Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Seven
The Wizengamot

Harry knew Hermione's shy humility couldn't last, and before long she was chattering about everything she was supposed to do as a Prefect and how she hoped she could get it right --- she was the only one with any worries there --- and all the wonderful and exciting things she'd found in the new Standard Book of Spells that she was eager to cover in class. Ron got a smile from Harry by making a "yap-yap" hand gesture where Hermione couldn't see it, but his mother lightly slapped his hand, and Ron himself remained untouched by any humor. Now it was his turn to pick moodily at his food, although Mrs. Weasley didn't make such a fuss as when Harry had acted that way.

As they were finishing breakfast, the fireplace flared green with Floo powder again. Harry whipped around, wondering who it could possibly be, and Sirius and Lupin leapt to their feet, but the figure that appeared revolving rapidly in the flames and stumbled out into the room was Arthur Weasley.

"Arthur!" Mrs. Weasley cried. "What happened? Why aren't you at work!?" Nonetheless she poured a cup of tea and offered it. "They didn't... let you go, did they??

Arthur grabbed the end of the table, out of breath. "No, Hestia --- Hestia told me --- The owl just went out ---" he panted, then took a steadying gulp from the cup.

Harry leaned forward to hear what had just happened.

"They moved up Harry's hearing! It's at nine o'clock today!"

"Today!?" Harry burst out, upsetting his orange juice. He had managed to put away his fear of the hearing, but on the assumption of having another week to prepare! Now all the dread he had been pushing aside for later crashed in on him in one tremendous blow --- and here he was still in his pyjamas!

"Wait, morning or evening?" Hermione asked. Meanwhile Lupin crossed to where he had folded the Invisibility Cloak.

"The building should close before nine in the evening..." Arthur said. He wrestled a crumpled scrap of parchment from his pocket and stared at it. "Yes, it's nine A.M.."

"But Mr. Weasley, that's in ten minutes!" Hermione cried.

"Five!" Professor Lupin corrected, offering Moody's pocketwatch from the cloak.

Arthur choked on his tea, accidentally showering Ginny with it. Instantly the kitchen was a flurry of activity; everyone jumped up from their seats at once. Harry reeled. He might have fallen out of his chair if Sirius hadn't grabbed his shoulders at the same moment and yanked him to his feet to hand him off to Arthur. Mrs. Weasley dashed over, apparently thinking to make him look presentable, but there was no time, and she just ran her hands over his uncombed-and-always-wild hair twice --- probably, Harry thought, only making it look worse. Lupin took the Floo powder from the mantel and poured a handful of it; "Ready, Arthur?"

A cacophony of well-wishing and advice poured in on Harry so suddenly he could hardly separate his friends' voices: "Don't worry, Harry, it'll be fine!" "Just keep calm. Be truthful and reasonable." "Good luck!" "Stay strong, Harry!"

"Ready," Mr. Weasley said. Lupin threw the Floo powder into the fire and he plunged into it, gripping Harry's wrist tightly. "Ministry of Magic!"

Harry looked back over his shoulder as he was pulled into the flames; Sirius had followed close behind and leaned over to look into the hearth after him, and Harry saw Professor Lupin's hand take Sirius's shoulder, as if afraid he might not stop. Behind his godfather, his friends were all waving good-luck wishes, and then the image of the Black House's kitchen was swallowed up in the suffocating, spinning flames of the Floo network. Harry squeezed his eyes shut and gripped Mr. Weasley's hand as hard as he could; if they got separated, no telling where he might end up...

A burst of cool fresh air and the dull roar of a crowded room struck Harry's face like a splash of water, and he opened his eyes to find himself in a huge white-marble-tiled space with a high ceiling --- the Ministry of Magic! They must have arrived in some kind of atrium, he thought as Mr. Weasley pulled him across the floor at a run; rather than looking ahead, Harry tried to take it all in in the few seconds he had. The walls were lined with golden fireplaces; random flames flared green one after another as people came and went. In the center there stood a great fountain of golden figures which all had their backs to Harry, but he could make out a wizard and a witch, a goblin and a centaur, and a great crystal curtain of water spouting from the wizard's upraised wand...

