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~*~
Crack. The gavel’s scream was little more than a whisper as the fifty members of the Wizengamot, associated press, and Ministry council all vied to be heard.
“Order!” The Head Warlock, Analecta Strix, a woman of advanced age who had been among the Wizengamot for over fifty years, called. Harry wondered if her voice had grown more powerful when she placed that tall black hat, indicative of her position, atop her head, or if she’d simply been born knowing how to command a room.
Harry and most of the rest of the Auror Force stood in the spectator’s box, a sort of holding cell charmed to let sound in but allow no sound to escape. The tension was evident in the crossed arms and tight frowns of everyone in the cramped space.
“This is a bloody farce. That ancient bitch will do anything to get re-elected,” an older DMLE detective who worked in the smuggling and trafficking sector harrumphed. Harry couldn’t remember his name on a good day, let alone on a day like today. That circular room held nothing but bad memories, and the air within it seemed too thin and too dry as though, innocent or guilty, the room was determined to make all within it suffer.
Harry hated this place, but not even Aurors were above the law. In fact, most days it felt like their faces were pressed into the dirt by it. The small room was stifling, but they’d all agreed to keep their deep scarlet robes on, to be a beacon of support for their peer.
“All rise.”
~*~
“What is this?” Harry demanded, shoving a copy of the Prophet in Draco’s face while he attempted to drink his morning Earl Grey. He’d expected this somewhat. Aurors were very loyal to each other and the Department. This was not the first post-incident investigation to ruffle his metaphorical feathers. But this one had, unfortunately, expanded somewhat into a full-blown Wizengamot trial.
Perhaps, in a normal household, such affairs would be mundane or commonplace, but in marriage between an Auror and a member of the Wizengamot, nothing was so simple. While Draco would not be able to review the case details until after the Wizengamot was in session and he’d sworn his oaths, the press made it hard to remain ignorant of this particular incident for very long at all. Ugly. That’s what this case was, and there was no doubt in Draco’s mind that its trial would be likewise. Sighing, he took the paper from his husband’s hands and placed it on their small kitchen table.
“Harry, I didn’t know I would be assigned to this trial until just yesterday,” Draco explained, calmly because one of them had to be. They had learned early on that they could not be angry at the same time. “And I could not simply tell you as it would be a violation of the confidentiality statutes.”
“The bloody Prophet knew, how confidential can it be?” Harry spat while gesturing to the rumpled newspaper on their table.
“The Prophet is associated press. They often know things even before I do, but more importantly, they are not sworn to protect Wizarding World justice and law, as I am.”
“As we are,” Harry corrected, motioning to the space between them that seemed to grow wider by the moment this morning.
“Must we do this again, darling?” Draco sighed, placing his tea to the side.
“Why do you black-robes always act as though Aurors are trying, at all turns, to break the very laws we have dedicated our lives to protect?”
“Harry, I am not acting as anything,” Draco attempted, though he knew Harry was not currently in his most reasonable state of mind. “I will simply read what is presented, hear what is spoken, and make a determination based only upon that. That is my job. My only job. That is all I am. A vector of logic and reason.”
“So you think it’s reasonable to put an innocent man in Azkaban?” Harry’s voice raised to a volume that indicated productivity had entirely evacuated the area. Draco pursed his lips attempting to maintain his calm so that they did not end up slinging hexes at each other. No one said marriage was easy. It was work, but so very worth it, and Draco owed it to Harry, at this moment, to work not to let Harry’s frustration strip Draco of his diplomacy.
“His innocence is yet to be determined,” Draco snipped, hearing the edge in his voice just as he saw Harry’s lip curl in response.
“That could be me next time, you know?”
“But, thankfully, this time it isn’t,” Draco replied before they could wander too far down this path to Hell paved in hypotheticals.
“He has a family, a wife, children, he—” Harry urged, but Draco held up a halting palm.
“A man is dead, Harry,” Draco stated, his tone terse with finality. “I cannot discuss this with you any further.”
~*~
“Auror Ridgefield, is it true that on the night of August the fifteenth, two thousand and twelve, you were on rotation at Azkaban Prison?” The prosecuting lawyer, a tight-lipped bird wearing too much lipstick, asked as her heels clack clack clacked over the seal of the Wizengamot.
“That is, um, true,” Auror Ridgefield responded as a court assistant held their wand to his throat using a simple Sonorus Charm to amplify his voice such that all the black-robed bastards (Harry’s own husband amongst them) could judge him for simply doing his bloody job.
