Chapter 1
The trial was public. Painfully public. The prosecution thought they could use it to make an example of him, but all hell if he didn’t make an example of them.
Harry wasn’t sure how he was out of the psych ward at all, much less in time to watch, but he was thrilled to have a front row seat. The ministry heard about the boy who was eager to join the dark side, and apparently couldn’t fathom any part of what they had heard being wrong. They even asked Harry to testify, as though every word he said wasn’t going to be in his favor. Harry was a bit biased, for some twisted reason he couldn't help but relate to Malfoy, and he could try to explain it, but he didn’t want to be in that psych ward, so he never brought it up.
It was the very first trial that wasn’t undeniably decided, set up to be the final nail in the coffin for everyone even slightly associated with the dark side. Harry didn’t completely register it at the time, but the plan was a public execution.
It had been almost seven months since the Battle of Hogwarts, and just about every day since had been spent in one of the lesser-known prisons used for overflow after Tom Riddle’s death. So when Draco Malfoy was walked into the courtroom, almost everyone expected him to be paler, smaller, thinner, and overall sickly, which is not at all what they saw. Every single person watching could plainly see him standing straight with his head held high, looking healthier and definitely stronger than anyone who had ever seen him before knew him to be.
Harry had dressed humbly.Tried to, anyway. He avoided being hailed as a hero by avoiding everyone and everything, and now that he couldn’t for this, he wanted to look exactly like himself. So he borrowed a suit from George. It was the first suit he bought after opening the joke shop, and he was thrilled to give it to Harry. It was sharp, re-tailored to fit, both the jacket and pants made of a dark brown material that sucked in light like crushed velvet. He didn’t have or want to wear a dress shirt, so he stuck with a short sleeved button up from sixth year that was a bit too tight for comfort, but still looked nice. Luna helped him style his hair so it would stay down, and he wore an old pair of Sirius’ dress shoes that matched well enough.
He was seated in the front so he’d be ready when he was called to the stand, and had an unobstructed view of every proceeding. The Ministry very loosely followed the laws as they were, determined to put on a show. Surprisingly, Malfoy ignored their showmanship and didn’t rise to the bait. He stared plainly and maintained a neutral expression, and he would absolutely be lying if Harry said he didn’t zone out several times watching. The first few witnesses were called by the prosecution, and a few of them were quickly eliminated by Malfoy’s lawyer, who looked a bit out of place in the dreary courtroom, as she was wearing a bright yellow suit and had an appealing drive and confidence that threw off the audience – jury – as they had undoubtedly been expecting a drab and serious Malfoy attorney.
She was brilliant, and Harry wanted to meet her. In different circumstances, preferably. It’s not like Malfoy was his friend, but Harry wouldn’t call them enemies either. Not anymore. Not even close.
Harry didn’t care to know why the first few witnesses were dismissed without taking the stand, but he was surprised when he was called to it next. Malfoy’s lawyer didn’t say a word in protest, even made friendly eye contact with him for a moment, and when it was officially stated that he was a witness for the prosecution, Harry forgot to stop himself from laughing. Forgot to care, really. He quickly apologized when Malfoy side eyed him.
“Harry,” The prosecutor started, a stuffy middle aged man with thick reading glasses and a thicker smoker’s cough.
“Mr. Potter,” Harry interrupted to correct. He caught one of the judges smirk out of the corner of his eye. There were a panel of three of them, one was a man with a confused and desperate stare, and two were women, one elderly and hardly awake much less paying attention, and the other listening quietly; the one who had smirked at him.
The prosecutor begrudgingly started over, “Mr. Potter,” He said, “You have known the accused since your first year at Hogwarts school, you met at the sorting ceremony, is that correct?”
“No.” Harry was proud to be refuting him already. Though he was careful not to sound too happy, “I met Malfoy in a shop in Diagon Alley the day before we got on the train for our first year. I remember because it was my eleventh birthday.”
“Yes, well, it’s all the same, isn’t it?” It wasn’t a question, but Harry tried to answer it with a scrunched facial expression anyway. “You have been in close contact with the accused since you were both eleven, and the two of you have had uncountable disagreements in that time, have you not?”