It was a mistake not to look ahead of him; Mr. Weasley swung around too tightly and Harry cut the corner, slamming into a blond-mustachioed wizard. They both fell to the floor in a shower of parchments.

"Watch where you're going!"

"Sorry! Terribly sorry! In an awful hurry!" Mr. Weasley jabbered, dragging Harry up.

"Sorry about that!" Harry said, coming face-to-face for an instant with the person he'd run into. The wizard's eyes obviously found the scar on Harry's forehead and then widened with what looked like genuine awe, but Mr. Weasley was already pulling him along again. On the third step, Harry realised one of his slippers had come off in the tumble, but there was no time to go back for it.

They were heading toward the back wall where a security desk stood in front of a great pair of golden lifts. The security witch had jumped up from her chair. "Arthur, what's the hubbub?"

"Potter's hearing --- moved it up ---" he sputtered, hitting the security barrier at a dead run and folding over it as Harry crashed into the desk under the same momentum. "Didn't get the owl --- starting right now --- please got to hurry---!"

"Wand with you?" the witch asked Harry.

"Uh, no..." Should it be?

She glanced at the scar, too. "I know who you are, go on in."

"Thank you Jan!!" Arthur shouted and was off again. Harry also shouted "Thanks!!" back at her as Mr. Weasley desperately punched the lift buttons.

"That's Jan Hardy, good woman," Arthur said distractedly. The lift doors opened within seconds, but it felt like forever until they practically hurled themselves onto the car. "Thirteenth floor!" Mr. Weasley told the lift operator.

The young, uniformed wizard blinked at him. "You sure about that? Twelfth?"

Mr. Weasley looked at his scrap of parchment again. "No, it says thirteen---Thirteen!? Ah, yes, twelfth..." His face went white as he stared at the little note.

"What's going on!?" Harry asked.

"Lift only goes down to twelve; gotta take stairs on down to thirteen," the operator said and frowned. "What'cha need down there, anyway?"

"A hearing," Harry said.

At this, the lift operator turned pale also, and Mr. Weasley squeezed Harry's hand as he stuffed the note back in his pocket. "Don't worry, Harry. It's going to be all right..."

Harry's legs suddenly went weak. He felt as if an emergency room doctor had just told him in that desperate tone, "You're going to be all right." As the lift began to move, Harry found that it moved downward, not upward, and the dial above the doors started at a star and counted from "1" toward "12." There were a few roman-numeral floors on the other side of the dial, which must go upward from the atrium, but those were getting further and further away...

The dial-hand was just passing "3;" the lift moved painfully slowly, and with nothing to do inside it but sit still, Harry found himself cursed with a quiet moment in which to realise what was happening. They had moved up his hearing with such short notice that, even with friends inside the Ministry to get the word to him and help him, he still might not make it. As far as whoever had rescheduled was concerned, Harry wasn't supposed to make it to the hearing. Suddenly it was being held on the "thirteenth floor," the very mention of which scared everyone who heard it...

Over the last several days, the Weasleys and Professor Lupin had kept telling Harry "The law is on your side; it'll be all right," but Harry now realised that the keepers of the law --- at least some key persons among them --- were definitely not on his side. That should have been obvious from the start, with Fudge and the Daily Prophet colluding to discredit him, and maybe it would be enough for them to drag him into a hearing, whether the law was on his side or not. Maybe they had ways to be sure that everything would not come out all right...

The lift at last settled to a stop, but Harry's insides kept sinking. Mr. Weasley pushed him through the first wide-enough crack of the lift doors and down a dark hallway --- a strangely familiar hallway --- at the end of which was a single black door. Harry found the door somehow fascinating, and it sent a muddling ripple of deja vu through his mind, as if this were all a dream --- if only that were true! When they came to it, the hall split off perpendicularly in both directions. Mr. Weasley hurried him off to one side, but Harry kept his eyes on that door and was only able to come back to himself when Arthur moved him bodily out of sight of it. Still, he was grateful to have had even a moment of respite from his dread.

