9

Chapter Nine – Truths Emerge

Ministry of Magic

Wednesday 27th January 1982

"Please explain the circumstances whereby you came to stun Mister Snape, Miss Wilkins," the DMLE Prosecutor requested.

It wasn't the full Wizengamot, just a small pre-trial hearing to establish whether or not a higher court was going to be required, if a standard punishment could be assessed, or if there was no case to answer.. As such they were in one of the smallest courtrooms, with just a Department of Law Enforcement lawyer and his assistant, and a panel of three Wizengamot members. She didn't recognise any of them, and had no expectation that they would recognise her. In cases like this, they would be unlikely even to ask her any questions unless they needed clarification on a point.

Severus Snape was sat across the room from her, closely guarded by a junior Auror, and he looked far less confident in himself than Monica had expected.

What she didn't know was that he had spent several hours having the pride knocked out of him by repeated refusals of the Aurors to send for Albus Dumbledore to assist him, and having been told that if he didn't cooperate fully then they would raise the level of the hearing to a full criminal tribunal, for which the minimum sentence would be a year in Azkaban.

That didn't prevent him glaring malevolently across the room at her, though.

"It was quite simple, Mister Trusswell, she replied to the Prosecutor. "I awoke in the middle of the night – it must have been around three o'clock – thinking I had heard something. I went to investigate and saw a light coming out of my study, whereupon I confronted the intruder. He had been going through the papers on my desk, and drew his wand as he turned towards me, so I stunned him."

"Thank you Miss Wilkins. Mister Snape? Have you anything to say? Bearing in mind, of course, that you were indeed found on Miss Wilkins' premises, your coat and shoes at the back door, still wet from the rain, indicating that you had only recently arrived."

Snape sneered at the tall, thin-faced lawyer, wondering how best to proceed.

The evidence so clearly against him, he wondered whether it would simply be easiest to plead guilty, but without Dumbledore to vouch for him he doubted whether he would get the same sort of leniency he had once received.

"Only that I was investigating a claim that Miss Wilkins was party to the abduction of a minor from his legal guardians, and that I had found evidence to support this before I was assaulted," he said accusingly.

"That's neither here nor there as far as this case against you for breaking and entering is concerned, Mister Snape," the lawyer said. "You should have taken such concerns through the proper channels, not acted yourself."

"I was acting on the instructions of the Chief Warlock, Mister Trusswell," Snape replied.

"That doesn't excuse your trespass upon Miss Wilkins' property," Trusswell confirmed. "I will have words with Mister Dumbledore separately as to what he thought he was doing, but having already vouched for you once only to see you engaging in further criminal matters does his reputation for good judgement little favour.

"Messrs Panel Members, I believe I have made sufficient case for this to go directly to standard sentencing. Do you agree?"

The three Wizengamot members conferred together quietly and briefly, and the senior one spoke up.

"Yes, we agree to standard sentencing."

"Thank you," the lawyer responded.

"Mister Snape, you are hereby sentenced to ninety days in Azkaban and ninety-seven days incarceration in the Ministry holding cells, with all but thirty days incarceration in the Ministry suspended for up to five years. You are also fined 25 Galleons to be paid to the victim by the end of that thirty days else the incarceration will be extended until you have made such arrangements for payment, and fined 50 Galleons in Ministry Costs. Do you have any further comments?"

"Only that I would be grateful if you could arrange for Albus Dumbledore to visit whilst I am serving my time so that I can arrange the payment of the fines."

"The Ministry will see what it can do, Mister Snape.

"Miss Wilkins, I trust that you are satisfied with this outcome. If you have any further comments to make regarding this process, please contact my office. Once your monetary award has been received by the Ministry, we will contact you to ascertain how you wish to receive it."

"Thank you, Mister Trusswell."

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Ministry of Magic – DMLE Holding Cells

Saturday 30th January 1982

Things were not progressing as smoothly as Albus Dumbledore would have liked.

When he had dropped Harry Potter off at Number Four Privet Drive, he expected that the onlt subsequent requirement upon his time relating to the child would be in carefully massaging the news stories around the Potters' deaths and that he would then be able to get back to the business of running his school.

When Sirius Black managed to get himself arrested and blamed for betraying the Potters and then murdering Peter Pettigrew (and twelve Muggles) that was the icing on the cake, as it meant he had a ready-made scapegoat and had no need to get involved to turn suspicion upon Black, other than to agree that he should be thrown straight into Azkaban.

Three months later, things had changed.

