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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 30
- 31
- 32
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Chapter Thirty-One—The Inquiry
“Thank you for coming, Madam Umbridge.”
Dolores gave the man shaking her hand a bland smile. He was Heracles Shacklebolt, and she knew very well that he was loyal to Dumbledore. Or at least his nephew Kingsley was, and it was wise to assume family connections in their world until someone told you otherwise. “You’re welcome. I hope to see justice done.”
For a minute, Heracles leaned towards her, and his grip crushed her hand. He was an old wizard who had shrunken with age, but his voice could still project threats when he wanted it to. “You’re trying to bring down a great man. Why would you do that?”
“Perhaps you should ask Dumbledore why he would try to read a little boy’s mind and gain control of him at all costs,” said Ernest Bolton, coming up behind her.
Heracles looked at Ernest and released her hand. “He didn’t do that.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t make such statements until you view the witness memories,” Dolores suggested mildly. A glance around the milling courtroom had told her that the Greengrasses were here, and so was Snape, although he’d left the house separately so as not to be seen walking in with her. “I’ve heard good witnesses can change someone’s position dramatically.”
“There’s nothing that can convince me to believe ill of Albus Dumbledore.”
“A hardened mind, impossible to change. What a waste.” Ernest shook his head and began to climb the stairs to the galleries.
Heracles stood and glared at Dolores. His dark skin seemed a little paler than usual. “What did you promise Ernest, to get him on your side?”
“Surely you should have seen that we’ve worked together for the last few years.”
“Someone shouldn’t be able to change—”
But not even one of Dumbledore’s loyalists was capable of ignoring that hypocrisy in his own statement. He clamped his lips tighter and turned away, heading up to his own seat on the opposite side of the room.
“Hello, Dolores. How is Harry holding up?” The Greengrasses had come up to her, and Alfred Greengrass smiled slightly at her. Daphne was beside him, her eyes wide as she took in the Wizengamot members rustling their robes and sitting down. Dolores assumed it was probably her first time here.
“Hello, Alfred. He’s doing well. He’ll be here, of course, but a little later. I saw no reason to expose him to more gaping and camera flashes than necessary.”
“The trials one must go through when you have a famous child.”
Dolores knew well enough that he would have liked to exchange his daughters’ quiet reputations as children of good family for Harry’s fame, so she merely smiled politely and gave a deeper nod, a half-bow, to Madam Greengrass, Alfred’s grandmother, standing behind him. She was also a member of the Wizengamot and had opposed Dumbledore on Harry’s behalf before. “Hello, Madam.”
The woman snorted and cast a spell that floated her up towards her seat. “You needn’t try that charming bollocks on me, Dolores Umbridge,” she said over her shoulder.
“She does like that her great-granddaughter is friends with Harry Potter,” Alfred murmured, avoiding Dolores’s eyes.
“I know she does,” Dolores said. She nodded to the Greengrasses and moved to take her seat in the row of chairs that faced the gallery. In truth, she didn’t fear much that Dumbledore would be able to escape this inquiry or make her look bad. There were simply too many people prepared to testify against him.
And the Wizengamot had bent its rules for Dumbledore in the past, but unless they were willing to change several laws, they would not be able to excuse him this time.
Dolores folded her hands and glanced around with casual interest. There were more members of the Wizengamot attending than she had seen in many months. A few reporters lurked along the walls as well, and Dolores nodded and smiled to the few who had helped her and Harry in the past. Then she looked up as Dumbledore walked into the room, clad in a set of robes bright enough to sear through someone’s closed eyelids.
He saw her and beamed at her. Dolores turned her head a little to the side and smiled, distantly. Dumbledore was a Legilimens himself, after all. She didn’t want her thoughts read before the inquiry started.
“We’ve all had so many misunderstandings,” Dumbledore said, and came over to stand directly beside her, which was more than Dolores had expected. His voice was soft and soothing. “Don’t you think we could put aside our disagreement, so that we might give Harry the best life possible?”
“The best life possible is one on the other side of the room from you, sir,” Dolores said. Her voice was cool. She kept her eyes on the far wall. Given what had brought them here, she doubted anyone was going to find fault with her manners.
