080.asc

// 14321
//== Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 2, The Horns Effect

// 14322
//The Most Ancient Hall of the Wizengamot is cool and dark, with concentric
//half-circles of stone rising up from the lowest center, and simple wooden
//benches set down upon those elevated half-circles. There is no source of light,
//but the chamber is well-lit, without any apparent cause or reason; it is simply
//a brute fact that the hall is well-lit. The walls like the floor are stone,
//dark stone, some elegant and mysterious conjugation of rock most fine to gaze
//upon, with a smooth texture that seems to flow and shift beneath its surface.
//This is the Most Ancient Hall, the oldest place of wizardry that has lasted
//into the modern day; every other place of power was destroyed in one war or
//another. This is the Hall of the Wizengamot, which is most ancient because the
//wars ended with the building of this place.

// 14323
//This is the Hall of the Wizengamot; there are older places, but they are
//hidden. Legend holds that the walls of dark stone were conjured, created,
//willed into existence by Merlin, when he gathered the most powerful wizards
//left in the world and awed them into accepting him as their chief. And when
//(the legend continues) the Seers continued to foretell that not enough had yet
//been done to prevent the end of the world and its magic, then (the story goes)
//Merlin sacrificed his life, and his wizardry, and his time, to lay in force the
//Interdict of Merlin. It was not an act without cost, for a place like this one
//could not be raised again by any power still known to wizardkind. Nor yet
//destroyed, for those walls of dark stone would pass unharmed, and perhaps
//unwarmed, through the heart of a nuclear explosion. It is a pity that nobody
//knows how to make them anymore.

// 14324
//In the highest of the rising half-circles of the Wizengamot, on the topmost
//level of dark stone, there is a podium. At that podium stands an old man, with
//care-lined face and a silver beard that stretches down below his waist; this is
//Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. His right hand bears a wand of power,
//upon his shoulder perches a bird of fire. His left hand holds a short rod, thin
//and featureless and forged of the same dark stone as the walls, and this is the
//Line of Merlin Unbroken, the device of the Chief Warlock. Karen Dutton
//bequeathed the Line to Albus Dumbledore on the last day of her life, scant
//hours after he returned half-dead from his defeat of Grindelwald with a phoenix
//flaming brightly at his side. She in turn received the Line from the
//perfectionist Nicodemus Capernaum, each wizard passing it to their chosen
//successor, back and back in unbroken chain to the day Merlin laid down his
//life. That (if you were wondering) is how the country of magical Britain
//managed to elect Cornelius Fudge for its Minister, and yet end up with Albus
//Dumbledore for its Chief Warlock. Not by law (for written law can be rewritten)
//but by most ancient tradition, the Wizengamot does not choose who shall preside
//over its follies. Since the day of Merlin’s sacrifice, the most important duty
//of any Chief Warlock has been to exercise the highest caution in their choice
//of people who are both good and able to discern good successors. You would
//expect that chain of light to miss a step, sometime down through the centuries;
//that it would go astray at least once, and then never return. But it has not.
//The Line of Merlin continues, unbroken.

// 14325
//(Or so say those of Dumbledore’s faction. Lord Malfoy would tell you otherwise.
//And in Asia they tell other tales entirely, which may not make Britain’s
//version wrong.)

// 14326
//Upon the bottommost platform of the Ancient Hall there is a high-backed chair,
//legged and armed and without cushions, of dark metal rather than dark stone,
//which Merlin did not place there.

// 14327
//The Ministry building that grew up around this place is wood-paneled and
//gold-washed, bright and fire-lit, filled with bustling foolishness. This place
//is different. It is the stone heart of magical Britain, and it is neither
//gold-washed nor wood-paneled, neither fire-lit nor bright.

