusting and too generous in keeping other people's secrets even when they're not worth her loyalty," Harry replied.

-o0o-

"I'm a little surprised that you didn't wait until your birthday to see the other betrothal contracts before finalising the one with Susan. Not that I think you did the wrong thing, I knew you would choose Susan, but I would have thought you'd be curious about the other offers," Neville said. "I know that I was a little disappointed not to see mine, though Gran knew of a few of them."

"I'm not interested to know who made me an offer, particularly any offers that were made after that night my parents were killed, a lot of them were probably spur of the moment in celebration or for the fame of having the Boy-Who-Lived as a son-in-law, but it would be nice to know if my parents had offered any other betrothals for me, and who offered before that night, but it wasn't worth the risk of someone else accepting their offer from my parents." Harry said.

"Well, I don't know which other families your parents set up a reciprocal betrothal agreement with but I do know that the Longbottoms were one of them. Though unless it was a multigenerational offer, the agreement wouldn't still be in your vault even if you had waited. It would've been destroyed when I signed the betrothal with Luna since I was my parents' only child. Gran told me about it and the other offers she knew about," Neville said.

"They signed an agreement between the two of us?" Harry asked surprised.

"Not specifically us, the agreement was for a child of my parents to marry a child of your parents. I don't think that our parents planned for either of us to be only children if they had survived. The contract was actually dated about six months before we were born but Gran said she didn't think either of our parents would've objected if we wanted to marry each other as long as the marriage contract allowed for the possibility of children," Neville explained.

"Did you have any other reciprocal agreements?" Harry asked.

"If you don't mind sharing that with us," Susan said hurriedly.

"Other than with both of you, no I didn't. Gran mentioned that Dad had told her the Weasleys had been wanting to make one but she said Dad didn't trust Molly with a reciprocal agreement, and didn't want me to end up married to a woman with a temper like that if her daughter inherited it, and none of the other order members had children the right age," Neville said.

"No, that's the main reason I didn't want to wait until my birthday so I could see the other contract offers my parents made for me. I was afraid that there was a reciprocal agreement for me and Ginny. It would explain why she felt like she had the right to warn witches off dating me even before I showed any interest in them and I know Ginny didn't take me not wanting to date her very well, I was worried about what she'd do if there was a reciprocal agreement and she had access to it, especially after Voldemort was killed and she thought I'd start dating. Even if she didn't have access herself, I think her mother would have given in to her wishes," Harry said.

"I don't think that she was as upset about it as she made out when you were around," Neville said cautiously.

"No, I saw that she was resentful rather than hurting when I was using my invisibility cloak to avoid her, but she was hurt and very angry and she was trying to use her emotions to manipulate me, which is why I was so wary of her. The problem is that I think the reason she got over me turning her down is that she'd convinced herself that I would ask her out once I'd killed Mouldieshorts. Ron said she was furious when she found out I was betrothed to someone else, so much so that their dad wouldn't tell her who I was betrothed to for a couple of days until she calmed down," Harry agreed.

"My dorm mates thought that Harry and Ginny were betrothed. They were surprised to hear that I had an active offer from him," Susan said. "Hannah thought that Ginny or her brothers might have started the rumour to discourage girls from throwing themselves at you. She certainly warned me off after she saw I was talking to Hermione. We were talking about our arithmancy assignment and Hermione mentioned you and Ron in passing as Ginny walked past us in fifth year before we were even friends let alone thinking of breaking bonds or secretly dating."

Harry sighed. "I think that my parents and Neville's parents were right to be cautious. Molly coddles Ron and Ginny. I can't imagine her denying Ginny a betrothal that Ginny wanted so much if it was in her power."

"So do you think she will be as dangerous an enemy as Pansy would've been if I'd accepted Draco's offer," Susan asked jokingly.

"Malfoy made you an offer? And since when do you call him Draco? You can't mean that you considered it? I thought he was betrothed to Parkinson," Neville spluttered in shock.

"That was the rumour but apparently there was no betrothal contract, I mentioned it to the goblins when I was discussing whether to accept my head of house ring and see the contracts or put it off until I finished Hogwarts, and they corrected me," Susan replied. "I called him Draco to differentiate between him and Lucius Malfoy, which seems important now that I killed Lucius."

"What were you doing gossiping about Malfoy and Parkinson to the goblins?" Harry asked amused.

"Aunt Amelia was trying to reassure me that none of the contracts would be to someone horrible because my parents loved me. I asked her if that meant that none of the girls in Slytherin were loved by their parents because I thought their betrothals were all horrible and the only couple who seemed happy were Malfoy and Parkinson and that was just because she was too besotted to see he wasn't treating her well. The goblin corrected me and he was going to write to the Head of Houses Malfoy and Parkinson and inform them that one of their offspring was claiming a fraudulent betrothal. I wonder if that's why he made me a courting offer, out of gratitude?" Susan said.