“But Harry is more important than anything we do here today.”
“I might get to say that,” Dolores said, and didn’t glance up at Dumbledore, but turned her body a little, to take him in without giving him access. “I took up the duties of his guardian, and I consider myself privileged to have the position. But what have you done that makes Harry important to you?”
“He is—”
“Someone you dropped off with abusive Muggles, and you did it by leaving him on a doorstep in autumn,” Dolores says. “No, sir, I don’t think Harry is important to you in the way you seem to be claiming.”
Dumbledore’s face turned the slightest bit pink. But he bent towards her and tried to use his gentle, condescending tone to best effect. “If you consider that he’s the Boy-Who-Lived, then he’s important to every wizard in Britain.”
“Then talk to me about him on that basis,” said Dolores, and glanced up more than she had so far. “He’s no more important to you than he is to every other wizard.”
“My dear woman, when you remember that I am the Headmaster of the school where Harry will spend seven years of his life—”
“That’s what we’re here to determine, Dumbledore,” called Madam Greengrass from up in the gallery. “Why don’t you take a seat so that we can get started already?”
Dumbledore turned pinker than before, probably because everyone was staring at them. Dolores rearranged her hands in her lap and nodded grandly to Dumbledore. “When you can, talk to me outside this hearing.”
Dumbledore watched her for a moment more, then turned and went to take a chair at the far end of the row. Dolores saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye; it was Sirius escorting Harry in. She smiled at them both—well, mostly at Harry, but Sirius was welcome to think that it was for him if he wanted to—and faced front again.
“We are here to conduct an inquiry into the activities of Albus Dumbledore, specifically considering his handling of Harry Potter and his guardian, Dolores Umbridge.” Minister Bagnold began the meeting with a rolling voice. “I understand that one of the charges concerns Headmaster Dumbledore’s attempt to have Severus Snape read the mind of Harry Potter during a birthday party gathering at Madam Umbridge’s house. Will the witnesses for this part of the inquiry please come forwards?” From her bland voice, one would never know she had been at that party herself.
Dolores stood up, along with Sirius, Harry, and Alfred Greengrass and Daphne. And, from the different part of the audience where he’d secreted himself, Snape.
Dolores couldn’t help herself. She turned her head a little to look at Dumbledore. His expression was as priceless as she’d always thought it would be when his eyes latched onto Snape. Then he shook his shoulders and sat forwards as if he was going to ride a plunging Abraxan through the clouds and down to earth.
You can be determined all you like, Dolores thought, and walked out of the row of chairs to meet up with the others. It’s hard to argue against evidence.
“You are Severus Snape?” Minister Bagnold asked, looking down on Snape with a remote expression as if she didn’t know perfectly well who he was. “Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”
“I am.” Snape looked calm. Dolores had wondered if he would manage to keep his spite on a leash, but he’d succeeded better, at least with his facial expression, than she’d imagined.
“And you have worked for the school for ten years?”
“Almost ten, yes.”
“Albus Dumbledore hired you?”
“He did.” Snape was looking now as if he was about to enjoy himself. Dolores eyed him. Just as long as he remembers that he has to keep his tongue under control, then I don’t mind what else he does.
“I understand,” said Minister Bagnold, magnificent in her condescension, “that part of the inquiry concerns whether Headmaster Albus Dumbledore knew you were a Legilimens when he hired you, and whether he intended for you to confine use of your gift to adults if he did know.”
“It does.” Snape reached into his robe pocket and produced a sheaf of parchments as though he was a Muggle magician conjuring a rabbit. “This is the contract that shows his awareness and what he intended to have me do to students.”
The roar that swept the courtroom seemed to come mostly from the people on the floor, but Dolores saw more than one Wizengamot member standing up in their seats and shouting fiercely. She smiled and stood there, looking around, as if she’d had no idea that this would happen. Ernest Bolton’s eyes were narrowed at her, but Dolores only shrugged. This worked out for their side, so he didn’t need to know every detail in advance.