“Yes, we have.” Harry reset his neutral expression.
“And we’ve all heard about how violent these… disagreements could get. Could you shed some light on the subject for us?”
Harry frowned, “I’m sorry, could you rephrase the question?”
The prosecutor paused. “How violent have your altercations with the defendant been while you were in school?”
“Sometimes we argued, sometimes we threw punches.” Harry glanced at the woman in the yellow suit, Relevance? He tried to ask her with his eyes. “The same things our classmates were doing.”
“Uh-huh,” The man hummed, leaning on his desk with one leg up, in a stance that was very… Lockhart. “Would you say he ‘threw punches’ more than your peers?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Harry knew not to push it. He hadn’t bothered to play the game so much before, and was nervous about overdoing it. This mattered to him.
“Oh,” The prosecutor tried to look disappointedly surprised, “Why not?”
Harry considered the question. If he said he was empathetic, or sympathetic, they’d all think he was too biased towards Malfoy. If he said Malfoy didn’t throw the first punch, they’d think he was violent and he’d lose their trust. If he said they preferred to argue whatever topic it was, they might take it as an endorsement of Malfoy’s intelligence and think him superior or manipulative.
“Because I threw more than he did. And… when it wasn’t between the two of us, if something could be resolved without drawing blood, he’d make sure it didn’t get that far.” Harry could feel Malfoy’s eyes on the side of his head.
“Did you ever become suspicious of the defendant’s intent or actions, in your several years of schooling together?” The prosecutor switched subjects.
Harry frowned. He didn’t know how to twist this question, but the prosecutor hadn’t said Malfoy’s name yet, and Harry bet that he didn’t want to. “I did, but I was suspicious of the people who helped me too. Malfoy and I were both kids.”
The prosecutor wanted to rush that reminder out of people’s heads, “Were your suspicions ever proved correct?”
The bathroom floor flashed in Harry’s memory. Dirty white tile, flowing water, and blood on the floor.
“Mr. Potter?” The female judge asked, when Harry didn’t answer right away.
“Sorry,” He said, “Um, I don’t know how to answer this question quickly, and clearly, like I’ve been asked.”
“That’s alright,” she said, “Explain it clearly, and leave nothing out.”
He nodded once, “Sixth year I was suspicious, I thought I knew a lot of things that turned out to be wrong. The night Dumbledore died-”
The prosecutor tried to interrupt, and Malfoy’s lawyer looked like she wanted to too, but the male judge shushed them and waved to Harry to continue.
He tried very hard not to look to anyone in particular. “ The night Dumbledore died, he had taken me with him to find a horcrux.” When no one questioned, he carried on. “When we got back to the school, he had aparated us to the astronomy tower. I wasn’t sure why, but he had sent me down to the storage area under the floor, and was rambling about something I couldn’t make sense of.” Harry swallowed and glanced down at his hands, “At one point, when I looked up, after Malfoy had disarmed him, Bellatrix Lestrange was standing behind Malfoy, with her hands on his shoulders, gleefully begging him to kill Dumbledore. He didn’t want to, anyone would be able to see that he didn’t want to, and when she started to get upset, Severus Snape killed Professor Dumbledore instead.” Harry reminded himself to take a breath and sit up straight, “I was suspicious of Malfoy all year, because he had been acting odd, and intense, and I couldn’t figure out why. That night I saw why, and I was right to be suspicious, but the outcome was not his fault.”
The entire courtroom could hear Malfoy’s labored inhale. Harry didn’t look at him yet. “So, no, my suspicions were not correct, but I was right to have them.” Harry wanted to mime a gag to express his disgust. The entire situation was wrong.
The prosecutor picked back up again, trying to find a way to spin Harry’s words, and Harry wasn’t sure what he was saying, but he couldn’t leave things the way they were, he couldn’t let them run with it. So he interrupted, “But it was more than that, there was so much more to it,” He glanced at Malfoy, who was looking straight at him, microexpressions showing his misery to no one else. “Dumbledore had the Elder Wand, from the Legend of the Deathly Hallows, and Riddle wanted the wand because his couldn’t beat mine, and the only reason he didn’t have it was because Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore and refused to kill him.”
