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Chapter 28

The night before the meeting Director Bones had planned, Harry was sleeping sandwiched between Hermione and Fleur. His mind, however, was back in his old nursery with the echo of his mother. "Harry pumpkin, what happened? You look like someone has died." The manifestation of the protection she died to give sounded concerned.

Harry tried to tell her what had happened, but the words just kept getting stuck in his throat when he tried to say them. 'What if she hates me for what I did?' and other such thoughts filled his head.

"Come on Harry, you can tell me. I wont be mad." Lily said, trying to sound supportive as it was obvious to her that Harry needed help, but her way of saying it may have been more suited to talking to a small child than someone Harry's age who was just on the cusp of adulthood.

However, the words sparked a memory in Harry of his mother saying those exact words to him before she died. He didn't even consciously remember the memory, but it still invoked a feeling of home and safety, enough that Harry was able to get his words out. "Mum I killed people."

Harry braced himself for his mother to start screaming at him or for her to reject him; he even prepared for her to leave and take the protection with her. What he wasn't expecting was to feel her arms wrapping around him and pulling him into a hug. "Oh my poor boy, tell me everything that happened." There was no judgement or condemnation, just genuine concern.

Harry told his mother's echo everything. He spoke, she listened. He cried, she comforted. Harry called himself a monster, and she slapped him lightly on the back of his head and told him never to say such things about himself again.

Once Harry was finished telling the story, Lily told hers. "People will tell you things like 'There's a war on!' and expect that that makes everything alright. After all, 'You're a soldier not a murderer.' It doesn't help. The truth is killing is hard, it's hard to do and it's harder to get over. My first kill was in the Battle of Hogsmeade. Your father and I were there on a date during our last year at Hogwarts. We were just coming out of the sweet shop, where your father had bought a bunch of cockroach clusters and was planning to prank your godfather with them. That's when we heard the explosion. Suddenly there were Death Eaters everywhere, and your father and I had to fight. During the battle I was doing as we had been told to do, sticking to legal spells like stunners. It was ten minutes into the battle when I saw a death eater pulling a girl from my year into an alley. Worse, this death eater had lost his mask in the fight and I knew I had already stunned him once before.

"It took me a minute to fight my way over to the alley, and when I got there Maude was already under the Imperius Curse and was on her knees opening his robes. I saw red at that moment. He was arrogant and had his back to the entrance of the alley. I shot a Piercing Hex through the back of his head. At that moment I felt brilliant, but soon after the battle it caught up to me what I had done. I felt terrible; hollow inside, like someone had come and scooped out everything inside of me with a dull rusty spoon.

"It was Maude who pulled me out of my self-pity long enough to actually talk to someone; your dad tried a lot but he just didn't know how to help. Maude told me exactly what the Death Eater had said he was going to do to her and how she was so thankful to me for saving her, as well as something that I'll never forget. 'You saved me, but you also saved every girl he would have done it to after he was bored of me. And you saved them from more than you saved me from, because they won't even have to experience the terror I did or the nightmares I suffer.'

"It took us months of talking, but eventually we both got past our demons. Do you understand pumpkin? You didn't just save your family, you saved every family they would have targeted after yours. Now would you call me a monster for what I did?" Lily asked as she stroked Harry's hair. Harry shook his head no. "Good, then if I'm not a monster you can't be one either."

-ϟϟϟ-

Harry sat outside the DMLE conference room, trying to look less nervous than he was. He had just learned that they were going to allow witnesses at the little meeting to decide if he was going to face trial. Sure, this meant that Hermione and Fleur and the rest of his family could be in the room to support him, but it also meant that Dumbledore and Fudge were going to be there as well. Even worse, Fudge turned up with Lucius Malfoy accompanying him. Harry wanted to object to Malfoy being present, but as it was the Minister of Magic who had brought him, he knew it was worthless even trying.

Still, Lucius Malfoy was in some ways easier to accept than the last person who arrived: Rita Skeeter. She and Harry had a pretty good relationship for a famous person and a reporter, yet Rita wasn't ever on Harry's side, just on her own side. If she felt it was a better deal to turn on him, then she wouldn't hesitate any longer than it took her to run the numbers.

It felt like Harry had been sitting there for days before the door finally opened and they were all told by an Auror that they could go in. There was a large table with four chairs on one side and two on the other, and the four seats on the one side were already filled with Madam Bones and three other people Harry had never met. Sirius, as Harry's magical guardian, took the second seat alongside Harry.

There were chairs around the outside of the room for everyone else who had come to watch. Dumbledore and Fudge both tried to move chairs from the edge of the room and place them at the the table, but Director Bones had sent the chairs flying back to the wall with a flick of her wand and told the two men that they were here only to watch, and that if they tried to interfere then she would remove them from the meeting immediately.