// 14328
//Filing solemnly into this room are witches and wizards in plum-colored robes
//each embroidered with a silver W. They carry themselves with an air of
//seriousness showing that they are well aware that they are terribly, terribly
//important. They are meeting in the Most Ancient Hall, after all. They are the
//Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot, and they consider themselves the greatest
//folk of the world’s greatest magical country. Lesser folk have fallen before
//them on bended knee in supplication; they are powerful, they are wealthy, they
//are noble; are they not great?

// 14329
//Albus Dumbledore knows everyone in this room by name. He has taught many of
//them, though too few have learned. Some are his allies, some his opponents, the
//rest he courts within the careful dance of their neutrality. All of them, to
//him, are people.

// 14330
//The current Defense Professor of Hogwarts, if you asked him for his opinion of
//the Lords and Ladies, would say that while many of them are ambitious, few have
//any ambition. He would observe that the Wizengamot is exactly where someone
//like that would end up - that it is exactly the sort of opportunity you would
//grasp, if you had nothing better to do. Such folk are rarely interesting, but
//they are often useful; pieces to be manipulated, points to be scored, by the
//true players of the game.

// 14331
//Not among the rising half-circles, but off to one side among a raised arc for
//the spectators, next to a witch in pointed hat whose face is lined with
//apprehension, there sits a boy dressed in the most formal black robes that he
//owns. His eyes are green ice and abstraction, and he hardly glances at the
//Lords and Ladies as they bustle in. To him they are just a collection of
//murmuring plum-colored robes to decorate the wooden benches, visual background
//for the scene of the Most Ancient Hall. If there is an enemy here, or something
//to be manipulated, it is merely “the Wizengamot”. The wealthy elites of magical
//Britain have collective force, but not individual agency; their goals are too
//alien and trivial for them to have personal roles in the tale. As of now, this
//present time, the boy neither likes nor dislikes the plum-colored robes,
//because his brain does not assign them enough agenthood to be the subjects of
//moral judgment. He is a PC, and they are wallpaper.

// 14332
//This view is about to change.

// 14333
//Harry gazed unseeing around the hall of the Wizengamot; it looked quite old and
//historic and there was no doubt that Hermione could have lectured him about the
//place for hours on end. The plum-colored robes had stopped arriving, and
//Harry’s pocketwatch, advancing at the rate of three minutes every half-hour,
//said that the trial was almost due to start.

// 14334
//Professor McGonagall was sitting beside him, and her eyes never left him for
//more than twenty consecutive seconds.

// 14335
//Harry had read the __Daily Prophet__ that morning. The headline had been
//“MAD MUGGLEBORN TRIES TO END ANCIENT LINE” and the rest of the paper had been
//the same. When Harry was nine years old the IRA had blown up a British
//barracks, and he’d watched on TV as all the politicians contested to see who
//could be the most loudly outraged. And the thought had occurred to Harry - even
//then, before he’d known much about psychology - that it looked like
//__everyone__ was competing to see who could be most angry, and
//__nobody__ would’ve been allowed to suggest that anyone was being
//__too__ angry, even if they’d just proposed the saturation nuclear bombing
//of Ireland. He’d been struck, even then, by an essential emptiness in the
//indignation of politicians - though he hadn’t had the words to describe it, at
//that age - a sense that they were trying to score cheap points by hitting at
//the same safe target as everyone else.

// 14336
//Harry had always possessed that sense of hollowness about political
//indignation, but it was strange how very much more obvious it seemed, when you
//were reading a dozen articles in the __Daily Prophet__ beating on Hermione
//Granger.

// 14337
//The leading article, written by some name that Harry didn’t recognize, had
//called for the minimum age for Azkaban to be lowered, just so that the twisted
//mudblood who had defaced the honor of Scotland with her savage, unprovoked
//attack upon the last heir of a Most Ancient House within the sacred refuge of
//Hogwarts could be sent to the Dementors that were the only punishment
//commensurate with the severity of her unspeakable crime. Only this would be
//enough to discourage any other foreign, subhuman brutes who similarly believed
//in their twisted insanity that they could evade the majesty of the Wizengamot’s
//inevitable and merciless scourging of all that threatened the honorable
//nobility of etcetera etcetera etcetera.