“A simple yes or no will suffice, Auror Ridgefield,” the prosecutor remarked as though the man were not only guilty but stupid. Ridgefield cleared his throat.
“Then, yes,” he corrected. “Yes, I was.”
“And can you recount the series of events that took place that night, starting at approximately half-sixteen that afternoon?” Harry’s gaze slipped to the defense counsel who was furiously dipping his austere goose-feather quill in an inkwell and scribbling some nonsense on the parchments set before him. He was a heavy-set balding man in a rather nondescript grey suit with silver cufflinks bearing the Ministry of Magic ‘M’.
Aurors facing on-the-job charges were not allowed private counsel, and instead, were appointed a public attorney. It seemed hardly fair to Harry that common criminals were afforded options that those who enforced the law were not, but Draco had explained a hundred thousand times that it had more to do with the optics or whatever than anything else. They didn’t want it to look like any employee of the DMLE had bought their innocence.
“I, um, received the affidavit of transfer around half sixteen that day, and—”
“And it was in order? Nothing unexpected?” The prosecutor interjected.
“Let the man bloody talk you daft bint!” One of Harry’s coworkers snapped, throwing his arms up. It was fortunate that this room was soundproof as much of the Auror Force’s commentary was not kind towards the members of the court.
“Y-yes,” Ridgefield answered, caught off guard by the interruption. “Yes, it was just a normal affidavit. Nothing unusual at all.” Ridgefield was not a large man, but some might describe him as stocky. He was maybe ten years Harry’s senior, married with two kids who both attended Hogwarts. He had a very amenable look about him. A very ‘every man’ quality and Harry knew that he would not harm anyone unless he felt it was absolutely necessary.
And sometimes, in their line of work, it was absolutely necessary.
~*~
“You want to get that, or do you want me to?” Auror Hanes asked, gesturing with his wand to the affidavit of prisoner transport that sat on Ridgefield’s desk. These were common as Azkaban was an ancient place with a mind, seemingly, of its own. Cells sometimes were flooded by the surrounding waters of the North Sea or otherwise fell into disrepair forcing the staff on rotation to move the mad bastards around. It was routine, but Ridgefield absolutely hated letting those animals out of their cages. Anything could happen.
“I’ll get it,” Ridgefield said, not wanting the rookie to have to move Prisoner 816, quite known for biting, on a day when they were down one Auror. He pushed himself to stand, grunting slightly in the process as his left knee had been bad since he took a hex to it in his early days on the force. “Get me the cuffs, will you?”
~*~
“Harry, please, is it to be like this throughout the entire trial?” Draco asked, crossing his arms as he leaned against the doorframe of Harry’s office where he’d been working late since the trial began.
“I dunno, you tell me,” Harry replied, curtly. It would be so easy to be angry with him, and frankly, that’s what he deserved right now, but Draco knew how deeply these investigations affected Harry, how strong his sense of right and wrong truly was. His moral compass pointed so intensely true north, but he had never been one for habeas corpus. Harry was a product of his training, a man who thought in shades of grey. A man who wished to protect the innocent at all costs.
Draco took a deep breath and stepped into Harry’s office. It was full of case reports yet to be filed and extra sets of red Auror robes without a gram or order or neatness. Somehow, Harry’s controlled chaos always seemed to perfectly complement Draco’s manic organisation. He sat across from Harry in a chair that seemed more coat rack than sitting device at the present.
“I know these trials are frustrating and frightening for you, darling, but I promise, I am not your enemy in this. Quite the opposite,” Draco explained. Harry’s brow furrowed as the green eyes that seemed to see straight into Draco’s soul flicked up to meet his gaze. The look on Harry’s face could level empires. A pained sort of desperate expression that pleaded Draco for a why that simply did not exist in their world.
“I don’t understand,” Harry stated. “He just…he was just—”
“I know,” Draco cut in, reaching a hand over the desk to clasp around Harry’s. The feeling of Harry’s hand immediately tightening around his own was heartbreaking and humbling in equal measure. How Draco had become such a man’s source of comfort, he could never know.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Harry sighed, catching his head in his free hand even as the one clamped around Draco’s squeezed ever tighter. “It was just…an accident. It could have been any of us.”
~*~
“Objection!” The defense counsel harrumphed, pointing a finger in the air.
“Over-ruled, sit down, Langley, for Merlin’s sake” Strix scoffed.