The intervention of Monica Wilkins, who Dumbledore had never previously heard of, had led to Harry being removed from the Dursleys and rehoused somewhere else. Somewhere that Dumbledore could not find. Somewhere that wasn't under his control. And that meant that instead of three relatively relaxing months, Dumbledore had been spending his time trying to find the boy.

His initial plan – simply confront this Miss Wilkins and order Harry's return – had come to a screeching halt when the rather formidable woman had flatly refused even to divulge Harry's location.

All of the effort that he had put in since in trying to find out more about Miss Wilkins' background, about whom she might have known that could have provided a home for young Harry, had come to nought. It was almost as though she had simply appeared out of nowhere early in 1982.

Background checks in the Ministry found next to nothing – she hadn't attended Hogwarts at any time in the last hundred years, and had no violations on record at all. Her file only really seemed to start a year earlier. Of course, it had details of her OWL and NEWT results, but barely anything else, not even an indication of where she had taken those exams.

Dumbledore had initially assumed that she must be a pure-blood witch, but one who had lived out of the country for a long time, hence her record being so sparse, but his confrontation with her had demonstrated that she was definitely English, and had no hint of an accent from living in the colonies.

He re-started his searches based on a new assumption that she was a Half-blood, but made no further progress.

Engaging Remus Lupin to try and establish a connection between Harry's new guardians and his family's friends had proven to be unsuccessful too. Remus had apparently been unable to extract much more information out of Miss Wilkins than he had himself, other than he knew that Harry's new family had other magical members, and that they had a child near Harry's own age that was also magical.

Dumbledore suspected that Lupin had made rather less strenuous efforts to try and infiltrate the home than he wanted him to, and thus he had turned to Severus Snape to try and establish information from the Muggle world instead.

This latest debacle just proved that you had to do things yourself if you wanted the right results.

Adding insult, he hadn't even been contacted when Severus was arrested, meaning that he didn't find out about the trial until after it had happened and he had been approached by the Ministry to pay Severus's fine.

A visit to the Ministry holding cells did little to ease his frustration.

"I had thought you would be more careful, Severus," he said once he had been cleared to approach the cell.

Snape growled at him. "I wasn't expecting to be caught, you know. Can you get me out of here?"

"I'm not sure that's a good idea, my boy," he replied thoughtfully. "You'll end up a fugitive with a bounty on your head. Hardly worth it for 30 days in prison."

Snape wrinkled his nose.

"Will you at least pay my fines for me?"

"I think," Dumbledore said with a frown, "that I can see my way to finding the necessary funds. But how will you repay me?"

"What do you suggest? I had assumed you were going to be paying me for whatever I could find on the Potter brat."

"Well, I have need of someone to teach potions, starting in September, Severus."

"Me? Teach? And what about old Sluggy?"

"I'm sure you'll manage. Horace is retiring at the end of the school year. Said something about spending more time with the fruits of his labours, whatever he meant by that."

Snape snorted.

"Yes, well in any case, it leaves me with a vacancy to fill. Your NEWT scores are enough to warrant me also sponsoring your Mastery in Potions, should you wish to take that route, and you could make your repayment in instalments, if you wanted."

Dumbledore knew that his fish was hooked now. Not only did he have him indebted for vouching for his character and turning against Voldemort, he now had both a financial and an academic hook in him as well.

"Very well," Snape agreed. "Thank you," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"Oh, you're quite welcome my boy. Now what did you find out about young Harry's location?"

Snape explained how he had followed the paper trail through the Muggle system only to be stymied by administrative intransigence, hence his nocturnal visit to Miss Wilkins' house.

Knowing the names of the adoptive parents at least gave him something to work on, and unlike Severus, he thought he might be able to get away with some subtle magical encouragement to the relevant authorities in order to get the information he was after. There couldn't after all, be too many people by name of Granger in South-east England who had adopted a young boy named Harry Potter.

The question would be: what would he do about it once he found out?

DOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHPDOHP

Crawley, West Sussex

Saturday 20th March 1982

Being Supreme Mugwump, Chief Warlock and Headmaster of Hogwarts left little time for Albus Dumbledore to be engaging in extra-curricular activities such as trying to find and relocate Harry Potter, which is why he had originally tried to get others to do some of the work for him.

This is why several weeks passed before he found the time to re-visit West Sussex social services, who had dealt with Harry's fostering and adoption, and to pick up the trail that Severus had begun seeking so that he could find the right people he needed to manipulate in order to find out who had taken Harry in.

