"I'm tempted to ask how it matters," Michael revealed on the way to a press conference.

"It wouldn't be a good look," Harry muttered back. "We don't want to have division between us and the Order."

It was a decision he reached after a lot of thought and consulting with the others. If the Phoenix had something to reveal to them regarding whether or not they should split up, there was no sign, but that was par for the course. No one expected constant communication, apparently, though Neville seemed to be concealing his disappointment. Countless headlines reading 'Potter Vindicated' from all over the country necessitated a statement, though, and he brought quite possibly his only unit who was not otherwise tied up with him.

"It's been a minute since you were out in the field."

"Is this the field?"

"Everything's the field. Treat everything like we're at war."

He knew Michael could tell that he meant to escalate only as the enemy escalated, and they took the candidate's stage in Diagon Alley without another word. The two of them had gone together primarily because he might have to evacuate them both and it was better to have a second set of eyes looking out for threats. It was nice to be able to keep their backs against a wall when scanning the crowd.

"I see you've brought a friend, Harry." It was Rita Skeeter, front and center, investigating the possibility of adding a new character to some bizarre narrative. As always, the idea was to give her most of what she wanted, or enough to keep her interested. "Perhaps you could introduce us before we get started?"

"This is Michael Corner, a trusted friend and a dutiful subordinate. They say that no one can have it all, but with friends like mine, I wonder what else I need. Things have overall taken a turn for the better, though the enemy is still out there. There may be more battles to face, and more losses to suffer, before this is all over."

He decided not to mention Ron. It was not going to help him, if he still breathed, and it was only going to be an unnecessary sad note for the public. More than anything else, though, it seemed unlikely his friend would have wanted it.

"Well, let's start with the obvious," one of the other reporters said. He might have been from one of the papers with foreign language versions available. "You've been treated rather abysmally by everything other than The Quibbler, for years. Do you see them as having high journalistic standards?"

"No, not really," he said, seeing the bait question for what it was. It stood to reason that papers would be trying to save face and getting him to say something ridiculous was a good place to start. "It's really more like everyone else had substantially worse journalistic standards. I'll start with Lovegood. He has some strange beliefs that he can't really prove, and some people like reading about it. That's all there is to it. Everyone else has consistently avoided even fair reporting when there was not a lot of information on the subject, and then minimized the Azkaban breakout." He thought for a moment. "That's in the past, though. There's no point in continuing that discussion. This isn't about revenge, either. It's about justice. And that means getting everything in order, and everything out in the open. I should think that any newspaper, or other resource, would publish an outline of the entire process of deciding to go with the false story. Name names. If someone told you falsely, let him answer for it, and do your best to explain why you trusted him against the advice of available information and basic logic. That's what I would suggest, anyway."

Most likely, everyone could tell that he had rehearsed that speech. It was an incredible mercy, or perhaps it seemed that way, that he was not insisting on burning down the institutions, but everyone who made bad calls, at whatever level, would be made to answer for them. Perhaps many of them had made honest mistakes. In that case, an apology was in order, not a beheading. There was no such thing as proportionate revenge; as long as the punishment for a crime was decided by the feelings of the victim, there was no way it would ever be fair. Revenge and silencing former critics would do nothing but sabotage his case; he wanted nothing more than for those same voices to start crying at all the boys who cried wolf.

"You've mentioned that it's important to understand the situation, that you've had some successes and things seem to be going well, but the enemy's still out there. What's one other thing that you would like to tell the public while all this is going on."

"I would like to thank my comrades for their sacrifice, and everyone who has helped us for their courage. Not long ago I made an announcement that I didn't care if someone had been born on the wrong side, or had made a few mistakes here and there. I can understand if someone out there thinks those were empty words. No one in a desperate situation would ever reveal plans to line up and execute everyone who failed to bend over backwards helping, at least not until the truly neutral people had been eliminated, and that would only come after the tacit and open supporters of the enemy had been killed, and that meant defeating the enemy first. I am willing, however, to enter into a binding magical contract which would involve all of my closest friends, to the effect that no one who either joins our numbers or aids us in some way, will be killed for any past mistakes or associations. It would not please any of us to kill anyone for such a cause, but this is the only guarantee that we can offer. There will be many more investigations that will make the simple fact-finding exercise of who exactly decided to strengthen this false narrative and why- look like a complete joke. All secrets will be revealed."

If anyone realized what he was referencing, no one said anything to that effect. It was strange how much Dumbledore could quote directly from a publicly available resource and have no one ever guess, even as popular as he was, and as many people had heard him. How long had he been putting on the 'mad old coot' act? Did he do that to allow people the chance to choose whether or not to listen to him?

