While Harry is teaching, the Ministry keeps prosecuting and judging.

AMELIA II

"Mr Podmore, you are accused of trespass and attempted robbery in one of the most secured area of the Ministry of Magic. If you refuse to speak in your own defence, I will be under obligation to judge your case solely on the elements that were provided by the Ministry. That is, the testimony of Mr Eric Munch, the man who arrested you, and the material evidence he gathered on you. Do you understand this?"

This was not a complicated case. Sturgis Podmore was surprised attempting to break into the Department of Mysteries, although this would never be indicated on the minutes of the procedure. They had the testimony of the watchwizard who surprised him in the act, a test on his wand proving that he tried to use magic to break through this door, and tools found on him meant for this attempt. The case was clear. And yet, whoever was accused of a crime deserved a fair trial, and a fair trial involved presenting your defence. But Sturgis Podmore refused to defend himself. He remained mute for the whole proceeding, and when it was his time to speak, he declared that he had nothing to say.

They were in Amelia's office. She had almost been surprised that Fudge let her handle this judicial procedure on her own. For minor violations such as these, it wasn't rare for the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to judge the case herself. It was even common. But she was surprised that Fudge didn't seize the opportunity to bring this trial in front of the Wizengamot. After all, Sturgis Podmore was a well-known supporter and great friend of Albus Dumbledore. Amelia even knew that he was part of the Order of the Phoenix, having been part of the organization during the previous war. She was even surprised that neither Dumbledore nor anyone from the Order had come to defend him. Perhaps Fudge didn't want to take the risk of suffering another humiliation before the Wizengamot, but even then, Podmore's actions unsettled her.

It was this, in addition to her wish to seek justice at all costs, that pushed her to insist for Podmore to present a defence. But the man didn't flinch.

"I understand perfectly, Madam Bones. And as I said, I have nothing to say," the accused declared.

Amelia looked at her right. A court scribe, being in that instance Mafalda Hopkirk, was taking notes of everything that was being said during the procedure. Three officials of the Ministry also attended the private trial, as witnesses to guarantee the procedure and rights of the accused were respected.

Amelia took a deep breath, knowing there was only one thing to do. "Then in this case, I will rule. Please stand up."

The accused did so. His face was impassive. His expression said nothing of what he was feeling. He didn't look afraid. This whole case was odd. Amelia could feel that something was odd. But they had reached this moment of the trial, and she couldn't back off.

"Sturgis Podmore, in light of the evidence presented at this trial, I hereby declare you guilty of trespass and attempted robbery at the Ministry of Magic. As I haven't been able to find any element that might justify or explain your behaviour, or any extenuating circumstances, I condemn you at the maximum sentence for those violations of the law. You are hereby condemned to six months of imprisonment. Is there anything you wish to say?"

"As I said, I have nothing to say," the man replied placidly.

She made a nod towards one of the officials. He opened the door of her office, and two other employees from the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol showed up.

"You will be escorted to your place of detention," Amelia continued. "If you resist in any way, this could result in further criminal charges against you."

He didn't resist. He let the two men escort him without saying a single word. Amelia watched them leave without a word as well, but also with a million questions remaining in her mind. Why did this man offer no defence? Why did no one show up to speak for him? And why did he try to break into the Department of Mysteries? The man was sentenced, but they had no idea as to what he was doing there, and what he was seeking within the department. This preoccupied Amelia, adding another event to the list of unexplained occurrences so far, a list that kept growing.

She ordered Mafalda to send copies of the minutes to all relevant branches within the Ministry, including the Department of Mysteries. As to what they would do with it, Amelia wasn't sure. She had tried to get from them the information as to what Sturgis Podmore might have been looking for. But the Unspeakables were not called this way for nothing. They remained tight-lipped. Whenever something concerned them, they refused to talk. Even the Minister had limited knowledge about their activities.

The officials left thereafter. Amelia was alone in her office, with just enough time to read a few more reports. One concerned new cases of regurgitating toilets, written by the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. Arthur Weasley and his colleague, Perkins, developed a trap to catch the person responsible. But now they required Amelia's approval to carry out the operation. Amelia quickly went through it, signed it, and sent it back to Arthur as a flying memo. It was a chance they had him leading this office, which was usually considered a place for failed or punished employees. Truth be told, Arthur Weasley had the skills and competence to occupy a more demanding position. But the truth was he never asked to be promoted, and the Minister was not interested in offering him advancement. If he was happy in this job, Amelia was glad to keep him there. Pranks on Muggles might not be considered important by many, but this small office was vital to ensure the secrecy of magic, protect Muggles from ill-intentioned wizards, and to prevent more important crimes.