"So, you weren't just teasing Harry, he really made you an offer?" Neville asked again.

"Not just an offer but an offer to court me. But of course, I didn't consider it other than to wonder about his motives. After all, no matter how much he might have secretly hated his father, and there was no reason to believe he did at all the way he talked about him all the time, it's in very bad taste to make an offer to court his father's killer the day after he died," Susan said.

Harry laughed. "Perhaps he didn't know how his father died or who killed him when he made the offer. I can't imagine Lucius sharing details of planned raids with the spoilt brat who acts more like a rash and impulsive Gryffindor than a cunning Slytherin most of the time."

"And perhaps he heard a veiled comment from Tracy that made him think you were seriously interested in Susan and he decided to court her to get one up on you," Neville suggested to Harry.

"Or he just plain noticed that Susan is one of the hottest girls our year and he couldn't convince Greengrass to give him the time of day," Harry said.

Neville laughed at Susan's affronted glare.

"One of the hottest… second to Daphne the ice-queen Greengrass?" Susan growled dangerously.

"Well, I think you are much hotter than Greengrass, she's kind of cold and bitchy, but she is in his house, he'd know her a lot better than he knows you, I would have thought he'd ask her first because there was a better chance she'd agree, even if he thought you were hotter than she is," Harry said quickly.

"I'm not surprised that Greengrass wouldn't go out with him. Being in Slytherin, she'd know Malfoy better than any of us," Neville said.

"She's had to put up with Malfoy's posturing more than we did, and seen up close the way he has treated Pansy," Susan said. "Not to mention that she sleeps in the same dorm as Pansy and would have listened to her complain about him."

"Parkinson would probably try to smother Greengrass in her sleep if she took Malfoy away from her, even if Greengrass wanted to be courted by Malfoy, she wouldn't want to have to be on guard against Pansy's retaliation all year long," Harry stated.

"You're lucky Ginny's not in Hufflepuff so you don't have to worry about her attacking you in your sleep," Neville said.

"Do you really think she would?" Susan asked.

"Not to kill you but curse you with acne or a hair removal curse, possibly, she has a vicious temper," Neville replied.

Harry nodded. "I can't say Nev's wrong but I'd be more worried about her using one of the twin's pranks against you. Ron said his Dad made her promise to leave my betrothed alone but I'm not sure that's going to stop her unless the promise was reinforced with magic."

Susan shuddered.

-o0o-

"The worst of it is that I can't actually charge him with anything that will stick, or would allow us to question him with Veritaserum without his permission. He's a pureblood and while we can prove he's guilty of a couple of misdemeanours, he's not an auror so it's not a crime not to inform us about a known Death Eater, or the theory of how He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named attempted immortality, and he did consistently warn us that he may not be as permanently gone as we thought," Amelia said frustrated.

"Did he say why he didn't prosecute the Death Eaters?" Susan asked.

"He believed they'd been misled by a charismatic leader and they deserved a chance to change their ways now they were able to reflect and think more clearly. He claimed to have no proof they would continue their crimes," Amelia said crossly.

"They aren't evil, they're just misunderstood, I've heard that before," Harry said laughing.

"It isn't a laughing matter, Harry," Amelia said annoyed.

Harry immediately sobered. "No, I agree, it's bloody infuriating that he thinks more of the giving the Death Eaters an endless number of second chances in the hopes they will repent than protecting the people they're going to target next. Especially as his argument only really makes sense if he didn't find out the names of the Death Eaters until after the Halloween Voldemort was defeated. So many people could have been saved before the end of the last war if the Aurors had been given those names as soon as he found them out. I was laughing because I got a letter from Hagrid this afternoon and for a moment there what you said sounded exactly the way Hagrid speaks of the vicious monsters he befriends, as being misunderstood creatures," Harry explained.

"That's the bloody limit," Susan said exasperated. "I suppose we should be grateful that Hagrid never met that bloody Basilisk."

Harry sighed. "I'd like to think that even Hagrid isn't capable of befriending a basilisk or adopting it as his pet but given his history, he'd be completely on the bloody basilisks side, protecting it and trying to look after it until it petrified or killed him."

"He's insane, I know he's a friend of yours but he's another person that should never have been allowed to teach children. Thank Merlin he doesn't teach the first and second years," Susan retorted

"I think he could be a good teacher if someone else set the syllabus and made sure he followed it, he certainly knows enough about caring for magical creatures. I used to think that he was just naïve about the dangers since he's part giant and a lot more robust than the rest of us, but he's just following Dumbledore's directive in his own way, he's never once questioned the man," Harry said.

A/N Thanks to all those who read, followed, favourited and reviewed for your support.

A/N2: I will be moving this story and probably most of the others eventually to AO3. I post there under the name RaspberyDreams1.