// 14338
//The next article had said the same thing in less eloquent words.

// 14339
//Earlier, Albus Dumbledore had told him,

// 14340
//__“I will not try to keep you from this trial.” The old wizard’s voice
//quiet and unyielding. “I can well foresee how that would go. But I would have
//you treat me with equal courtesy in return. The politics of the Wizengamot are
//delicate, and of them you know nothing. Dare any folly and it shall be to
//Hermione Granger’s cost; and you will remember that folly for the rest of your
//days, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.”__

// 14341
//__“I understand,” Harry said. “I know. Just - if you’re planning to pull
//a rabbit out of your hat and save the day at the last minute when everything
//seems lost, please tell me now instead of letting me sit and worry -”__

// 14342
//__“I would not do that to you,” the old wizard said, a terrible weariness
//seeming to suffuse him as he turned to go. “Still less to Hermione. But I have
//no rabbits in my hat, Harry. We can only see what Lucius Malfoy wants.”__

// 14343
//There was a small sharp rap, a single brief sound that somehow silenced the
//entire room and caused Harry’s head to jerk around and upward. High above,
//Dumbledore had just tapped his podium with the dark rod he held in his left
//hand.

// 14344
//“The ninetieth session of the two-hundred-and-eighth Wizengamot is convened at
//the request of Lord Lucius Malfoy,” the old wizard said tonelessly.

// 14345
//At once, far to the side of the podium but also in the highest circle, rose a
//tall man with a mane of long white spilling down from his head over the
//shoulders of his plum-colored robes. “I present a witness for questioning under
//Veritaserum,” Lucius Malfoy said, his cool tone clear throughout the room,
//smoothly controlled with only a slight undertone of righteous fury. “Let
//Hermione, the first Granger, be brought forth.”

// 14346
//“I ask you all to remember that she is a first-year of Hogwarts,” Dumbledore
//said. “I will brook no abuse of this witness -”

// 14347
//Someone in the benches quite audibly said “Pfah!” and there was a spread of
//disgusted snorts, even one or two jeers.

// 14348
//Harry stared at the plum-colored robes, his eyes narrowing.

// 14349
//And with the growing anger came something else, a rising sense of disquiet, of
//something horribly skewed, like reality itself was being disrupted. Harry knew
//that, somehow, but he couldn’t figure out what was awry, or why his mind
//thought it was getting worse…

// 14350
//“__Order!__” Dumbledore bellowed. He rapped the stone rod twice against
//the podium, producing two more small clicks that overrode all noise. “I will
//have order here!”

// 14351
//The door through which the witness was brought forth was set directly beneath
//Harry’s own seat, so it wasn’t until the entire group had emerged fully into
//the stone hall that Harry saw -

// 14352
//- an Auror trio -

// 14353
//- Hermione’s back was to Harry as she was brought out, he couldn’t see her face
  //-

// 14354
//- followed by a shining silver sparrow and a running moonlit squirrel -

// 14355
//- and the source of the horrible wrongness, half-hidden beneath a tattered
  //cloak.

// 14356
//Harry shot to his feet before he could even think, it was only Professor
//McGonagall’s sudden frantic grab on his wrist that stopped his hand going for
//his wand; and the Transfiguration Professor whispered desperately,
//“__Harry it’s all right there’s a Patronus -__”

// 14357
//It took a few seconds for Harry to remember himself. For the part of himself
//that understood that Hermione hadn’t been directly exposed to a Dementor, to
//argue his other parts into something like sanity -

// 14358
//__But animal Patronuses aren’t perfect,__ said another voice inside his
//mind. __Or Dumbledore wouldn’t see the form of a naked man painful to
//look upon. You felt it approaching, animal Patronus or no…__

// 14359
//Slowly, Harry Potter sat back down again as Professor McGonagall pulled down
//with her grip on his wrist.

