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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8180 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Ten—Courtroom Duels
“You should make sure that you look presentable, Harry,” said Dolores, and slid her hands down his shoulders, watching the hang of his robes critically. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but he kept obligingly silent. Dolores smiled and patted his shoulder. “You see? Now you look like a respectable child who can appear in front of the Wizengamot and won’t shock them.”
“Why are you always dressing him in green?” asked Black from the door. “It’s a Slytherin color.”
Dolores didn’t say she had been a Slytherin, because that would only launch Black into a rant, and make them late. “Surely you must have seen how it brings out his eyes.” She turned Harry away from the mirror so that Black could see his face. “He has beautiful eyes.”
Harry squirmed under her hands. Dolores suspected he didn’t know how to take a compliment. Another lesson to teach him, before Narcissa could.
“Oh, I know,” said Black, and gave Harry the kind of doting smile that made Dolores sure she could eventually secure his loyalty, too, as long as Harry’s stayed with her. “So did Lily.” Then he snapped his gaze up to her. “But I don’t think you should go around calling them beautiful. He’s a boy.”
Dolores restrained her sigh. “He’s at the age where people don’t expect him to be strong and fearless all the time,” she explained. “They can see a beautiful child. He’s so young…”
“Yeah, he is,” Black whispered, and in one of those rapid transitions that still left Dolores blinking, he came sprinting across the floor and knelt in front of Harry with his hands on Harry’s shoulders and his eyes locked on his face. “Do you forgive me for dashing off to Azkaban, pup? And leaving you all alone with the Dursleys?”
Dolores just waited. She saw Harry, as Black did not most of the time, but she didn’t know how he would respond to this. It would be interesting to find out.
Harry twisted his hands together, but then lowered them and clasped them before Dolores could even poke him in the back to make him do so. His voice was soft and steady as he said, “I forgive you, Sirius.”
Black crushed him so hard that Harry let out a small whimper. Dolores gently pulled him backwards again, and marked the way that Harry was holding onto the left side of his ribcage. Probably some old break there, which ached when someone held him too tightly. She would have to take him to the Healer at the end of the week—the emergency session of the Wizengamot could not last longer than that—and see about regrowing the bone.
And she would have to think of something special to do to the Muggles.
The problem was, nothing she thought of seemed special enough.
“What’s wrong, Dolores?”
Though Dolores still winced at the speaking of her name without a title, at least having another adult around meant she could share her thoughts a little. She flicked her eyes down to Harry, still tenderly rubbing his ribs, and then back up to Black and mouthed the word, “Muggles.”
Black’s lip peeled back from his teeth, and the insanity in his eyes grew. Dolores did her best not to show her shudder. At least she knew Black had the same thoughts as her, because for a moment, his eyes fixed on Harry as he walked ahead of them down the stairs.
“We’ll have to think of something special,” he whispered.
Dolores patted his shoulder as she passed him, taking the chance to smooth down his black formal robes the same way she had Harry’s. “We will.”
*
“Why, Lucius, have you called this special session of the Wizengamot?”
Dolores smiled through her teeth. Because the wheels of justice moved so slowly, Dumbledore still had the right to be here as a member of this august body, although not to preside. And he had immediately followed on the heels of Lucius Malfoy’s opening speech with this question.
Lucius turned his head and gave Dumbledore a faint smile. “Why, Albus, to make absolutely sure that the question of Harry Potter’s custody is settled. Since you thought it was urgent enough to break into Miss Umbridge’s house in the middle of the night, I thought you would agree it should be attended to as soon as possible.”
Laughter of varying degrees of politeness circled the room. Dumbledore didn’t flush, but only bent a slightly sad look on Lucius, and then on Harry, who stood next to Dolores. Black loomed on his other side. That kept him from looking too small and alone.
“I did what I thought was for the best before we knew that Sirius was innocent.”
“Then let the past be the past,” said another, thin man whom Dolores remembered after a moment of concentrating. Tacitus Nott, who didn’t show up for that many meetings nowadays due to ill health. “Let’s discuss what happened last week when you broke into Miss Umbridge’s home, Albus.”
Dumbledore’s jaw twitched a little. “I think Harry’s godfather should have custody of him.”
“Then you don’t break in in the middle of the night—”
“I do have custody of Harry! I just have shared custody—”
Lucius and Black broke off and glared at each other. Dolores looked the other Wizengamot members over critically, counting expressions that had a theme of outrage, so she wouldn’t laugh.
“Go ahead, Mr. Black,” said Lucius finally, because it made him look like the gracious one, gesturing with his arm so that his pale sleeve swayed. Black, in that infuriating manner he had, just nodded and turned back to the Wizengamot, accepting the gesture without feeling obligated for it.
“I have custody of Harry,” he explained. “But I don’t have any houses that are clean and ready for a kid! If you saw Grimmauld Place right now…” He shuddered a little. Then he turned and looked down at Harry, and his face softened.
“And Harry wants to stay with Dolores. She rescued him from people who were mistreating him. What kind of godfather would I be if I didn’t let him stay where he’s comfortable?”