Severus's investigations had helped him in that respect, at least, as he now knew the names of the people he was searching for, but it had taken quite a deal of persuasion and a fair number of Confundus charms and Obliviations to convince the staff that he was a distant Great-uncle who was just looking to visit, and perhaps leave a monetary legacy to the child whose parents had died in untimely fashion.

This had led him here to Kingston Drive in Crawley, and Number Sixteen in particular, the home of Doug and Helen Granger and, by all accounts, lately of Harry Potter as well.

Irritatingly, it wasn't even ten miles from the home of Monica Wilkins, and he cursed himself under his breath for not having realised that she would have been sure to keep the child somewhere close at hand, not realising that in fact the opposite had been the case, and she had chosen her own home to be close to the Grangers.

Having been sure to don his most conservative muggle suit to try and delay recognition as long as possible, he still rather stuck out, given that his attire was more than half a century out of fashion, and more than one youngster giggled at his top hat as he strode along the street to his destination.

"Might I come in," he asked the woman who answered the door to his knock.

She bore a rather startling resemblance to the Wilkins woman, and Dumbledore realised that she must be some sort of relative, with that bushy hair and oddly intelligent look around the eyes. Another woman who, despite her youth, might be rather more formidable than she first appeared, he decided.

She took a long look up and down him at his attire, particularly noting his long beard, before popping her head back inside and calling out to her husband.

"Doug, can you ring Monica urgently, please. Code 'Old Wizard'."

She turned back to find that he was already trying to push his way into the house.

"Hey! What are you doing! That's rude!"

"I'm sorry, madam, but I'm here to return custody of young Harry to his Aunt and Uncle."

"You certainly are not!" she stated firmly, and trod heavily on Dumbledore's toes, making him hop back in pain and draw his wand.

"I see – you leave me with no other choice, then," he began, and drew his wand, only to be interrupted by the familiar sound of Apparation and the sudden appearance of Monica Wilkins from behind, snatching the wand out of his hand.

"Albus Dumbledore! I don't know how you found this address, but you are not wanted here!" she said.

He turned to face her, incidentally allowing Helen Granger the opportunity to slam the door in his face.

"Come now, Miss Wilkins, I am only trying to restore young Harry to his rightful guardians."

"What utter rubbish," Monica said. "Firstly, we've had this discussion before, and you have no jurisdiction in child placement. Harry's placement with the Grangers is in complete compliance with the law. In addition, Vernon and Petunia Dursley have made it clear that they do not want Harry, and intimated that he would be physically abused if he ever manifested any accidental magic – hardly a place for a young wizard to be growing up, let alone the supposed saviour of the Wizarding World.

"You seem to have some weird obsession with Harry living with his Aunt and Uncle. That isn't going to happen. But maybe you can explain exactly why you think it's necessary? All I've had out of you so far is that you say that it's best for Harry. Well, I can tell you it isn't."

Throughout her rant, Monica kept her wand trained on Dumbledore, not knowing whether he might have some wandless magic that could disrupt her.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss my reasons with you, Miss Wilkins," he said superciliously. "It's a matter of security, you understand."

"Perhaps if you were prepared to provide a little bit more information, you might find that others are also willing to share things with you, Mister Dumbledore?" Monica suggested.

"That's not a step I'm willing to take at the moment," the elderly wizard responded. "There's far too much at risk."

"Then I'm afraid you'll have to accept that you aren't going to take Harry back to his Aunt and Uncle without that information. Because whether he is the child of the Prophecy or not, he isn't going back to the Dursleys to be abused just because you have some odd notion that he needs to grow up with blood relations."

Dumbledore's eyes grew wide at the mention of the Prophecy.

"What do you know about the Prophecy? It's supposed to be restricted information!"

"Restricted by whom? Voldemort already knows the first part of it, since you allowed Severus Snape to report it back to him after he disturbed your interview with Trelawney, and acted on it by attacking the Potters, so what exactly is the point of there being any restriction on it?"

"Who are you, to know that?" Dumbledore demanded, his expressions becoming more and more comical as Monica revealed what she knew about the Prophecy.

"Had I been willing to trust you, as once I thought I might, then you would have been the first person I would have taken the information to. But given what I've learned about you, and your unhealthy fixation with the Boy-who-Lived growing up unloved and uncared for with his Aunt, I'm not comfortable with letting you know all the 'whys' and 'wherefores'.

"You'll just have to trust that I know what I'm doing. Much, in fact, as you insist with all your minions, too."

"I don't know what Remus has told you-"

"This doesn't have anything to do with Remus," Monica interrupted. "He hasn't even mentioned anything about your Order of the Phoenix."