“Like I saying,” the prosecutor carried on. “Why did you not further examine the regulation spelled cuffs used to transport Azkaban prisoners between cells of the prison when they were delivered to you by Auror Hanes?” Several of Harry’s coworkers banged on the thick glass of the box in outrage though it made no sound.
“I was going to—”
“Objection,” the prosecutor stated, levelly, as her eyes shifted up to Strix.
“Sustained. Please answer the question, Auror Ridgefield.”
“My shift was over in less than forty-five minutes,” Ridgefield explained. “I thought Hanes had it under control, and I wanted to get home to my family as fast as I could. I didn’t…I never thought that…”
“Objection.”
“Sustained. Stick to the questions, Ridgefield.”
~*~
“Alright, Carrow, let’s get this over with,” Ridgefield sighed, pointing his wand at a dingy old wooden box on the floor. Everything about Azkaban was wretched, and he was more than ready to head home after his two-week rotation at the awful place. Every Auror was required to do two weeks every four months at the prison, and every single one of them spent the subsequent three and a half months dreading the next stint they’d have to do.
The prison was a type of cold that seemed to burrow deep into your skin and sap your soul of the hope of ever being warm again. It was dark as though perpetually stormy, as though the sun were just out of reach behind the thick, grey clouds. That is to say nothing of the inhabitants of such a place.
Red sparks sprayed from Ridgefield’s wand as the box opened revealing four steel shackles. He waved his wand and the shackles took their places around Amycus Carrow’s emaciated wrists and ankles, sizing themselves such that he could not break free of them. They were imbued with an Unbreakable Binding Charm that held the prisoner's limbs completely still while they were levitated from one cell to another.
Ridgefield stayed clear of that bastard’s face. Once a posh thing, the man’s unkempt scraggly hair hung back from his head as Ridgefield’s magic raised him such that his back was to the ground like a floating corpse. That’s all most of them were at this point.
“Clear,” one of the guards, whose name Ridgefield did not know, called as the heavy metal bars of Carrow’s former cell were closed and locked behind him. Just a few more minutes, and he’d be on his way home to his family and getting the hell out of this horrid place.
~*~
“Your name, for the court, please,” Strix droned. After twelve consecutive days of this madness, they were all growing a bit weary.
“Matilda Cauldronshire, Your Honour,” a woman with the most corporate air about her, in a white pantsuit with her hair pulled back so tightly it seemed plastered to her head, spoke, confidently.
“For the record, Ms. Cauldronshire, can you tell the court your occupation?” Strix requested, the exhaustion as plain on her aged face as it was in Harry’s hunched shoulders as he rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses.
“I represent McMurdough and Tillson,” she stated, succinctly, and as though on cue, both the prosecutor and the defense counsel, rose to their feet, prepared to cross-examine their new witness.
“We’ll start with the defense, Azalea,” Strix called, putting up a hand to still the prosecutor while gesturing with the other to the defense attorney. The prosecutor nodded, taking a seat.
“Is it true that McMurdough and Tillson designed and manufactured these Unbreakable Binding Charm cuffs?” he pointed to four pieces of mangled shrapnel that sat upon the evidence stand. Cauldronshire leaned forward, an arrogant closed-lipped grin upon her face.
“Yes.”
~*~
“This isn’t right, Draco, this isn’t justice,” Harry shook his head, gesturing intently with his hands. The only topic of conversation that could thrive in their house over the last two weeks was the trial. “Why is it taking so long to see that Ridgefield didn’t do anything wrong ?” Draco blew an exasperated exhale into the mess that was Harry’s hair. He tightened his arms around the man’s waist as they lay together on their sofa as though intent to squeeze even the tiniest level of patience and faith in the system into him.
“Justice built by man rarely feels as such,” Draco sighed. “We only seek to do the best we possibly can.”
“How can you say that?” Harry twisted to look over his shoulder. The dark circles under his eyes mirrored the ones under Draco’s own, and it felt this trial would suck every last drop of life from all involved. “How can you say any of this is fair?”
“I have never once said as such,” Draco replied. “Fairness rarely factors into matters of justice, Harry, you know that better than most.” Harry turned back forward again, his back pressed tightly against Draco’s chest.
“No one could have known the equipment was faulty,” Harry whispered because he also knew that they could not discuss the trial until the verdict was cast. Draco loved this about him. He loved Harry’s unwavering dedication to protecting those who could not protect themselves, his need to help, and his guilt when he could not. He loved these things, and yet he’d do just about anything to slip the weighted mantle of responsibility from Harry’s shoulders even just for a moment. “Honestly.”