There were people murmuring and nodding all around the room. Dolores relaxed a little. She had known it was a good move to make an ally of Black, but she hadn’t realized how much respect he would get for his family name.
“And you, Miss Umbridge? You’ve been quiet through all of this.”
Dolores tilted her head back and squarely met Lucius’s gaze. He might think to play with her by mentioning her now, but she had the words ready.
“I’ve been keeping quiet until the esteemed members of the Wizengamot should ask for my input,” she said, and gave a small curtsey, which she noticed some people nodding in approval over, too. “But I believe the facts are obvious. Sirius Black wishes Mr. Potter to stay in my custody. And I want to have Harry with me, too. And Albus Dumbledore broke through the defensive spells on my house to come and kidnap Harry.”
“I did not do such a thing.” Dumbledore had taken up the persona of sad but noble Hogwarts Headmaster, shaking his head over someone misunderstanding him like that. “I knew that Miss Umbridge would never allow Harry to meet his godfather, so I broke in with the desire to present the boy with a link to his past and let him make his own choices.”
“That’s not what you said at the time,” Black muttered.
Dolores saw that no one appeared to have heard him, and opened her mouth to speak in turn, but Lucius was already doing so. “What proof did you have that Madam Umbridge would never let Potter meet Black?”
“My own instincts, of course. When someone attempts to keep the Boy-Who-Lived for the sake of political power, it becomes obvious that—”
“And yet, Miss Umbridge was the one who said something in the last Wizengamot session to discuss Potter’s custody that I believe prompted you to look into Black’s trial records,” said Lucius musingly. “That doesn’t sound as though she was taking all routes possible to keep Potter to herself.”
“And if anyone was keeping the Boy-Who-Lived for the sake of political power…” Black tugged Harry against him, rumpling his robes so that Dolores had to bite her lips in disapproval. But it was all made-up for by the way he was glaring at Dumbledore.
A whisper of laughter circled the room. Dumbledore spread his hands. “You know that I was only thinking of the future of the wizarding world, Sirius.”
“W-what about my future?”
Dolores turned swiftly. They hadn’t discussed Harry speaking unless someone asked him a direct question, and then both she and Black had agreed it would be a good idea if he only said a few specific things. This wasn’t one of them.
But from the way Harry stared at Albus Dumbledore and people murmured, as Dolores had known they would, “What a beautiful child!”, this might work after all.
“What about my future?” Harry repeated. There was such deadness in his eyes that even Dolores wanted to reach out and comfort him. He looked down at the floor, and then he looked back at Dumbledore, but he didn’t seem weak. “What were you thinking when you left me on the doorstep of Muggles you knew hated me?”
“Harry, my boy.” Dumbledore was using that soft voice that usually served him so well in the Wizengamot, because it meant everyone had to calm down and listen to him. “I did not know they would abuse you.”
“You knew—you knew my aunt. Sirius told me.” Harry shuddered a little, but didn’t move, and although at the beginning Dolores had thought he looked like a bird hypnotized by a snake, now she didn’t know who the real snake was. “You knew she was jealous of my mum. You thought you had to threaten her to make her keep me.”
Dumbledore sighed. “There is a large difference between an unhappy home and an abusive one. And between an abusive home and death.”
Dolores made a large noise, unable to help herself, even seeing all the eyes it attracted. He had just lost! Black had told her that Dumbledore would want to justify his decisions no matter what, and that would help them, but she hadn’t believed him, not really…
Now, he’d lost.
“So it was all right if I was abused, as long as I didn’t die?” Harry shook his head, his eyes locked on Dumbledore. “I don’t think my mum would like that, sir. She actually died for me.”
“So you could live, Harry! Not so you could always be kept safe.”
Dolores clasped her hands over her mouth. He kept giving them more! He didn’t know when to stop!
She wondered, for a moment, why he’d never been like this in the debates before the Wizengamot when she had watched him and wished he would undermine himself, but then she realized Black had given her the clue to that, as well. He’d said that Dumbledore was at his worst when he wanted to justify himself to someone he felt he’d wronged. There had been no one on the Wizengamot like that in the years Dolores had been attending.
“So you’re saying I would eventually have to die. Or get hurt. Or…something.”
Dolores caught Lucius’s eye, and they exchanged mild nods. Yes, this was perfect. And Lucius would move on it before they could lose their advantage.
“I think he is saying that he did not care what happened to you, Harry, because he was too intent on playing Merlin to think his plans could ever go wrong.” Lucius rose to his full height, which Dolores had to admit was more impressive than either she or Black could look, her with her shortness and Black with his thinness from prison. “Well, they did. And now we must look to who would actually take the most care of so precious a life.”
“I know who would,” said Black, and his eyes glittered at everyone, including Dumbledore.
“I beg you to think about what you’re saying, Sirius.” Dumbledore was attempting to keep his voice calm and quiet, but Dolores could hear how badly he wanted to raise it. Even Harry might be able to, from the way he craned his neck at Dumbledore. “I beg you to raise Harry by yourself, if you think you have to, but do what Lily and James would have wanted you to.”