Now he hurried ahead of Mr. Weasley down a dark spiral staircase of rough, cold stone that bit into his slipperless stocking foot. At last the floor flattened out, and he saw a dim-but-lighted doorway beyond. Harry broke into a run and dashed forward.

Once he was through the portal of dim light and had been swallowed up into the room on the Ministry's thirteenth floor, the air froze in Harry's mouth. He felt as if he couldn't breathe, as if he were about to faint. He had seen this place before --- in Dumbledore's Pensieve. It was the inquisition hall where he had seen the remembered trials of the Death Eaters: an enormous chamber all in dark stone, dimly lit by torches. Tiers of stone benches rose above a bleak square of floor, in the center of which was a single chair; Harry couldn't see its arms from here, but knew that they were covered in magical chains with which those who sat there were bound in place. At the center of the opposite wall, a judges' box almost like that at a sporting event stood high above the floor, and now that box was the only part of the room that was filled. Other than the people seated there, the vast stone benches loomed silent and empty, excepting a few visitors beside the judges' box who were scribbling away in notebooks with quills --- reporters, Harry realised, as if this weren't bad enough, but at least Rita Skeeter wasn't among them --- and Mr. Weasley, who stumbled in behind him and fairly collapsed onto the nearest seat.

"Go, Harry," Arthur panted, but still his tone was unmistakably sorrowful. "You've got to just go out there... Nothing for it..."

Harry nodded stiffly and began the long walk to the center of the room. His legs trembled as if they might collapse with any step, and yet he could hardly feel the effort in them, or even the sensation of the floor on his almost-bare feet. He tried to look at the judges, not at that horrible chair; in the first row of box seats, Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, stood flanked by two witches. Fudge was in a black robe, and his lime-green bowler was missing. He glowered down at Harry threateningly. To the left of him was an obviously very old witch, skinny and shrivelled, curved over but somehow not stooped; she reminded Harry of the pictures he'd seen of Oriental trees, the kind that swept sideways strangely yet gracefully. She wore red velvet robes and hat, and blinked at him through tiny round spectacles, alternately glancing at a piece of parchment for reference. The witch to the right of Fudge looked as if she might have spilled over from the reporters' seats; she was scribbling in a book, and her fashion sense certainly didn't seem to befit a judge, nor flatter her wide, almost toadlike figure. She wore a bright pink robe with ruffles at the neck and wrists, and a matching alice band that pulled the front of her hair severely tight to her head and sent the back of it flying into a mess of dirty-gold sausage curls. Her broad face was much-too-heavily made up, powdered quite white with great blots of rouge on her cheeks and a blood-red cherry drawn onto the middle of her wide flat lips, while her unlined eyes dissolved into just a pair of coal-black spots floating in her doll-painted face. She looked as if she were made up for the stage --- or for other professional endeavors that Mrs. Weasley might slap Harry if he mentioned aloud. Behind those three were six more wizards and witches, all talking among themselves. Harry thought unhappily that at least some of them must be remarking on the defendant showing up missing a slipper, in pyjamas and bed-hair and yesterday's socks.

"Who comes before the Wizengamot, high council of Warlocks?" Fudge shouted down from the box. His somewhat nasal voice couldn't bring off the threatening intonation he was obviously trying for, but it was enough.

"Harry Potter," Harry answered; to his embarassment it came out as just a tiny croak as he came up beside the chair; those chains were barely a foot from his arm...

The old witch in red adjusted her tiny glasses. "State your full name clearly, please." Her calm professional tone let Harry get his bearings more.

"Harold James Potter," he said clearly.

"Be seated!" Fudge commanded.

It was what Harry had been dreading ever since he had recognised the room. He stared at the chair and the chains for a long moment, struggling to see which course was less frightening, and at last looked back up at the judges. "Can I have a different chair?" He could fairly hear Mr. Weasley groan behind him.

"Excuse me, Mr. Potter? I'm not sure I heard you," Fudge said slowly, and leaned forward.

Fudge was baiting him --- teasing him! Harry felt as if he were being interrogated by Professor Snape, and despite everything his temper sparked. He thrust a pointing finger at the chains. "I'm not sitting in that thing!!"

A wave of muttering went through the reporters and judges. "Do you mean to show contempt for this council!?" Fudge demanded.