Once everyone was sat down, Director Bones started everything off. She went through all the stuff Harry had seen before about setting up a Dictaquill and introducing all the voices to it. Then, she read Harry his rights again before finally starting the meeting. "This meeting is being held to determine whether the actions of one Harry James Potter are worth the expenditure of resources required to call a full session of the Wizengamot to sit in review, as some people outside the D.M.L.E. believe, or if they fall so evidently under the exemptions for self-defence and the defence of innocents that to proceed to trial will be a waste of Ministry resources and taxpayer gold." The director then went on to introduce the three people who were sitting in review of the case. One was a Warlock named Perkins, who was the new Head of the Department for the Registration and Control of Muggle Artefacts. One was Madam Hopkirk, who ran the Improper Use of Magic Office. And finally Rufus Scrimgeour, who was head of the auror office. They would be the ones voting on if Harry needed to face a trial.

After all the introductions were over, Director Bones started to summarise all the charges that Harry could face and the dates and times of the incidents. She explained how Harry had willingly gone along with the Aurors when they investigated and how he had willingly submitted to interrogation under the influence of Veritaserum. Harry couldn't help but feel a little lighter as Director Bones talked. She was only telling the facts, but the way she laid them out definitely seemed to say she was in favour of letting Harry go.

"Mr Potter, as you have already been interviewed under Veritaserum regarding these events, would you consent to being interviewed under its effects again for this meeting?" Director Scrimgeour asked.

"Yes sir," Harry nodded, then added, "under one condition."

"What condition?" Scrimgeour asked, his tone guarded.

"That only the people who are currently sitting at this table are permitted to ask me questions while under its effects. I have serious doubts that some of the people in this room wouldn't take the opportunity to further some agenda of their own by asking unrelated questions."

Harry's condition was accepted pretty quickly, and one of the Aurors in the room to provide security came over with a box containing the truth potion before administering Harry the normal three drops. Harry felt a calmness come over him, and as the group of four Ministry workers started asking him questions he recounted every detail he could remember of the events. Harry actually didn't dislike being under the potion, if he was asked right then he would have probably said it was a relief. The calmness that the potion induced was a welcome relief from the turmoil of emotions that he had been suffering ever since Easter. The emotions were still there and he could feel them, but they were also separate in some way; it probably wasn't healthy but it was like a vacation from the turmoil.

The questions were just wrapping up when Dumbledore decided to interrupt, "Mister Potter, how did you feel when you killed those men?"

It was against the rules, but the question was asked and there was no way Harry could keep from answering. "Angry at them for attacking my home and family, satisfied that they wouldn't be able to attack and kill anyone else, happy that there was a good chance I could tell Tracey I had avenged her parents, distressed that I had needed to kill anyone, and angry at the Ministry for not doing a better job locking up these murderers after my parents gave their lives ending the war."

Sirius tried to pull his wand and silence Harry, but it was in his pocket and before he could pull it and point it at Harry he was already finished giving his answer to the question. While Harry was saying all that, Director Bones shouted, "Aurors, remove the Chief Warlock from the room now!"

The two Aurors jumped into action, and almost immediately Dumbledore had a hand on each of his shoulders and was quickly being led out of the room. He didn't offer any resistance other than to purposely walk slow enough that he could hear Harry's full answer.

Once Dumbledore was out, Director Bones turned to Harry and Sirius and said, "I'm sorry about that. But now that that question has been asked, I think it's best to ask a few more questions. Are you okay with that?"

Being under the effect of the potion, Harry had no choice but to answer. "That's fine by me, Director," he said in his potions-induced detached voice, but he honestly believed that the Director was on his side in this.

Sirius, however, was of a different opinion. "Personally, I think it would be better if Harry was given the antidote now. The one condition we had has already been breached, how can we trust this process? That condition was to stop exactly this sort of thing from happening. What does it matter what Harry's emotions were at the time? It has no bearing on the fact that If Harry hadn't acted so decisively then there was every possibility that innocent people, most of whom were school children, would be the ones dead instead of four murderous Death Eaters. I think you have all the information you need."

"No Sirius, I want to answer the questions," Harry said.

Sirius looked at Harry for almost a solid minute before he nodded. "Fine, but only if I can put up a one-way silencing ward so we at the table won't hear anything said by anyone outside it."

"Probably should have done that from the start," Hermione muttered just loud enough for everyone to hear.

Director Bones agreed to the ward and let Sirius put it up. Minister Fudge tried to object, but Director Bones told him if he didn't like it he was free to leave.

Finally, with everything done, Director Bones asked her questions. "Mr. Potter, you said in the moment you felt satisfaction at killing the Death Eaters. Is that how you still feel? If not, what made your opinion change?"