“That’s keep Harry safe,” Black snarled, and his face split so suddenly into a vicious grin that Dolores wanted to back away. But she stood, because it would be fatal weakness for her to do that now. “Not just alive, not leave him with abusive Muggles and throw away the memory, but actually protect him.”
“I am the only one who can do that, Sirius. If you knew everything that I did, you would understand why Harry needed to grow up away from the wizarding world, to avoid precisely this kind of situation…”
“But you didn’t tell me, even when you had the time and the privacy to do so,” said Black, and narrowed his eyes. “That makes me think that your arguments aren’t all that convincing after all, and you don’t want to repeat them now, in front of everyone. Or do you? Well. Come on. I’m waiting.”
Even Lucius was silent as they watched Dumbledore struggle. Dolores stood straight and blandly interested and had to smile a little. For the moment, this was a personal battle between Dumbledore and Black, the way it had been between the Headmaster and Harry a short time ago. Dolores knew Dumbledore sounded overblown instead of grand when he tried to retreat to a more personal scale.
“There are secrets that cannot be whispered in front of people like these,” Dumbledore said at last.
And that compounds the loss. Dolores was much more approving than she had thought she would be of this new form of political intrigue, where she stood back and smiled benignly, and Dumbledore destroyed himself with no help from her.
This time, it was the Wizengamot who rose snarling, with members other than Lucius standing up to offer their opinions.
“What do you mean, people like these?” That was the immensely old Madam Greengrass, who didn’t even bother to speak up most of the time, and sat back in a posture that the unobservant would think meant she was sleeping. Dolores knew it meant she only responded to the important things. “We’re your colleagues in the Wizengamot, Albus. We’re meant to help make decisions. Or have you started thinking that you can do it all by yourself and you don’t need help, because you’re never wrong?”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, Evelina,” said Minister Bagnold, although her eyes twinkled. “We only need to ask Albus, and he’ll explain—”
“You’re deluded if you think that, Millicent,” said Abraham Daley, a half-blood who had clawed his way up the ranks with sheer tenacity and a touch that turned Knuts to Galleons. Dolores didn’t approve of his blood, but she could only admire his tactics. “Albus Dumbledore has apparently gone beyond us, in deciding not only the laws but the destiny of the wizarding world.” Daley turned to stare at Dumbledore. “Haven’t you, Albus?”
“Now, Abraham, I never—”
“Yes, you did,” said Greengrass, and her cane creaked under her hands as she braced herself on it. “You did, Albus. And you’ve gone too far this time.”
“There was no other person to take charge of the child, and he needed a place to stay! I couldn’t spend weeks debating—”
“You didn’t even spend one night,” said Minister Bagnold, apparently deciding her days of appearing to be moderate were over, and swinging hard on Dumbledore. “And there were plenty of families in the wizarding world that would have taken little Harry, and you asked none of them. Is that what you call reasonable?”
“Now, Millicent—”
As the Wizengamot began to tear him apart, Black leaned towards Dolores, his eyes darting nervously around the room. “Are we supposed to be doing something right about now?”
“No,” said Dolores, and felt a stab of pity for Black when he only stared at her. “Why should we? They’re doing all the work for us.”
She looked down at Harry, who was watching everything with intelligent green eyes that barely reflected any emotion. She nodded to him when he looked up at her, and gave him a quick, reassuring smile. He had more political awareness than Black. Then again, it seemed Dolores had probably taught him better than Black’s parents taught him.
“But…I don’t know, do we need to say something, do we need to show that we respect him, or…”
Dolores leaned close to Black, so no one else could hear her words over the chaos flying around the room. “Remember that he left you there to rot, Black. You can feel sorry for him if you want to, but if that makes you endanger Harry, then I shall think less of you.”
She already had the key to Black. His moods could change on the spin of a coin, but there was one thing that would always make his eyes and mouth harden, and that was the mention of some danger to Harry.
“You’re right,” he said, and he folded his arms and leaned back against the pillar behind him, watching the slaughter of Albus Dumbledore’s political power with a cool expression.
In the end, the conclusion was foregone. They gave Black and Dolores shared custody, as Dolores had known they would, and Lucius Malfoy also specified they should stay in Dolores’s house, since Black had confessed of his own free will that he didn’t have a suitable home for Harry.
Dolores saw Dumbledore watching them, and inclined her head. She knew he would probably manage to recover some part of his power. At least, he would remind people of connections and favors and debs they owed him, and he would retain his position as Headmaster, which was not small.
But it would take him months, if not years. And in the meantime, Harry would be growing up under Dolores’s care, learning to resist the way Dumbledore manipulated things so that he would be safe from him when he went to Hogwarts.
As Dolores smiled, something small and cool touched her. She started and looked down.
Harry had just slipped his hand into hers. He stared at her.
“Do you not like it?” he whispered. “I can take it away if you don’t like it.”
But Dolores only shook her head, disregarding the lack of a title, and let it remain. She would not always be lenient, but then again, it was not every day they won such a victory.
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The Daring Win