"No!"

"Now, Cornelius, this is such a technical charge," the old witch in red said at a conversational volume. "I move that the council forgo restraining Mr. Potter; it would seem awfully silly to."

"I'll second that motion," boomed a kindly voice from behind Harry, "even though I am but a former member of the council."

Harry turned around and saw Headmaster Dumbledore walking onto the courtroom floor, bringing with him a palpable aura of warmth and calm and safety which washed over Harry so wonderfully that he actually smiled for a moment. In a sweep of long silver hair and beard and flowing pearl-and-yellow robes, Dumbledore crossed to where Harry stood, moved the chained chair aside with a brush of his wand, and conjured a flower-upholstered overstuffed armchair in its place. "If you would be seated, Harry?" Dumbledore invited. Without hesitation, Harry sat down.

"Albus Dumbledore. Good morning," the old witch greeted.

"Good morning Griselda, Cornelius, all."

"Wh- What is your business here!?" Fudge demanded, catching himself.

Dumbledore conjured a padded bench beside Harry's chair and seated himself. "I am here to act as an advocate on Harry's behalf, as is my right under the law," he said pleasantly. "Very fortunate indeed that I got word of it when the hearing was moved up on such short notice. Someone at the ministry clearly is to be praised for their organisational skills."

Fudge coughed into his fist. "This hearing of the Wizengamot has been called to rule on Mr. Potter's violation of the ban on Use of Magic by Underage Wizards, and possibly of the Magical Secrecy Omnibus Act."

"Doesn't that seem a bit extreme?" Dumbledore replied offhandedly.

"You are speaking out of turn!" Fudge shot back.

"The council will indulge," 'Griselda' said flatly. The Minister clenched his teeth in consternation.

The fat, pink-robed witch on the opposite side flipped through her book, cleared her throat --- "hem-hem" --- and spoke at last. "In the incident in question, Mr. Potter cast the Patronus charm in a Muggle-populated area, and the records show that a Muggle was present at the casting of this --- if I may say so --- highly visible spell. The records also show..." she flipped more pages "...that this is not a first offense. Three years ago, there was the matter of an illicit Hover Charm, and one year following that an incident in which Mr. Potter, ah, 'inflated his aunt'? ...which was stricken from his official record but nonetheless should be kept in mind, in my humble opinion." Her voice was high-pitched, with childlike and broad timbres doing discordant battle; if an operatic soprano could catch the illness of an untuned piano, she might begin sounding like the pink-clad witch. At any rate, it was not the tone of someone whose opinions were ever humble.

"How do you explain these facts, Mr. Potter?" Fudge demanded.

"In the first place," Harry shouted back, "the Hover Charm on the pudding wasn't me!"

"So three years after the fact you wish to dispute this charge?" the Minister asked, mock-incredulously.

"If it please the court," Dumbledore stepped in, "Mr. Potter is telling the truth, but before evidence was available, several months had already passed since the incident and I imagine it understandably slipped his mind, or perhaps he didn't want to inconvenience the witness."

"Witness? You can produce a witness to this?" Fudge challenged.

"Indeed I can. If the council wishes, it may summon the house-elf who cast the Hover Charm in question. He was released by his family and is currently without a master, so there should be no particular difficulty with his testimony."

While Fudge huffed, Griselda fiddled with her spectacles again and spoke. "Unfortunately, even in such a case it is outside the bounds of the law for a house-elf to give legal testimony. However, Albus, we may take your willingness to vouch for Mr. Potter under consideration. Besides, that is not the issue---"

"The issue to be determined at this hearing," Fudge interrupted with his ersatz booming shout, "is the incident of the illicit Patronus charm! Casting such a theatrical spell in front of a Muggle is serious business indeed, Mr. Potter! How are you going to explain that? Was it actually a Goblin who got hold of your wand??"

The older witch glared at the interruption. "Cornelius, that remark was inappropriate," she scolded; he ignored her.

"It was self-defense," Harry called up at them angrily. "Dementors attacked me and my cousin!" The judges' box was suddenly alive with talk and the reporters scribbled furiously. Serves me right for telling the truth... Harry grumbled internally.