Amelia had thought about downgrading Alan Atwater, the former Head of the Improper Use of Magic Office, to the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, placing him under the direct orders of Arthur Weasley. However, she didn't want him in a position where he could cause legal problems. So she sent him back to a clerk position at the Department of Magical Transportation, where he actually began to work when he joined the Ministry. This way, he would be in no position to cause any issue with legal procedures. To Amelia, his attitude during the Harry Potter case was unacceptable. He had hidden information about the use of magic, even destroyed registers to hide that her niece's Trace detected the same spells at the same place, and he would have broken the law if his men had destroyed the boy's wand without a disciplinary hearing. These weren't his first irregularities. Under his lead, a few cases happened in the past years when unlawful uses of magic were not followed. Up to this day, they were sparse and nothing indicated they were more than errors. However, after Amelia suspended him following the revelation of his failures in the Harry Potter case, some of his employees confessed that he willingly and consciously hid unlawful uses of magic from people whose families rotated close to the Minister and other high officials. These were treatments of favor, and although Amelia found no trace of bribes or anything Atwater might have received in exchange for this unjustified leniency, she decided that his place was not in this Office and she relegated him to a subordinate position. Corruption didn't have its place in her department. Not as long as she would manage it.

Mafalda slightly opened the door. Amelia had hired her as a personal assistant recently. She was one of the employees who gave the most details on the illegal practices of Atwater, and Amelia admired her work ethics enough to move her under her direct orders. "The Minister is here to see you, Madam Bones," she informed Amelia.

"Let him in," she retorted, finishing to read another report from the Department of Magical Games and Sports about the smuggling of false Firebolts into the country from a counterfeiter based in France.

The Minister walked in, Mafalda closing the door behind him. He seemed in a good mood.

"Amelia, I believe that I owe you an apology," he declared, still looking very happy.

"I'm afraid you will have to tell me what you need to apologize for, Minister," she replied.

"For doubting you. After this whole affair with Harry Potter, and when I discovered about… well… his relationship with your niece… I had my doubts about you. And your loyalty…"

"My loyalty goes to the Ministry, Mr Fudge. And you know it. I believe I made it clear often enough," she reminded him.

"Yes, you did. And you proved it today. Good job with Sturgis Podmore."

"I merely did my job."

"And you did it well." He chuckled. "I will not say their names, but some people around me thought you were going to let him go. You should have seen their expressions a moment ago, when we learned of the sentence you delivered."

"He was obviously guilty and refused to explain himself. This was the appropriate sentence."

If Podmore had explained his actions, if he had told why he tried to enter the Department of Mysteries and what he was trying to steal, Amelia might have reduced his sentence. Reducing the sentence when someone admitted his crime and the reasons behind it was a good way for the Ministry to learn more about crimes that were committed and the reasons behind it. It bothered Amelia that they couldn't know what Podmore was actually trying to steal, and she doubted that six months in prison would make him change his mind. Not to mention that he would spend his prison time without direct contact with the Dementors, in a section of Azkaban where Dementors could not physically interact with prisoners. Amelia would not place an ally of Dumbledore in a situation where Dementors would have direct access to him. She didn't want another murder attempt to take place.

"Yes, it was," Fudge confirmed, looking reinvigorated. "It will teach Dumbledore and his friends that you don't play with my Ministry." This wasn't the reason why Amelia delivered the sentence, but if Fudge wanted to believe it was the case, she would let him think so. In the current atmosphere, it was better if the Minister believed, even wrongly, that you had no sympathy for Dumbledore and his allies.

"By the way, this investigation, how is it progressing?" he asked. Amelia didn't need for him to specify what investigation he was talking about.

"For now, they found nothing. I'm sorry, Minister. But I told you that as soon as they would find something, you would be the first to be informed."

"It has been almost a month now! Your people really have found nothing?"

"You're asking them to find a crime that was committed by Albus Dumbledore. This is not something easy to find."

The Minister seemed displeased. "I thought some people would be ready to talk against him."

"Some have, Minister. But my men, after investigating further, found that these people who denounced Dumbledore so far were lunatics or invented something entirely from thin air. If you want to accuse Dumbledore of something, it must be a real crime, or else he will destroy the accusations in court. And I will not tolerate for my department to be ridiculed in front of the Wizengamot again."

Fudge seemed to be thinking about it for a moment. "No, you're right. We cannot allow something like that to happen again. With the Daily Prophet, we managed to limit the damage after Potter got away but… I see how the members of the Wizengamot look at me since this damn hearing." He sighed. "You were right. I should have let you handle this thing. At the very least, the Ministry would not have been humiliated before the assembly of the greatest wizards of our country."