“I can’t talk about this, Harry,” Draco explained for the thousandth time.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Harry said, and Draco knew he was earnest, but he also knew that Harry would do just about anything to right something he believed to be wrong. “I just don’t understand why it’s gone on so long. You have the Pensieve, Ridgefield’s memories, what more is there?”
“Memories, especially ones created in times of distress, are fallible,” Draco replied. Harry might be stubborn, but he was, when he really put his mind to it, reasonable, and he would listen to logic if presented well. “If it were you, wouldn’t you want every shred of information presented before the court? Wouldn’t you want the truth to be the loudest voice in the room?”
There was a lengthy pause before Harry nodded his head. Draco leaned forward to press a consoling kiss into his hair.
“Some people ‘round the office have been saying it should be a mistrial.” This time, it was Draco’s turn to nod.
“I could understand how someone might feel that way.” It was the most neutral statement he could make on the matter. “There has been a lot of press, a lot of noise, and, some days, it seems the truth is so profoundly quiet. So easy to drown out.” Draco breathed against Harry for a long moment. He was so intensely tired. “Sometimes it feels it is entirely silent.”
~*~
“We have a code nine-nineteen, repeat, nine-nineteen!” Ridgefield called as loudly as he could, but the guards around him were all ghost-white and paralyzed with fear. They were barely old enough to be out of Hogwarts let alone working in a hell pit like Azkaban. Running armed prisoner drills was nothing like the real deal.
“Hanes! Look ou—”
“Avada Kedavra!” The bolt of green streaked past Ridgefield’s face so close he could feel the icy death it carried straight into Hanes’ chest. The man’s lifeless body hit the ground with a horrid sound a split second before one of the guards had 816 disarmed and cornered.
“Incarcerous!” Ridgefield yelled. Ropes shot from the tip of his wand, binding Carrows’ legs and wrists where the shackles had once been. It all happened so fast. So insanely fast. Hanes was alive one minute and dead the next. The guards and Ridgefield rushed over, but the kid was cold in their hands. He was alive just a bloody minute ago and now he was…
Their panting breaths puffed in front of their faces in thick white clouds just as Ridgefield realised how frigidly cold it was. Just an instant before the prisoner’s agonised scream confirmed his fear: they’d forgotten to banish the Dementors. They’d left the prisoner vulnerable.
Everything had happened so quickly before, but now it seemed time had slowed nearly to a halt. A long, drawn-out exhale cut through the silence as they all turned back to prisoner 816. Little made the sight of those dreadful monsters any nicer, and nothing quelled the awful guilt like a bottomless pit in Ridgefield’s stomach as he watched the Dementor swallow Amycus Carrow’s living soul.
~*~
The courtroom was quiet for a long, solemn moment as they watched Amycus Carrow’s soul ripped from his body for what felt like the hundredth time. It never got easier. None of this was easy. It was an impossible puzzle that the Wizengamot were tasked with solving. A knotted mess of circumstantial rubbish and unreliable testimony to be untangled.
Why hadn’t he checked the cuffs? Harry thought as the scene played over and over and over. Because he wanted to go home. The rotations at Azkaban were horrific, and Ridgefield likely just wanted to see his family so badly. He trusted Hanes, but he was the Commanding Auror on duty. Harry felt queasy at how avoidable this was. How obvious the direction in which the finger of blame would point had become.
“They’ll string him up as an example,” someone said behind Harry. “That fossil is up for re-appointment and she’ll want to pander to all the bleeding heart prisoner rights loonies.” He’s no murderer, but he’s guilty nonetheless. Harry thought. Merlin, this is awful.
“Cosgrove, come off it.” Harry recognised that voice as Hattsfield, an Auror he’d trained with who stayed in robberies and break-ins. “We have protocols for a reason. We don’t get to determine who…well, who suffers that, and who doesn’t. Good thing, too. Can’t imagine sleeping at night after signing that order.” Why didn’t you just check the bloody cuffs, Ridgefield?
“You come off it,” the man Harry now knew to be Cosgrove spat. “Half those bastards down there are just trying to keep their jobs. They don’t give a shite about justice or us, they just want to get reappointed so they can cash their fat Ministry paychecks. They don’t know what it is to stare down the wand of a mad goat ready to blast your bloody brains out. They don’t know what it feels like to—”
“Some of them do.” Harry met Cosgrove’s eyes for a long beat before turning back to look down at the sea of black robes ready to declare their decisions. That was one thing Harry did value about the Wizengamot. There was no hiding behind a jury, no anonymity. If you wanted the power to condemn someone to a fate worse than death in Azkaban, then you better be prepared to say so out loud.