"What's Voldemort plotting?" a particularly bold interviewer asked after a moment.

"We're not sure," Michael said after a moment. "He seems committed to killing Harry here, though, so no matter what, we can assume his plans involve just that." He looked around like he wondered how many of them would prefer it if he went away. While he had never wronged them, it probably stung for many of them to have someone criticize them from a high thestral while they could say nothing back to him. The press conference had been held within the specific context that the time for excuses and complaints had passed, and if they wanted the truth, if they wanted to start repairing their reputation, they could hear it straight from the source that had not at any point lied.

"Can you tell us the names of the Death Eaters who have fallen in battle?"

"Of course," the leader said, taking a breath. "There are quite a few. Not all of them strictly fell in battle; in some cases their bodies were discovered and it's not clear how they died." He listed off names, covering up the fact that some of them had really been killed in ambushes at or outside their homes, and some of them really had died under unclear, but not entirely mysterious circumstances. It was probably only going to lull people into a false sense of security if he revealed that Voldemort sometimes killed his own servants in anger; it was really only the low-value ones who died like that, and it had an effect of scaring the rest of them into trying harder than before. Most likely, the dark wizards were still collecting common criminals to serve as minions, and those would have to be disciplined one way or another.

"That's a long list," someone else said after he finished. "Many of them escaped punishment with the Imperius Defense decades ago. Does this indicate that they were serving willingly the whole time?"

"I doubt that they all could have been controlled like that in the first place," he said. "I'm not an expert on the curse myself, but I've spoken with those who could be called experts, and there are tell-tale signs that someone is being controlled over the long term. Even when you have a supremely powerful dark wizard casting the curse, he can't control more than maybe three people, and that's if they're not resisting at all. They might not know how to resist the Imperius, but it's complicated to control all three of them. To stabilize, you need to be able to find some common ground or trick them into thinking they're doing something else. From what I understand, there were experts on dark magic in the government in the nineteen sixties, but they were either killed or disappeared, and then their positions were removed, and all because they were labeled as dark wizards and someone decided to get all the dark wizards out of the government to fight corruption. The easy way of going after surface-level associations with the enemy won out over a genuine investigation."

"There's a theory, of course, that those positions were removed by dark wizards," Michael said. "Arthur Weasley looked through public records, and at this time we would like to thank the current Improper Use of Magic Office for reinstating his department- and he found that it was one of the old Lestranges. Funnily enough, the a similar thing happened with a few offices in other departments. Cordelia Pithe, for example, was a pure blood who was known for believing her sort were the best, but she never associated with the Death Eaters; she was even in Hufflepuff in Hogwarts, apparently to her surprise. In the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, in seventy nine, just before the end of the war, a treasure trove of evidence disappeared and the blame was placed on her just because of her unsavory beliefs. She had access to the evidence, but she wasn't the only one."

"I don't think the simple fact that she wasn't hiding what she felt should have made her immune to suspicion," Harry clarified after it looked like there was a question. "It's possible, though that she was innocent. Unfortunately for her, no investigation could go anywhere now; she was killed by a falling chunk of rubble in Azkaban when Voldemort assaulted the place in order to free all his loyal supporters." He shook his head. "Most likely, he had never heard of her; the whole thing would have been dreamed up by some of his followers who got off."

Their vindication had brought about a host of rabid fans who wanted to see some blood. There were calls for arresting anyone who had ever said no one could come back from the dead, and locking up family members of people who had something to do with the do-nothing government, and it was particularly rewarding to shut them all down in favor of a fair solution. It had been, after all, the search for easy answers, that had gotten them into the current mess in the first place, and he was sure that those responsible for more recent problems would again like to hand the public an obvious suspect to tear apart. Years ago, that had been Sirius, and it was the most important thing they could do in the present to keep that from happening again.

"So, if I have this all correct, the problem wasn't that the Wizengamot was too lenient," a journalist from before summarized. "You've said that your godfather was innocent, and they threw him away without a trial. The problem was that the problem became political and no one was concerned with due diligence."

"That's basically correct. My friends have read entire books about it. You had fear-mongers saying that asking a bunch of pointless questions while there are dangerous people out there isn't the best move, and then you'll have the interested parties sabotaging when it comes around to them. It's no secret that Lucius Malfoy has commendations for handing out gold to the right parties, at the right time. There are some who think that there's no circumstance where any amount of enforcement will ever reach them, and that it's all just a tool for them to get rid of people they don't want around, but if they were that powerful, they wouldn't need to be so indirect. I don't think that the fact that they avoided punishment points to a wholesale futility of law, but I think it raises a lot of questions about how many hands pass over these decisions."