“Those papers could be tampered with!” Heracles Shacklebolt was arguing, waving his hands around. “We won’t know—”
“I know there are potions that would reveal any tampering with the original parchment and ink,” Snape said, curling his lip as if he was smelling manure. “Why not bring them out and use them on the contract? I assume that the Ministry keeps such potions on hand.” His opinion of them if they didn’t was left implied.
“Of course we do,” said Minister Bagnold, with a frown at Heracles when he tried to open his mouth. She turned and nodded to a woman in the robes of an Auror behind her, and the Auror slipped away while Bagnold turned to Heracles. “If you will calm down, please, Mr. Shacklebolt.”
Heracles did, but he was still scowling at Snape. Snape gave him the blandest look imaginable in return.
Dolores finally couldn’t control herself, and turned around to look at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore stood there with his hands folded and a smile on his face. Dolores wondered if she was the only one who could make out the sharp brittleness of the lines carved around his mouth.
“While we are waiting for the potion to be delivered,” said Minister Bagnold, “perhaps you could tell us about what occurred at your ward’s birthday party, Madam Umbridge?”
Dolores nodded and stepped forwards. “Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor Severus Snape unexpectedly arrived at Harry’s birthday party,” she said. “I hadn’t realized they intended to be anywhere near him before Harry arrives at the age to go to Hogwarts. Because of interactions between Headmaster Dumbledore and my ward in the past, I felt compelled to be present when they met. I was therefore close enough to hear Professor Snape murmur ‘Legilimens.’”
“Why would anyone want to read the thoughts of a child?” Heracles tried to interrupt.
“I know, it is a terrible crime,” Dolores agreed, laughing inwardly when she saw how his face flushed. She thought he’d been trying to set up a line of reasoning about a child’s thoughts being boring, but it wasn’t going to succeed. “I was angry at Professor Snape first of all, of course. But Professor Snape revealed that he had either been meant to go unnoticed and find information in Harry’s mind that would allow the Headmaster to influence him or take the fall if he was noticed—”
“You cannot prove that!”
“Well, I can certainly offer up my Pensieve memories,” Dolores said mildly. “And so can Professor Snape. I imagine that he can remember the moment when Headmaster Dumbledore told him that he would like to read Harry’s thoughts.”
“Yes, I can,” Snape said, perfectly on cue.
“I, for one, would like the thoughts of the child whose mind was supposedly violated,” Heracles said loudly. “Let’s ask him what it felt like.”
Sirius had led Harry up to the front already. Harry turned his gaze from face to face, his expression blank except for a little sadness in his eyes. Dolores would have hugged him if they had been alone. Or at least patted his shoulder. It wouldn’t do to have the boy getting ideas.
“What did it feel like, when Snape supposedly made this probe into your mind?” Heracles demanded, his smile faltering when Harry only went looking at him. “Can you even describe what it felt like?”
“It felt like someone trying to dig up the most precious secret I had,” Harry said simply. “And like I knew they would laugh at it and publish it in all the papers. It was disgusting and horrible, and I saw several memories flash before my eyes.”
There was silence for a bit, and then another Wizengamot member said, “That is what it’s like when someone’s thrashing around in your mind with Legilimency, I have to say. An accurate description.”
That made a few other people start to argue, but Dumbledore spoke up then, and made his voice golden and sweeping, the way Dolores thought he must have when he gave speeches in the Wizengamot in the past. “If I might respond? What Madam Umbridge says is inaccurate. She does not understand the inner workings of Hogwarts as—well as she thinks.” He smiled, and it was reassuring and noble and all the other positive adjectives someone could apply to a political leader. “And while Severus may have done that, it certainly was not at my order. I had already intended to sack him for using Legilimency on the students.”
Snape laughed. Dumbledore frowned at him.
What, did you expect him to go quietly to his doom like a good little sacrificial lamb? Dolores thought, shaking her head. Neither him nor Harry. You aren’t as good a planner as I thought if your plans always involved people offering themselves up in your place.
“We can settle with Pensieve memories and Veritaserum,” said Minister Bagnold, at the same moment as the Auror she’d sent out earlier returned with a flask of bubbling brown potion. “Ah. Now we can test the contract Professor Snape says is his.” She gestured and Summoned the parchments Snape had been holding.