“Yeah,” Cosgrove grunted, conceding. “Maybe.”
“Our only option is to trust them,” Hattsfield said as the first member of the Wizengamot stood to deliver their vote. “The man made a mistake, but he’s no killer.”
“The system is fucking broken if that’s our only option,” Cosgrove hissed, standing and trudging from the room before the first vote was cast.
“The system was broken long before they came along,” Hattsfield said though Cosgrove was well out of earshot by then. The man shook his head, bringing a hand to his chin. “Such a stupid mistake.”
~*~
“Guilty.” Draco took a deep breath as each member of the Wizengamot stood and delivered their vote. It always led to this part. It used to be easier. The truth had once seemed so much louder. Or maybe it had always been like this, and he’d simply been so easily manipulated by the rhetoric and misdirection that he hadn’t noticed.
“Guilty.” He had to believe there was still something good to be done here. He had to or else why would he remain?
“Guilty.” This world had suffered such intense atrocities and prevailed, and Draco simply had to believe that there was still good left to triumph over darkness.
“Guilty.” He stood, looking down at Auror Ridgefield sitting at the centre of the room.
“Guilty.” The words came easily to his lips because, at the end of it all, he still believed in justice. He still believed in reason and truth above all else. And he believed the people around him did as well.
Draco looked up to watch the spectators in red. It was obvious why they felt a visceral connection to this trial. As Harry said, it could have been any of them. In another life, it could have been Harry. Would it have felt different if it had been? Draco would, mercifully, never know.
But today, here, this was the only justice that made sense. It was not sweet, nor satisfying. It was not triumphant. It was reason and logic. Accountability. It was the balance, and it would have to be enough.
“On the charges of gross misconduct leading to an unwarranted extrication of a human soul, we find the defendant, Auror Tennyson Ridgefield, guilty,” Strix read out the verdict in a soulless monotone. “You will be stripped of your rank and title within the Ministry of Magic, effective immediately. You will be fined seventy thousand Galleons to be paid to the family of the afflicted.”
Draco found Harry’s green eyes, the ones that glinted with a hope so strong that it drove Draco to pursue this career. The ones that burned with a resolve and a purpose so true that they showed Draco there could only be justice if people were willing to fight for it. That pushed him to fight for it.
Every day. All days.
~*~
“Doesn’t feel good,” Harry remarked, linking his arm in Draco’s. The streets of Wizarding London were as they always were. Busy, full of people hurrying here and there. Harry wondered what they felt when they saw the red robes. He wondered if they felt safe because of the Aurors or despite them. “Feels a bit shite, actually.”
Draco huffed an enervated chuckle beside him. The days had been long and unforgiving of late. Harry could see the exhaustion plain on the man’s face.
“Always sort of feels that way if I’m honest,” Draco remarked. “Sometimes I think we were ruined for this world.” He brought his free hand to rest atop Harry’s elbow as though reaching out for that sense of nearness. “An evil so plain and obvious walked among us. One that united peoples from all walks of life. All backgrounds. Like a fairytale.” Harry nodded, solemnly.
“But real justice isn’t so simple, is it?” Harry asked, rhetorically.
“Not at all.” Draco drew in a long breath then it out all at once through his mouth. “But it really is all we have.”
“You’ll fix it,” Harry encouraged. “You’ve already fixed bits. You’ll sort it.” And through his bone-deep tired, Draco managed an unlikely smile. Those were Harry’s favourites. They were timid and subtle, but within them lay the burning inferno of purpose. This world was not perfect. It was not without deep and visceral fault. It was cracked, but it could heal. It was made of stardust and possibility.
The din of shopkeeps and storefronts played out in the background, and Harry let the subtle and unassuming magic of life stoke the flames of his own drive. They had come so close to losing all of this. Evil had toed so near to prevailing.
Maybe it looked different now. It wasn’t drawing swords from hats or duelling dark wizards most days. It wasn’t solving ancient riddles. And though he was cracked, Harry too was healing. It didn’t look like a storybook anymore, but it could still end like one.
“We can sort it together,” Draco quipped. They laughed and it felt as though the world slid into rhyme if only for a moment. Some things were as certain as the sun’s rise. The Thames would flow. Big Ben would tick. The Union Flag would fly over 10 Downing Street.
And Harry Potter would keep fighting for justice.