"How many people could have decided not to accept the bribes?" Michael asked. "How many could have chosen to remain above board by announcing it to the world, if no one else would do anything about it? If they did, would the story have gone anywhere? I like to think that it would, because I don't know how bad things were at the time, but I suppose I can't be sure." He took a deep breath. "Even if the current government was as transparent as possible, people wouldn't necessarily be able to spot all the important bits within the murk of day to day politics. Fundamentally, that's why we were meant to have watchdog journalism. Neither of us are here to lecture anyone on how to run a paper, but honestly- bringing up Harry's name just to say that he was a liar and Dumbledore was finally mad?" He looked around. "Even if you're about to claim that you were sure there was no way a dead man could come back to life, what was the point in all that? This is just a way of illustrating things, I suppose, but I had a friend ask me how I knew the current information system was doing a terrible job and I just started with everything that the public could benefit from knowing, every true and important thing that I knew, and the fact is that instead we were doing hit pieces for a whole summer, and then a while after that, on a beardless boy, claiming he was seeking attention, which he got, from Dementors, and that was also never covered."

It was a good thing that none of their guests came to argue about how it was really quite unfair of them to expect investigative journalists to figure out who was telling the truth between a government official who set non-being prison guards on a witness, the latter, when he had not even made any statements since his initial account; there was no way of saying that he was becoming a nuisance. He had done literally nothing to cause a general disturbance, nothing except tell people something, and the content of what he said was what disturbed people. It certainly had not helped him, even to feel understood, over that summer when he was desperate for news from the outside, but he found out that there were apparently people panic buying and in some cases leaving.

"We're here to be productive, though," Harry said after a moment. "It'd be nice to know about how my story was suppressed, and by whom, but what's more important is how we go forward from here. There's a glimmer of hope, in that the public may have learned that they shouldn't care so much about the kinds of things you've been covering, and they should care a lot more about the kinds of things you haven't been covering. It's sad that it's had to become a matter of life or death, but for many, it already has, and maybe they won't want to repeat the same mistakes going forward. Even if we succeed in killing Voldemort, and that's probably a ways off, there will be more work ahead of us. There's work ahead of us that will make us all wish that we were still dealing with the war- everyone not in a combat role, at least. I don't expect many people to know or care about the true significance of this conflict, what the prophecy means and why it was made, and I don't honestly think many people have ever tried to find that out. Some of you know I didn't grow up in this world; I grew up around muggles, and by nature, they have more concerns. They have to work hard to put good food on the table; they can't just enlarge it or duplicate it; they have to take care of themselves because they can't just wave a wand and make themselves better again. Every little thing they have to do in life is much harder. I can only think that the reason this world struggles with seemingly pointless conflict is because many wizards have it so good in real terms, that they freak out over the slightest things, at least by comparison."

"You're saying, then, that there was a time when wizards were concerned with what they would eat the next day, and that made them better? That made them more likely to focus on things that mattered instead of killing each other?"

"It's not really like that," Michael deflected. "It's more like we're concerned about the muggles. They haven't really figured out how to get along; it's just that most of them don't have much of a choice. Countless might be tempted to turn to crime, but they don't have the means to get away with it. The richest among them don't have a fraction of the power we have and they do awful things to get richer. The fact that we're dealing with all these problems today means that even if they get what they want, a little more security, a little more extra resources, and a little more conveniences in their lives, they'll still have a ways to go before they ever start running into the problems we have now."

No one said anything back to that, not immediately. The journalists had expected to ask some questions to clear up a few things about what had happened, and listen to what they wanted to say now that they had been vindicated, but something about muggles must have not come up in planning meetings. In any event, the conference finished on a strange note after several more questions, of a generally more practical nature than what they had said so far. There were Ministry employees there; they could be recognized by their uniforms depending on the departments where they worked and they all seemed to be watching carefully, even if some of them looked like they would rather be anywhere else. There would be a substantial change in leadership before the war was over, and that would probably go further than strictly necessary.

"The only thing I want to add to all this," Harry said after a moment. "Is that many of you might be concerned by the uncertainty that this all presents. The way things worked probably gave you an idea of justice and morality, in addition to the idea of truth that you got from reading the news. For listening to all that, you have no one to blame but yourselves, and you need no one else's help to get to a better place. I highly recommend reading the Phoenix Script to get a better understanding of how all that works, and I promise you- there's literally nothing that can happen that will upend it. These new challenges that we face might pave the way for our muggle friends who will face them sooner or later, depending on whether or not we can find a better way of keeping them from being too disappointed that they can't do magic themselves- but they're not entirely novel. Over a year ago now I thought I was the first person to ever go through the kinds of problems that I had- in other words, I was a typical teenager. If there's any more questions, we've already discussed how to reach us."