At least, the Minister understood this. Fudge might not see it yet, but Dumbledore was not his worst enemy. Fudge was his own worst enemy, beginning by his refusal to even consider the possibility that Lord Voldemort was back. But Amelia could not tell him. All it would achieve would be for her to be kicked out of her position, maybe of the Ministry. It was better if she remained at her place.

"Anyway." Fudge looked happy again. "I have a few surprises in store for Dumbledore. He might think that he got the better hand by nominating Lily Potter at a teaching position, but he doesn't know what is coming for him. I wish you a good day, Amelia."

On that, he left. After he was gone, Amelia consulted the most recent report about the investigation on Albus Perceval Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Fudge had forced her to open this investigation to find a crime Dumbledore might have committed during his long life, right after Harry Potter was cleared of all charges. It was Fudge's condition to let Amelia's services investigate the Dementors' attack on the boy and her niece. Although Fudge continued to think the attack never happened, Amelia's investigators had found some things. They had found Muggle devices near the site of the attack that registered a significant fall of temperature around the time the Traces of the two children detected the charms. Temperature could not fall by nearly seventy Celsius degrees within less than ten seconds through a natural phenomenon. Visits to Muggle inhabitants in the neighborhood also confirmed that they felt the effects of a Dementors' presence that evening around this hour, although the investigators made sure the Muggles thought they were agents of the Meteorological Office of the United Kingdom conducting a survey on the summer's heatwave. The presence of Dementors was certain, although they still failed to find how they ended up here, and who may have ordered them to London. The investigation was still ongoing.

But what Fudge was really interested in was to find charges to prosecute Albus Dumbledore and get rid of him. Amelia doubted he would ever find something tangible. This was Albus Dumbledore. Although many people considered him a fool, there were also many who thought the opposite. And even those who thought he was an old fool still respected him for the most part. He remained the wizard who defeated Grindelwald and fought against Voldemort in the previous war. Furthermore, Dumbledore had almost always been seen as some of kind of fool, in a good sense, by many people. So people willing to denounce a crime he may have committed, whether it happened yesterday or a hundred years ago, were very few. And even if they did, and even if Dumbledore actually committed a crime, the proofs would be very difficult to find. Amelia had named an investigator who Fudge approved of, a woman who believed the Daily Prophet and supported Fudge personally, but she also happened to be honest and would never prosecute Dumbledore for a false crime or without enough proofs. Whatever Fudge wanted or wished, he would never be able to arrest Albus Dumbledore. This was the truth, and Amelia had no reason to lie to herself about it like Fudge did.

Amelia found herself thinking about her niece. Amelia and her parents ordered Susan to write to them after her first week of school to tell them how she was faring and to check if everything was fine with her. Amelia felt better knowing that her niece was within the walls of Hogwarts. And although she regretted that Evans went to teach at Hogwarts instead of continuing searching full time for Barty Crouch Junior, that made a competent and veteran Auror to teach her niece how to defend herself, and also to protect her if something was to happen within these walls. As much as Amelia knew the situation would deteriorate as Lord Voldemort rebuilt his forces, he had never dared to attack Hogwarts, even at the peak of his power. She could rest assured that Susan was way safer in this school than anywhere else in the world.

Though… Considering Montreal was on the other side of an ocean and the Université had a great reputation for protecting its students as well, Amelia wondered for a moment if Susan may have been better off in Canada, like her sister-in-law thought. Even though Rosa would have said that it was in Quebec that Susan would have been safer. Amelia shook her head. Aurelius came to dine with her earlier this week, without his wife. He told her that Rosa was becoming hard to live with. They were both afraid for their daughter, especially after the Dementors assaulted her, but Rosa suffered great stress from her job as well. In less than two months, a referendum would take place in her native country. Amelia failed to see what benefits it would bring to anyone, but if the referendum succeeded, maybe she wouldn't have to deal with two ministries of magic each time she was faced with a problem concerning a francophone Canadian.

Amelia went back to work. It was Friday. She would probably receive her niece's letter tomorrow. In the meantime, all she could do was work to make sure this country, and both its Muggle and wizarding communities, were as safe as possible. This was her duty and no one, be it Cornelius Fudge, the Daily Prophet, her brother and his wife, her colleagues, or even Lord Voldemort and Albus Dumbledore, would make her deviate from this goal.

Like I previously said, Amelia will be a recurring POV. Through her eyes, we will see how the Ministry is behaving and reacting to many events as the story unfolds. The sentence of Sturgis Podmore is only the beginning. And we will also witness more divergence from canon.

Please review.

Next chapter: Ron