// 14360
//But by then he’d already declared war on the country of magical Britain, and
//the idea of other people calling him a Dark Lord no longer seemed important one
//way or another.

// 14361
//Hermione’s face became visible to him, as she sat down in the chair. She wasn’t
//upright and defiant like she’d been in front of Snape, she wasn’t crying like
//she’d been when the Aurors arrested her. She just sat there with a look of
//vacant horror as dark metal chains snaked out from the chair and bound her arms
//and legs.

// 14362
//Harry couldn’t take it. Without even thinking he was trying to flee inside
//himself, flee into his dark side, pull the cold rage over himself like a
//shield. It took too long, he hadn’t tried to go fully into his dark side since
//Azkaban. And then when his blood was something like cold, he looked up again,
//and saw Hermione in the chair again, and discovered that his dark side knew
//nothing about how to deal with this type of pain, it pierced through the
//coldness like a knife and didn’t hurt less in the slightest.

// 14363
//“Why, if it isn’t Harry Potter!” came a high, light female voice, sickly sweet
//and indulgent.

// 14364
//Slowly, Harry turned his head away from the chair and saw a smiling woman
//wearing so much makeup that her skin looked almost pink, sitting next to a man
//that Harry recognized from photographs as Minister Cornelius Fudge.

// 14365
//“Did you have something to say, Mr. Potter?” inquired the woman, as cheerfully
//as if this wasn’t a trial.

// 14366
//Other people were also looking at him now.

// 14367
//Harry couldn’t speak, all the words in his mind would have been stupid to speak
//aloud. He couldn’t find anything to say that Neville could also have said.
//Dumbledore had warned Harry that if anyone __else__ wanted the
//Boy-Who-Lived to speak, he must __pretend to be his age__ -

// 14368
//“The Headmaster said I shouldn’t ought to talk,” the boy said, not quite able
//to keep the edge out of his voice.

// 14369
//“Oh, but you have __our__ permission to talk!” the woman said brightly.
//“I’m sure the Wizengamot is always happy to hear from the Boy-Who-Lived!”
//Beside her, Minister Cornelius Fudge was nodding.

// 14370
//The woman’s face was puffy and overweight, visibly pale beneath the makeup.
//Almost inevitably, a certain word came to mind, and that word was
//__toad.__ Which, said Harry’s logical part, shouldn’t correlate to
//morality in any way. Only in Disney movies were ugly people more likely to be
//evil and vice versa; and those movies were probably scripted by writers who’d
//never been ugly. He’d give her a chance, everyone in this room deserved one
//chance…

// 14371
//“Because I got rid of the Dark Lord?” the boy said, and pointed at the Dementor
//where it was hovering behind Hermione’s chair. “There’s something in this room
//that’s Darker.”

// 14372
//The woman’s face narrowed, growing a little stern. “I realize a young boy like
//yourself may be scared by them, Mr. Potter, but the Dementors are quite
//obedient to the Ministry of Magic. And they would, of course, be necessary to
//guard -”

// 14373
//“A twelve-year-old girl?” the boy yelled. “Those are the Darkest creatures in
//the whole world, I could feel it coming here even through the Patronus - the
//__wrongness__ coming nearer - it’s horribly evil and it - it’d eat
//everyone in this room, if it could! It shouldn’t be let near any child, ever!
//Not me, not her, not anyone! You ought to vote to send it away!”

// 14374
//“We’ll __certainly__ have no such vote -” the toad-woman snapped.

// 14375
//“That’s enough, Madam Umbridge, Mr. Potter,” came Dumbledore’s stern voice from
//high above. And then after a short pause, the old wizard went on, “Although, of
//course, the boy is correct on every count.”

// 14376
//Some of the members of the Wizengamot were looking abashed at the
//Boy-Who-Lived’s admonition, and a few others were nodding violently to the old
//wizard’s words. But they were too few. Harry could see it. They were too few.