It was Griselda who finally took the gavel from in front of Fudge's chair and banged it on the box for order; the sound of it echoing through the whole chamber seemed disproportionate to quiet only the judges' box, but it succeeded at doing so in any event. Fudge testily took the gavel back and glared down at Harry again. "And what would Dementors have been doing at the scene of the incident? Why, no Dementor has ever left Azkaban island without the Ministry's knowledge!"

"I don't know what they were doing there!" Harry answered. "Shouldn't you be trying to figure that out!?"

Fudge banged the gavel; Harry suspected he just wanted to one-up Griselda's use of it a moment ago. "Again I must warn Mr. Potter not to show contempt for this council!"

"He does have a point, however," Dumbledore said over casually steepled fingers. "Harry does not bear the burden of showing why the Dementors were there --- as I will demonstrate to the council that they indeed were."

Another loud wave of chatter broke through the judges box, another flurry of scratching quills among the reporters. Again Griselda reached for the gavel, but Fudge hoarded it. After another minute or so in which he ignored her apparent requests that he call for order, the old witch very calmly took a wand from her robes, pointed it at the ceiling, and set off a shower of white sparks with an earsplitting BANG!! The room fell silent.

"I would like to remind Mr. Potter and his advocate," Griselda said, tucking away her wand, "that they do not in fact bear the burden of proving that Dementors were present, only that Mr. Potter genuinely percieved a threat that would reasonably call for the use of the Patronus Charm. In my view that already seems clear, so I move that---"

"I move---" Fudge shouted her down again, "---that the council see this matter through completely!"

"Second," said the fat pink witch smartly.

Fudge turned on Harry and Dumbledore again. "What evidence can you produce as to the appearance of these alleged Dementors!?"

"So glad you asked," Dumbledore said, rising to his feet. "If it please the council, I would like to call as a witness Miss Arabella Figg. And I will point out if I may, that summoning a witness is also my right under the law...?"

Fudge's face fell. He stared dumbly at the Headmaster; the pink witch frowned. Again Griselda stepped in. "Let it be so," she said, obviously a prescribed line, and produced from behind the edge of the box what looked like a glittery green egg. She tossed the object down onto the courtroom floor where it smashed and let loose a great burst of green flames and smoke. When the haze cleared, Miss Figg was indeed standing there between Harry and the judges' box, dressed in her housecoat and slippers and hairnet, her clanking bag on her arm. Harry was too surprised to laugh when a little black-and-white face poked out of the bag and meowed. Miss Figg fanned the smoke away, then caught sight of Harry and waved at him with a smile.

"Full name!" Fudge barked down at her.

She turned around. "Oh, Cornelius, I didn't see you there." Several of the council members around him laughed. "Arabella Doreen Figg. Excuse me a moment..."

Miss Figg walked right over to Harry in his chair, lifted the small cat from her handbag --- he recognised Little Miss Footie-Socks from all those photos --- and handed her to Harry before turning back to the judges' box. Harry tried to hold the cat and pet her, but she climbed up his pyjama sleeve and began awkwardly exploring his shoulders, no doubt making him look more ridiculous than ever, but it was hard to be angry at Miss Figg or her kitten.

"Remove that cat from these chambers!" Fudge shouted, apparently having managed it.

"I move that we indulge the cat," Griselda said calmly. Three hands went up behind Fudge to second the motion, and Harry could see the Minister fairly tremble with rage.

"Mrs. Figg," the pink witch moved in while Fudge collected himself, "Were you present on the occasion of Mr. Potter --- an underage wizard, I must remind you --- casting the Patronus Charm outside of Hogwarts, in view of a Muggle, no less?"

"I was," Miss Figg said.

"And would you say that you clearly saw what happened that night?"

"I would, yes."

"Describe to the council what you saw."

"Well," Miss Figg said, with an air of settling in, "I'm in the habit of letting my cats patrol the neighborhood, which happens to be near where Harry's Aunt and Uncle live, and my Tibbles---"

"Are we to accept testimony from a cat!?" Fudge shouted. With his composure obviously cracking, he was sounding less imposing and more snivelling by the moment.