"Then how could you know anything about me and what my methods are? How do you even know about the Order?"

"Simple observation, Mister Dumbledore. Supported by your own attitude towards me when you came to my house and made demands of me, and the fact you arranged for Severus Snape to burgle my house in the middle of the night. And your attitude right now – the high and mighty Albus Dumbledore refusing to explain his esoteric reasons for attempting to enforce an illogical and unreasonable solution on someone not old enough to decide for himself."

Monica didn't mention how she knew about the Order of the Phoenix, as that was slightly more difficult to explain.

"In the meantime, I trust you'll leave now, before I have to call the Aurors to remove you?"

Dumbledore looked around and considered carefully whether there was any way that he could enforce his will here without his wand, before deciding that caution might be the better part of valour.

"Very well," he conceded, "I shall leave you be. Don't doubt that I shall be taking this up through legal channels, however."

"You may, try, Mister Dumbledore, but Harry is with those who have the legal right to him, which you do not."

"If I might have my wand?"

Monica handed the elder wand back to Dumbledore, who took it with trepidation, wondering whether or not he was still its master, but having been disarmed non-magically, it appeared that the wand did not consider that to signify a change of ownership, and he sighed with relief as he Apparated away.

Back inside, she rejoined Helen Granger.

"Don't mind me for a few minutes," she said, "I'm just going to add something to protect you all."

She went around the house engraving some runes, which took around twenty minutes, before returning to the living room.

"What was that about," Helen asked.

"I got a good read off Dumbledore's magical signature whilst I had his wand, and I've carved some protective runes based on it that should prevent him entering the house now unless you specifically invite him in and have me make an adjustment to one of the runes in advance," Monica explained. "That should hopefully stop him just turning up and snatching Harry in the middle of the night."

"What if he sends someone else, like he did to your house?"

"Then it won't work, but hopefully your burglar alarm will pick them up."

Ministry of Magic

Friday 26th March 1982

The small Ministry courtroom was sparsely populated this Friday afternoon. The proceedings hadn't been announced, nor would they normally have been for a custody hearing of this nature. For once, of late, Albus Dumbledore was confident that he would be getting his way.

"Custody hearing for Harry James Potter to begin. Judge Sandeep Patil presiding," the bailiff announced.

Thank you, Mister Trevelyan," the Judge said. "Who do we have present for this case, please?"

Dumbledore stepped forward.

"Albus Dumbledore, seeking custody of the minor child Harry James Potter, whose parents were killed last October," he said.

Judge Patil frowned and looked curiously over the top of his glasses at Dumbledore.

"This is a bit unusual, Mister Dumbledore. Why is the Chief Warlock seeking guardianship? Do you not have significant other responsibilities? And how do you intend to raise the child by yourself? Ah, never mind – we'll come to that in due course.

"Other interested parties?"

A tall, thin-faced man in dark grey robes stepped forward.

"Edwin Trusswell, your honour. Here on behalf on the existing legal guardians of Harry James Potter, and their nominated representative in the Wizarding World, Monica Wilkins."

Dumbledore frowned. How could that dratted Wilkins woman have found out about this hearing? He had tried to get it arranged as quickly and as low-key as possible, so that he would have no opposition, and now he was going to have to defend his decision to apply for custody. It would have been so much easier to get himself appointed Harry's magical guardian if there were no alternatives.

"Thank you Mister Trusswell. Any other parties?" the Judge asked.

"Very well," he continued after a moment, when it was clear that nobody else was coming forward. "Let's get started then," he said, after a brief glance at his notes.

"I understand that Master Potter became orphaned when You-know-Who killed his parents on 31st October last. I'll hear from Mister Dumbledore, first, as to why he wishes to assume guardianship."

"Thank you, your honour," Dumbledore began. "After young Harry's parents were killed, it became clear to me that he would still be at risk from any Death Eaters seeking to revenge themselves for their master's death. Therefore I placed him with his closest blood relatives, his Aunt and Uncle, and placed some significant magical protections on their residence. However, it appears that these relatives were unhappy to have their nephew placed with them, and have fostered the boy out, which puts him at risk again.

"The new foster parents have refused me access to the child to check on his well-being, and so that I could replicate the wards that I had laid down onto his new residence.

"Therefore I would like to ensure that Harry can be provided with the protection that he needs, and it has become evident that I shall need official recognisance in order to be able to do so.

"In addition, the child is the subject of a prophecy concerning the Dark Lord, and should he not have fully fully vanquished, as I believe is the case, Harry will need training and moulding to ensure that he is prepared to face him should there be a revivification."