The court didn’t follow, they didn’t particularly want to entertain his interruption, but this was information that none of them had heard before. “Explain.” The old woman said.
Harry glanced at her. “Riddle thought the wand would be loyal to him because Snape killed Dumbledore, and then he killed Snape, but because Malfoy disarmed Dumbledore first, the wand was loyal to him, until I disarmed him later on, and the wand’s loyalty shifted to me. If Malfoy had been the one to kill Dumbledore, then Riddle would’ve…” Harry looked to Malfoy without turning his head. He looked like he was going to be sick. “... and the wand would have been loyal to Riddle.”
“But the Elder Wand was not used in the battle between you and Tom Riddle? So how is this relevant?” The prosecutor asked, still frustrated that he had been interrupted.
Harry exhaled in a sigh, leaning back in the uncomfortable chair. “I…” He thought about it a moment. “I don’t know how far back to go…” Harry was at a complete loss, and he could feel the desperation creeping in. He swallowed, “Riddle made seven horcruxes. It was his original plan, and he only got to six before killing my parents, which is why no one expected…” He sighed again, “He created another horcrux when he killed my mother, but he didn’t mean to, and the thing his soul latched onto was me. As a toddler. Which means in order to kill him, I kind of had to die too. The whole situation was fuzzy, which I think is why Dumbledore didn’t exactly protect me, but he did give me the Resurrection Stone, and he made sure I got my father’s Invisibility Cloak back, which means that when I disarmed Malfoy and got the loyalty of the Elder Wand,” A few of the people present gasped, “I had every piece of the Legend of the Deathly Hallows. Riddle killed me in the Forbidden Forest, and I don’t know if I’m alive because he would’ve had to kill me twice anyway, or if I was alive to kill him because Draco Malfoy gave me the Elder Wand.” Harry felt frantic, his hair had to be back to its normal wreck, and he felt Malfoy’s eyes on him too. He also felt the irrelevance to Malfoy’s case. “And,” he said, “I’d also like to point out, that I only had a wand to kill Tom Riddle with because Malfoy willingly gave me his.” Harry looked back up, and settled in his seat.
The courtroom was dead silent, and it didn’t take long for the male judge to call for a recess. Harry spent the next fifteen minutes trying to ease his headache, and desperately hoping that at the very least, he hadn’t hurt Malfoy’s case. Ron and Hermione didn’t try to talk to him, but they stood next to him and tried to make sure he knew they were there if he wanted to. It was a routine they’d fallen into fairly smoothly over the last several months.
When they resumed the prosecutor pushed to pull Malfoy’s memory of the night in the astronomy tower, to try and verify Harry’s story and see if it was even worth it to work with the information he gave them all.
Harry, still technically on the stand, offered his instead. He turned to the panel of judges and made brief eye contact with the young woman before pulling to turn towards the man to ask that he pull his own memory. He appealed to the male, but made sure that the woman knew he was really asking her. It worked.
Harry had mentally checked out for most of the rest of the trial, checking back in the best he could when it called for it. Hermione would tap his knee, or Ron would nudge his arm, or he’d catch a name or a phrase or familiar situation. Unfortunately, he had given the court the idea of pulling memories into a pensieve, and hadn’t been able to stop them from bringing it up again. Never mind the woman who ran out of the room crying after seeing his.
The trial was only supposed to take a few hours, not even all day, which is the only reason it wasn’t pushed back and set to continue in the morning. It went late, very late, and a few hours after dark Ron and Hermione tried to convince him to go home and sleep. They offered to stay and fill him in on anything and everything. Instead, he managed to convince them to go home.
Harry stayed until the very end, even the extra two and a half hours before there was a verdict, and he was glad he did.
The atmosphere was heavy, ridiculously heavy, and Harry was tired but wow did he want to laugh. Full on cackle, if he could. Because it was ridiculous.