"You're interrupting the witness, Cornelius," Griselda warned.

"You can move to find Tibbles in contempt, if you like," Dumbledore suggested, drawing more laughs from the judges' box to the Minister's consternation. By now Fudge's mustache was jutting from his upper lip at aggressive angles.

"As I was saying," Miss Figg began again, "Tibbles came running to get me and I knew that there was something wrong. He led me to an alley where I found Harry and his cousin being attacked by Dementors."

"And are you sure that they were Dementors you saw?" Fudge asked.

"If the council will indulge me?"

"It will not!" Fudge snapped.

"We will indulge," Griselda said.

"Madam Marchbanks, I am presiding over this hearing---" Fudge argued.

"And I am an Elder Witch of this council. We will indulge," the old witch answered, unfazed.

"Thank you," Miss Figg said. "If the papers are to be believed, Cornelius, you have encountered Dementors on several occasions, or haven't you?"

"Of course I have! I inspect the prison every year!"

"Then tell me, would you ever mistake a Dementor?"

Fudge opened and closed his mouth several times, but no sound came out.

A brown bearded wizard in the row behind him --- one of the youngest of the judges --- raised a hand. "I believe I should mention here that Miss Figg was my Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor at Hogwarts;" the man said. "She taught me how to recognise a Dementor, and I have not found any inaccuracies in her teaching since then."

Harry looked up in surprise --- Miss Figg had been a teacher at Hogwarts?? Her cat tried to escape from his lap, and he picked it up again, having to pluck its claws out of his pyjamas.

"But as to the matter of the Patronus Charm," the pink witch stepped in again, "would you not admit that there was an awful risk of detection in that? Especially with a Muggle present??"

"Oh, I shouldn't think so, not the way it happened," Miss Figg said. "The only Muggle there was Harry's cousin, who knew about our kind already, and he seemed to be unconscious before I arrived, poor thing..."

"Yes, but wouldn't the Patronus Charm be visible at some distance?"

"A fully-formed Patronus would be. Harry only managed a bit of smoke that time."

"Is is possible that he cast a more effective Patronus before you arrived to see it?"

"Well, as you said, I should have been able to see it at some distance, and in that case I shouldn't have seen any Dementors."

"But after you came on the scene, Mr. Potter did produce at least a strong enough Patronus to drive the Dementors off?" the pink witch questioned.

"No, I'm afraid not," Miss Figg admitted.

Holding Little Miss Footie-Socks against his chest, Harry sank shamefully into his chair as they discussed the extent of his failure. He looked across to Dumbledore, who had settled back down on the bench, but the Headmaster just kept facing straight ahead and didn't even glance at him.

"Then I suppose you must have summoned a Patronus," Fudge recovered to insist. "If something didn't drive the alleged Dementors off, then how are you and Potter here to tell the tale??"

"I threw biscuits at them," Miss Figg said simply, as if it were perfectly natural. Indeed only one voice in the box laughed, and it was quickly silenced by the awkwardness of finding itself alone.

"What sort of biscuits?" Griselda asked.

"Lemon-sugar, baked from my own recipe and with great care, mind."

Griselda once again adjusted her tiny glasses. "Since Arabella is a respected citizen in good---"

"Hem-hem!" The pink-clad witch cleared her throat loudly and interrupted. "I have another question for Mrs. Figg. Is it or is it not true that you have a history of consorting with werewolves?"

Harry did a double-take; could he have heard that right?

"Well, I don't see what that has to do with the matter at hand," Miss Figg answered; apparently she had heard the same non-sequitur question Harry had. "...But I'd like everyone present to know that the answer is 'yes.'"

A smile of savage pride at Miss Figg's answer swelled up in Harry's chest. The reporters were scratching their quills again; the judges' box was chattering. Fudge had turned his back and was arguing animatedly with the council members in the rows behind him, so he wasn't looking when Griselda again took his gavel and banged it for silence.

"I believe we've heard enough," she said. "As Elder Witch of the Wizengamot, I submit for the council's vote that both incidents discussed at this hearing be stricken from Mr. Potter's record."