// 14377
//The Veritaserum was brought in then, and Hermione looked for a brief moment
//like she __was__ about to sob, she was looking at Harry - no, at Professor
//McGonagall - and Professor McGonagall was mouthing words that Harry couldn’t
//make out from his angle. Then Hermione swallowed three drops of Veritaserum and
//her face grew slack.

// 14378
//“Gawain Robards,” said the smooth voice of Lucius Malfoy. “Your probity is
//known to all of us. If you would do the honors?”

// 14379
//One of the three Aurors stepped forward.

// 14380
//After the first few questions Harry looked away and stared off to one side with
//his fingers in his ears, as Hermione’s brain played back the contents of the
//False Memory Charm. He couldn’t handle the drug-dulled anguish in Hermione’s
//voice as she recounted the false memories, and his dark side couldn’t handle it
//either, and he’d already heard the contents summarized.

// 14381
//Harry’s mind flashed back to another day of horror, and even though Harry had
//been on the verge of writing off Lord Voldemort’s continued existence as the
//senility of an old wizard, it suddenly seemed horribly and uniquely plausible
//that the entity who’d Memory-Charmed Hermione was the very same mind that had -
//__made use of__ - Bellatrix Black. The two events had a certain signature
//in common. To choose that this should happen, __plan__ for this to happen
//- it would take more than evil, it would take __emptiness__.

// 14382
//Harry looked up for a moment, then, and saw that the plum-colored robes were
//watching, just watching.

// 14383
//Some time later, after all the stars in the night sky had gone cold and dark
//and the last light in the Universe had sputtered down to embers and gone black,
//the questioning of Hermione ended.

// 14384
//“If it pleases my Lords,” said the voice of Lord Malfoy, “I should like to have
//the testimony of my son Draco, witnessed under two drops of Veritaserum, read
//aloud at this time.”

// 14385
//__Until she went after me in that battle, I wasn’t plotting anything
//against Granger. But after that day I really was feeling insulted, I’d helped
//her all those times -__

// 14386
//The sound that came from Hermione’s throat was like she’d just been crushed
//under a falling stone, so huge that she couldn’t cry or breathe, just a small
//sad gasp.

// 14387
//“Pardon me,” said one witch from what seemed to be the Malfoy-aligned side of
//the room. “But Lord Malfoy, why would your son __help__ this mudblood
//girl?”

// 14388
//“My son,” Lucius Malfoy said in a heavy voice, “seems to have been listening to
//certain misguided ideas. He is young - and he has learned, now, we have all
//seen as a country, what such folly brings in repayment.”

// 14389
//A few steps down along the visitor’s benches, a man wearing a newsman’s cap and
//a badge identifying him as belonging to the __Daily Prophet__ was avidly
//scribbling with a long quill.

// 14390
//The few people who’d nodded along to Dumbledore earlier had rather sick looks
//on their faces. One witch in plum-colored robes quite deliberately stood up
//from what had seemed like Dumbledore’s side of the room, and made her way over
//toward the Malfoy side.

// 14391
//The Auror went on reading, his voice monotone.

// 14392
//__I’d been so tired from casting all those locking wards, I was weak when
//I cast the last one. I thought I was stronger than Granger but I wasn’t
//certain, so I tested it empirically by challenging her to a duel, that’s why I
//d-d-did it and also because if I’d won I was planning to beat her again the
//next day where everyone could see. Stupid Veritaserum. But __she__ didn’t
//know about that when she tried to __kill__ me! And I really was insulted
//by what she’d done, I really had helped her before and I hadn’t been planning
//anything against her then, only __she__ went after __me__ in front of
//everyone!”__

// 14393
//When all the witness testimony was done, the deliberations of the Wizengamot
//began.

// 14394
//If you could call them that.

// 14395
//It seemed that many members of the Wizengamot were of the strong opinion that
//murder was bad.