"No, I don't feel that way any more. It changed when you told me their names. Before that they weren't people, they were Death Eaters, boogeymen, monsters. I couldn't feel guilt over killing a monster, and that's all I can see when I see their marks. Monsters I needed to protect my family from." As Harry answered, he realised that Director Bones had already known the answer to this question. She had seen the shift in him when she told him the names. He couldn't help but glance over at Malfoy as he said this, only to see a slight look of concern on his face. Harry suspected that the news that he had no problems about killing masked Death Eaters would quickly make its way to Voldemort's ears, and quite possibly the ears of the other Death Eaters as well. Hopefully it would make some of them wary about coming after him.

The meeting went on a little longer, then Harry was given the antidote to the Veritaserum and a large glass of water, both to help wash the taste of the antidote from his mouth and because he had just talked for almost an hour and his throat was dry. Everyone except the directors were kicked out of the room so that they could all discuss everything they had just heard. Hermione and Fleur sat Harry down on one of the chairs in the hallway and took the seats either side of him, then both of them cuddled into his sides. It was both a gesture of support for him needing to relive everything again, and one of concern and worry that if the vote went the wrong way they could lose him.

The fact that the two aurors stayed close to Harry and were probably waiting to stop him from leaving or to arrest him if the vote went the wrong way made the truth that Harry was facing some serious time in Azkaban if the things went wrong very real. Luckily Dumbledore wasn't lurking in the hallway so he didn't harass Harry, and when Rita Skeeter tried to approach him for a quote the Aurors wouldn't let her get close enough. She did take the opportunity to ask Sirius a few questions though.

-ϟϟϟ-

"What are you trying to do here Amelia?"Rufus Scrimgeour asked his boss. "A case like this almost always ends up in front of the Wizengamot. What's so special about this one?"

"It's Potter-" she started but was cut off by scoffing sounds.

"I won't let his celebrity sway my vote," Hopkirk said, sounding scandalised and insulted.

Before anyone could say any more, Director Bones said, "I don't expect you to. I wasn't referring to his celebrity, but you have to admit that there are enough hardliner blood purists on the Wizengamot that he in particular would have trouble getting a fair trial. Do you really want to see an orphan child sent to Azkaban for the rest of his life for defending the family he is building from the same monsters that killed his parents?"

That took the wind out of Hopkirk's sails and she calmed down a little. "That's a fair point," said perkins. "But surely you don't want the lad to just go free? What if he does it again?"

Scrimgeour interjected. "You heard him under the potion, he is only dangerous to Death Eaters and anyone dumb enough to go after his family. Personally I think I'd rather just give him a badge and go tell him to get the job done, he seems better at it than my Aurors at least. They haven't been able to catch anyone from the Death Eaters who is important enough to have any real information, and they certainly haven't done enough to scare any new recruits from joining them. Potter probably did more to demoralise the Death Eaters in one afternoon than we have done since Potter's duel with You-Know-Who last year."

"That's another point," said Bones. "It was said before that Dumbledore was the only man You-Know-Who was afraid of. But Potter caused him more injury than Dumbledore ever did. I would bet that Potter is starting to feature in You-Know-Who's nightmares at this point. Do we really want to risk putting half of what's keeping him from operating in the open in Azkaban?"

"Amelia, are you listening to yourself? You are talking about a fifteen year old like he is a weapon. You can't seriously be thinking of turning him loose to go after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!" Hopkirk was outraged by the idea.

"God no. But keeping him at Hogwarts where he keeps the students safe because He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is avoiding a fight with Potter sounds good to me," Bones said, hoping they understood her point. After all, her Susan was at that school. She wanted it to be as safe as she could make it and she believed that was with Potter there.

-ϟϟϟ-

Eventually, Harry and the others were all led back into the conference room, and Director Bones quickly told Harry the result. "Harry James Potter, it is the finding of this body, by a unanimous vote, that your actions clearly come under the definition of self-defence." The director went on to say a lot more, but Harry honestly found it hard to focus after that as he was relieved to have the pressure of the legal case over with.

On one hand Harry knew he was lucky that everything had been dealt with so quickly. Easter Sunday had only been a few days ago, yet it was officially done. He knew this was in part because Director Bones had taken over the case herself, and also in part because the four men were Death Eaters. It helped make Harry's self-defence claim believable that his four 'victims' were all members of a notorious gang of terrorists.

Yet it was also true that every day since then had felt like a month. It wasn't all because of the stress of facing the Wizengamot, the stress of killing four people certainly added to the massive pile he was under. Still, the loss of the worry on the legal side had Harry mentally celebrating the load being taken off his metaphorical shoulders, and because of this he was going to have to rely on Sirius, Hermione, and Fleur to recap everything he was being told later.

Some people would have expected Harry to throw a massive "he got off" party once he and his family got back to Grimmauld place. However, while everyone was relieved beyond belief, the mood was still way too heavy for a party. Like Dan had said when Sirius had suggested a celebration, "It doesn't matter how much someone deserves it. You don't celebrate killing someone." That didn't stop Sassy and Dobby from making a big dinner for everyone, though. Their excuse was that none of them had eaten well since Sunday because of the stress, so now that the case was over they needed to eat.