Dolores suffered a brief flash of discomfort as Bagnold tore a corner of the parchment and snipped loose a piece of one large letter to get a sample of the ink. If Snape had lied and this wasn’t his original contract after all…
But the potion abruptly calmed and turned clear. Bagnold nodded to a man who had followed the Auror, and he said, in the precise words of someone who cared more about the details of potions than politics, “That indicates that the contract is the stated age.”
“Well, then.” Bagnold put the parchments down next to her chair and turned to Dumbledore. “Perhaps you could indicate, Headmaster, why you chose to hire someone who you knew had Legilimency, and also make it a condition of his employment that he use it at your discretion?” Her voice was soft, but Dolores could hear the shake in it. Bagnold was much angrier than she was letting on.
“As I said, I intended to sack Professor Snape for using Legilimency on students—”
“But you already had committed an illegal act by hiring someone who did, and saying in his contract—”
“I changed my mind over the years.” Dumbledore looked tragic as he lifted his hands. “Can a man not do that? Or must the crimes of my younger self ruin my reputation even as I attempt to cleanse it?”
Some members of the Wizengamot nodded fervently, but Minister Bagnold simply turned to Snape and said, “Would you be willing to undergo Veritaserum to substantiate Madam Umbridge’s charge that the Headmaster ordered you to use Legilimency on Harry Potter?”
“Yes,” said Snape, after a long moment in which he examined the man standing behind the Minister. He must be someone who Snape trusted to brew good potions, because when he took out a vial of Veritaserum with a small bow and walked towards him down the stairs, Snape reached for it without hesitating further.
“Now, this seems a little hasty—” Dumbledore began.
Snape had already taken the potion and placed three precise drops on his tongue. He swayed, but stayed on his feet, and Minister Bagnold asked, “Is your name Severus Snape?”
“Yes.”
“Do you work at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”
“Yes.”
The Minister started to open her mouth again, but Dumbledore cut in quickly before she could. “Were you an unrepentant Death Eater until 1981?”
“Yes,” Snape said, after a visible moment of sweating and struggling.
Once again people leaped to their feet and roared. Heracles was pointing a finger and asking, “How can you trust someone who was a Death Eater?” Sirius moved closer to Harry as if to shield him. Harry was looking around with cold eyes, but he caught her gaze and slipped his blank mask back on.
“Did Dumbledore know you were a Death Eater when he hired you?” asked the Minister.
“Yes.” Snape’s eyes had filled with viciousness that Dolores felt pleased about. Honestly, Dumbledore should have known better than to stir him up.
“Then why did he hire you?” the Minister asked, in between more shouts and finger-pointing and accusations.
“Because he felt I had sincerely repented for my actions during the war,” Snape said. “And because I promised to be his spy in the Death Eater ranks if the Dark Lord should ever return.”
“It seems more and more obvious to me,” Dolores said, in one of those pauses that happened when everyone else had fallen silent in shock, “that Headmaster Dumbledore has run the school more for his own political purposes than as an educational institution.”
“That seems to me true.” Minister Bagnold’s smile was strained. “Now, please give us your version of events at Harry Potter’s birthday party.”
Dolores didn’t listen to Snape’s exact words. Of course she knew what he would say, and she was more interested in keeping an eye on Dumbledore. His face was bloodless, but he was still trying to smile. Perhaps he thought he had too much political power to fall even now.
The Minister motioned for the Potions brewer to give Snape the antidote to the Veritaserum when he was done reciting his memories, and she turned to Dolores. “I would like your memories for our Pensieve, Madam Umbridge. The memories of the party, that is. And those of anyone else who is willing to give them.”
Alfred and Sirius were already stepping forwards. Dolores touched her wand to her temple as she saw an Auror coming down the steps from the gallery with the Pensieve, but her eyes were on Dumbledore’s stunned, angry face.
The inquiry hadn’t concluded yet. They might end up recommending that Dumbledore have some kind of sanctions imposed rather than leave his post, Dolores knew.
But his attempts to manipulate the evidence were also now on record. He was not going to survive as he had been.
It feels good to change the world, Dolores thought cheerfully, and put her memory in the Pensieve as it hovered in front of her.
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The Daring Win