Fudge turned around in shock. Griselda offered him his gavel back and he snatched it, but made no further move for several moments. "Would you like to call the vote or should I?" she asked at last.

He huffed out a few more breaths. "All in favor," he spat out at last.

Griselda raised her hand, as did the brown-bearded wizard and three others in the back rows.

"Opposed!?" the Minister snarled, raising his own hand.

The pink witch raised her hand, and two others went up as well.

"That's five to four," Dumbledore announced as Miss Figg shuffled over to retrieve her kitten. "I believe this hearing is over."

The judges' box began to disintegrate even before Fudge grudgingly called "Adjourned!" with a final bang of his gavel.

Relief flooded over Harry, and he at last broke into a broad grin as Miss Figg lifted the cat out of his hands. "Miss Figg!" he burst out. "I never knew you were---"

"Oh, there'll be time for all that later, Harry Dear," she said. "You go with Arthur. Go," she said, shooing him gently before ambling off again.

Harry saw Miss Figg and Griselda heading for each other, and thought he heard amid the chatter Griselda saying "...haven't seen you in ages!" He turned to say something to Dumbledore, but the Headmaster had vanished from the bench beside him. He looked around the room; Dumbledore should have been easy to pick out, especially in such a sparse crowd, but Harry didn't see him.

Mr. Weasley arrived and took Harry around the shoulders. "Congratulations, Harry! A clean slate --- better than we could've expected!"

"Yeah!" Harry agreed, but Dumbledore's sudden disappearance had taken a bit of the energy out of his grin.

Leaving the inquisition hall at last, they took the stone corridor and stairs at a more leisurely pace; Harry hadn't realised the spiral staircase was so long, and Mr. Weasley had to catch his breath after climbing it. When they arrived at the lift, Harry couldn't resist looking back down the twelfth-floor corridor at the black door. He wondered what was behind it, and had the strangest feeling that he already knew --- that he had been through that door before, and just couldn't remember. It was like trying to remember a dream; every time he reached into his mind after it, he could feel it there waiting just beyond his reach...

Mr. Weasley had to take him by the arm and lead him into the lift when the doors opened. They didn't take the it all the way back up to the Atrium, but only to the fourth floor down, where they emerged into what Harry thought looked just like a Muggle office building, except for the parchments that zipped on their own along the ceiling from one cubicle to another, the personal photos that moved, and the words and phrases that appeared in the snatches of conversation Harry could hear, such as "Apparate" and "Enchanting Contractor."

"Where are we going?" he asked Mr. Weasley.

"Oh, well, I thought I'd take you to my office," he said. "I just really can't afford any more time away, and frankly I could use a witness of my own..."

Harry remembered what Ron had said about his father's treatment at work. Could he really be sacked for telling Harry about his hearing and for staying there with him? He didn't have to stay...

Mr. Weasley led the way off the main avenue, through zigzags of paths that seemed to become narrower at each turn. They were already rather narrow when they passed under the sign floating near the ceiling that read "Misuse of Muggle Artifacts," and would become tighter still before at last they arrived in a windowless corner of the large space, where a tiny cubicle was marked with a worn placard: "A. Weasley." Harry thought he could see bruises on the carpet where the partitions had recently been moved tighter. Whether it had always been like this or not, Mr. Weasley's cubicle would now fit easily inside Professor Lupin's house. It contained just enough room to sit at a desk --- only now that was impossible, because the desk was piled high with parchments and a television set had been deposited in the chair.

"Oh, not that thing..." Mr. Weasley lamented.

"What is it?"

"A- a telemission set---"

"Television," Harry corrected, he hoped gently.

"Once someone starts watching it they can't stop. We got hold of it after a whole houseful of Muggles starved in front of the blinking thing; their police were investigating and turned it on, and they ended up in the hospital by the time the Ministry took it away from them --- didn't let us have it without a fight, either..."

The disturbing part, Harry thought, was how little different this sounded from a normal TV.