There was of course a media storm over the next few days. Rita had owled Harry and his family for any comments they would like to make. Harry had written back saying that he and his family wouldn't hesitate to defend themselves in the same way in the future, and that the four Death Eater corpses should be a warning to anyone who is thinking of joining Voldemort's cause. After all, it's difficult to collect on the promised rewards of a one-armed lunatic when you're dead.

It was strange for Harry seeing his own words on the front page of the Prophet, and Harry was hopeful that it would be enough to make a few people who were thinking of joining Voldemort reconsider. Not that Voldemort was having an easy time recruiting to start with. The twins had told Harry after Christmas that, while they were at the Order of the Phoenix headquarters, they had overheard some meetings and one of the things that was said was Voldemort had lost a lot of respect when he ran from Harry at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. The blood purists weren't quite so eager to join up when they thought there was a good chance that Voldemort would lose to Harry again and they could all end up in Azkaban.

Another thing that was bothering Harry was a question Daphne had brought up. After everything had settled down and they had a chance to breathe, she had asked, "how did they know we were going to be in the house?" The only person outside of the people who were currently staying in Grimmauld Place that they had told was Professor McGonagall, which meant someone had said something to someone else somewhere, and it was either not kept in confidence or it was eavesdropped upon. The problem was, it could have just as easily been two of them talking amongst themselves, such as Harry telling Tracey the plan, and it getting overheard by someone. Sirius was nominated to talk with Professor McGonagall once the new term started up and ask her if she had mentioned it to anyone so that they could try and work out how the information had leaked. However, it was likely that they wouldn't ever find how Voldemort and his goon squad found out and that they would just need to be more careful in the future.

-ϟϟϟ-

Only a few of the muggleborn students were surprised to see Harry, Hermione, Tracey, and Daphne on the platform. Everyone else had heard the news about what happened over the holiday. Harry and Hermione, who had unofficial double duty helping the muggleborn first years, were spotted by a few of the parents of the students they ran the letter writing club for, and they were pulled aside and thanked for making sure their kids wrote home regularly.

Once they were on the train, Harry found out that prefects on the train during the Christmas and Easter holidays had a much more involved job than they had at the start or end of the year. Not all of the prefects went home for Easter, so the fewer prefects had to do patrols more often. On the flip side, the patrols were easier; there were fewer students, and this time they had all seen their friends only two weeks ago rather than the six weeks of the summer break.

However, Harry and Hermione were not having an enjoyable trip. There was nothing really wrong, but the duo were missing Fleur. Their French paramour had gone back to France the day before so that she could get back to Beauxbatons on time. It was getting harder for the duo to keep saying goodbye knowing it would be months until they saw her again. Honestly Harry couldn't wait until the summer when Fleur moved into the Hogsmeade house. Not only would they be able to see her on Hogsmeade weekends, but there was nothing stopping Harry from Stepping over to the house and either taking Hermione with him so they could spend time there or to sneak Fleur into the castle for a date night. Next year would be much easier on their relationship than this year.

At dinner that night there was a lot of quiet whispering and looks directed Harry's way. Apparently the news that he was officially a killer now had made the rounds and a lot of the school were unsure about him again. The only people who didn't seem to have changed their opinion of Harry at all were the ones he and Hermione were teaching self-defence to. Harry hadn't spoken to them all yet, but Ron, Ginny, and Neville were all seated pretty close to Harry and Hermione and had told them that group just wanted to learn how Harry had done it.

The biggest shock was later in the evening, when the twins pulled Harry and Hermione aside in the common room and, with Ron and Ginny, told them about a letter they had gotten from their mother.

"Guys, we just wanted to give you a heads-up that you may want to avoid our mother. She has gotten it into her head that, because you killed those Death Eaters, you have gone dark and we need to stay away from you before you are found to be the next dark lord," Ron explained.

"Don't get us wrong here, we aren't going to listen to her," one of the twins said.

"But we may act differently in a few situations to keep her off our backs," said the second twin.

"Not like she can tell George or I what to do anyway, as we are of age," said their first twin again, identifying him as Fred.

"I'm more pissed off at the hypocrisy. She is a part of an illegal vigilante group, but she calls someone who was just defending his home and family dark. Where does she get off?" Ginny ranted a little. Harry and Hermione really didn't know what to say; sure they agreed with her, but they didn't want to say anything that could be considered slagging off their mother.

"Guys, lay off her a bit, you know she is just worried about everyone after what happened to Dad," Ron said, and that had them all go quiet. Harry and Hermione talked to the Weasleys for a while longer before it was time for everyone to go to bed.

A/N

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