Judge Patil frowned once again.

"That seems to be a rather excessive response to an uncertain threat, Mister Dumbledore. Have you confirmation that this Prophecy exists and that Master Potter is indeed the child concerned?"

"Yes, your honour – the Prophecy was given to me directly, by a seer from a family of known prophecisers. The prophecy orb has been registered in the Department of Mysteries as is required. There is no other child to whom the Prophecy could relate."

"Very well, Mister Dumbledore. Your claim has some merit, even if its genesis is somewhat obscure."

He turned to the DMLE lawyer.

"Mister Trusswell? Your case on behalf of the current guardians?"

"Thank you, your honour. Our case is fairly straightforward – Harry already has guardians who care for him deeply, and do not need the interference of Mister Dumbledore. They have friends who are able to provide wards for their home and ensure that Harry is brought up knowing who he is and about the magical world, alongside their own magical daughter.

"In fact, Mister Dumbledore is the last person who should be granted custody of Harry, because whilst he says he 'placed him with his closest blood relatives', he did so by leaving him on their doorstep in the middle of the night with a note telling them they had to take him in. He didn't ask Vernon and Petunia Dursley what they wanted, he simply left the child there.

"Not only that, but he did so without even checking the boy's health; my clients immediately noticed that here was an issue with the scar that appears on Harry's head and took him for medical assistance. There was some concern initially that he had been made into a living Horcrux-"

"Please, you honour, this is information-" Dumbledore tried to interrupt.

"No, Mister Dumbledore," Judge Patil insisted, "you may not stop this testimony."

"But the knowledge of Horcruxes mustn't be spread."

"That is not for you to decide, Mister Dumbledore. I know what a Horcrux is, and I must say that if there was any possibility that a child might have been infected with such an evil ritual then I would have expected St Mungo's to have been contacted immediately!"

"I assure you that I had Madam Pomfrey check him over before-"

"Then clearly Madam Pomfrey did not know what she was looking at. You, on the other hand, do appear to know what a Horcrux is and what it might mean, given that you have repeatedly stated to the Ministry and here in this courtroom that you do not think You-know-Who is completely gone.

"Now," he turned back to the DMLE lawyer, "Mister Trusswell. Please continue."

"As, I was saying, your honour, there was some concern that You-know-Who had deposited a Horcrux in young Harry's head, which is defined by his scar, but on further investigation it proved that this wasn't actually the case – the Dark Lord might have intended to use the child's death to create a Horcrux out of some other object, but what he actually did was create some sort of power leech that-"

"But-" Dumbledore tried to interrupt.

"No, Mister Dumbledore!" Judge Patil intervened firmly.

"Some sort of power leech," Trusswell continued, "that was able to be removed by Healers attached to the Department of Mysteries.

"So, it is clear that Mister Dumbledore has no actual regard for Harry's health at all.

"But in any case," Trusswell added, "Master Potter actually already has a nominated magical guardian, Sirius Black, as set out in the Potters' will."

"Sirius Black was convicted of betraying the Potters and multiple counts of murder and sent to Azkaban, though," Judge Patil said, somewhat shocked that this was even being raised as a possibility.

"That's not actually true," Trusswell told him. "Black was never even given a trial, just sent straight to Azkaban. And as for betraying the Potters, Mister Dumbledore knows that Black wasn't actually the Secret Keeper; Peter Pettigrew was – he cast the Fidelius on them, after all."

"Is this true, Mister Dumbledore?" Patil asked.

"I think that this has been taken completely out of context, your honour. Surely this isn't the place to be arguing the merits of a murder conviction when we are simply trying to ensure that a young magical child is placed in the safest possible environment?"

"That may be the case, Mister Dumbledore, but you be sure that I will be taking this up with my colleagues on the criminal courts as well, once we leave here. I see you haven't answered my question either, therefore I am taking from that that I assumed correctly. I am most disappointed in you.

"This case should never have been brought in the first place," he continued. "There is no reason for Master Potter to be removed from his current guardians, who, my notes advise, has been legitimately fostered by Mister and Mrs Granger, and is looking to be adopted by them. There is no evidence that Mister Potter needs any special protection that cannot be provided by his current guardians. Finally, we will be asking the DMLE to look into the case of Sirius Black, and if it is determined that he is wrongfully imprisoned, and is the rightful magical guardian of Harry Potter, he will be the first given the opportunity to stake his claim for that guardianship.

"In the meantime, this court finds in favour of Mister Trusswell and his clients. Court dismissed!"

The judge rapped his gavel on his desk and the case was over.