"Sandy Orpp was looking into it, but we had to lock it up after the poor lady tried the switch and found out it would play without eclecticity," Mr. Weasley explained. "Had to call the Aurors downstairs to get it away from her. After that, she was fine --- we just had to keep it put away, but they sacked her earlier this summer, so I guess---"

"Weasley!" Harry looked up to find a blond wizard, obviously younger than Mr. Weasley, coming toward them. "It's about time you got back!" the man snapped. He was shouting so loudly that a wide radius of cubicles could hear, and Harry saw several pointed hats perk up over the walls in nervous attention. "Where have you been!? Who is this guest and why wasn't I informed??"

"Arthur was doing a favor for me," came a rich, deep voice from somewhere nearby in the maze of partitions. The speaker was visible as soon as he stood up to walk around toward them; he was a tall black man with a glossy bald head, a hoop earring, and dark eyes that were gentle but very alert. In his black robe he made quite an imposing figure, except for the shirt he wore underneath --- the bit of paisley turtleneck that peeked out from his collar looked altogether out of place. Still, he stood head and shoulders above Mr. Weasley's supervisor, who was obviously cowed by him.

"This is Harry Potter," the black wizard continued. "Him being Black's godson and the Patronus Charm suggesting Dementors might have been involved, I wanted someone I knew at his hearing."

"That's not for a week!"

"They moved it up," Harry said. "It ended a few minutes ago." Suddenly, however, he didn't trust the tall man, not with the way he had mentioned Sirius...

"Harry was cleared," Mr. Weasley added.

"Well, congratulations," the black wizard said. "I asked Arthur to do it because Potter is a friend of his son, thought he could be more relaxed with someone he knew, and Arthur has advised me on this case before."

"No flying motorcycles yet, Kingsley," Mr. Weasley said.

Flying motorcycle? That notion definitely sounded familiar to Harry; he'd been having occasional dreams with flying motorcycles in them ever since he could remember, and he also thought he'd heard something once about Sirius having one...

"I overheard about that television, by the way. Would you mind if I took it down and let our forensic division look at it?" 'Kingsley' asked. "If it's done that much damage, it sounds more in our line."

"Oh, be my guest," Mr. Weasley said with obvious relief.

"Unless of course you have any objection?" Kingsley asked the blond supervisor as he took out his wand.

"No, not at all. Carry on, all of you," the man said, and urgently wandered off.

With a flick of his wand, Kingsley levitated the TV set out of Mr. Weasley's chair. "If you wouldn't mind coming with me, Harry, I'd like to talk with you." He said it pleasantly, but Harry's hackles rose. Was this man after Sirius? Could he get it out of Harry where Sirius was?

"Don't worry, Harry," Mr. Weasley said, half-collapsing at his parchment-mounded desk. "This is Kingsley Shacklebolt; a bit of an imposing fellow but he's a family friend." On the words "family friend" he gave Harry's hand a little shake, perhaps trying to signal something. Did he mean that Kingsley was safe? That he was a member of the Order? "Go on downstairs with him. I bet Harry'd love to get a look around your floor," he added to Kingsley.

"Follow me, if you don't mind?" Floating the television ahead of him, Kingsley led Harry back to the lifts, but turned aside from them and crossed to the stairwell in an adjacent corner. "Prefer the stairs myself; keeps the body fit," he said, and started downward.

Harry followed, still in his socks and one slipper, and counted the doors they passed. They had started from four, so that meant they were passing floor five, six, seven... When he counted floors nine and ten, Harry began to worry, and at eleven, the stairwell ended --- but Harry knew there was a twelve and a thirteen; had he miscounted? "Is this the bottom floor, or...?"

"Not quite. Only the lifts go to twelve and stairs from there to thirteen," Kingsley explained, opening the door for him. Harry walked in as invited. This place had granite walls in a network of avenues and offices, a sort of cross between Mr. Weasley's floor and the inquisition hall that looked slightly like the inside of Hogwarts. Just ahead, the hallway teed off in two directions, and on the wall facing the juncture was a great iron plaque:

MINISTRY OF MAGIC
D E P A R T M E N T • O F
MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT
‡ ‡ ‡
AUROR HEADQUARTERS

Harry's heart quickened with excitement. Kingsley was an Auror, and Harry was about to see the inside of Auror Headquarters!

to be continued in...
Chapter Eight: The Ministry