// 14396
//The plum-colored robes on Dumbledore’s side of the room were silent, the
//supposed forces of good saving their political capital for more winnable
//battles. And Harry could hear, as though Professor Quirrell were standing next
//to him, a dry voice in his mind; explaining to him that it would hardly have
//been to the politicians’ own advantage to speak, just then.

// 14397
//But there was one wizard in the room whose status was high enough that he had,
//it seemed, transcended his caution against losing face; one wizard alone whose
//status was high enough that he could speak a word of sanity and escape
//unscathed. He alone spoke to defend Hermione, the man with a phoenix flaming
//bright upon his shoulder.

// 14398
//Only Albus Dumbledore spoke.

// 14399
//The Chief Warlock didn’t raise the possibility that Hermione Granger was
//entirely innocent. That, the Headmaster had explained to Harry, would not be
//believed, would only make it worse.

// 14400
//But Albus Dumbledore said, in one gentle reminder after another, that the
//perpetrator was a first-year girl in Hogwarts; that many had done foolish
//things during their youth; that a first-year in Hogwarts was simply too young
//to comprehend the consequences of her acts. He himself (the Chief Warlock said
//quietly) had attempted certain foolish things during his childhood, when he was
//well older than she.

// 14401
//Albus Dumbledore said that Hermione Granger had been beloved of all the
//Hogwarts faculty, and helped four Hufflepuff girls with their Charms homework,
//and had scored one hundred and three points for Ravenclaw over the course of
//the school year.

// 14402
//Albus Dumbledore said that nobody who knew Hermione Granger would be anything
//but shocked by these events. That they had, all of them, heard the horror in
//her voice as she recounted her testimony. And if some unusual madness had
//temporarily possessed her, then - his voice rising in stern command - she
//deserved nothing from them except sympathy and a healer’s attentions.

// 14403
//And at the last, Albus Dumbledore reminded the Wizengamot, over cries of
//protest, that the charge was __attempted__ murder and not murder. Albus
//Dumbledore said, over a rising storm of objections, that no lasting harm had
//come to anyone. And Albus Dumbledore begged them not to do worse themselves
//than anything that had yet been done -

// 14404
//“__Enough!__” bellowed Lucius Malfoy, and a show of hands ended the
//deliberations. The white-maned man stood tall and terrible, his silver cane
//held high in one hand like a gavel about to fall. “For what this mad woman has
//tried to do to my son - for the blood debt that she owes for trying to end the
//line of a Noble and Most Ancient House - I say that she will -”

// 14405
//“Azkaban!” roared a man with a scarred face, seated at Lord Malfoy’s right
//hand. “Send the mad mudblood to Azkaban!”

// 14406
//“Azkaban!” cried another plum-colored robe, and then another, and another -

// 14407
//A click from the rod in Dumbledore’s hand silenced the room. “You are out of
//order,” the old wizard said sternly. “And your proposal is barbaric, beneath
//the dignity of this assembly. There are things we do not do. Lord Malfoy?”

// 14408
//Lucius Malfoy had listened to this with an impassive face. “Well,” Lord Malfoy
//said after a few moments. A cold gleam lit his eyes. “I had not planned to ask
//it. But if that is the will of the Wizengamot - then let her pay as any in her
//place would pay. Let it be Azkaban.”

// 14409
//A great cheer of rage went up -

// 14410
//“Are you all __lost?__” cried Albus Dumbledore. “She is too young! Her
//mind would not withstand it! Not in three centuries has such a thing been done
//in Britain!”

// 14411
//“What will the other countries think of us?” said the sharp voice of a woman
//that Harry recognized as Neville’s grandmother.

// 14412
//“Will __you__ guard Azkaban after she goes there, Lord Malfoy?” said a
//stern old witch that Harry didn’t know. “For my Aurors may decline to guard it,
//I fear, if small children are kept within.”

// 14413
//“The deliberations are ended,” Lucius Malfoy said coldly. “But if you are
//incapable of finding Aurors who can obey the vote of the Wizengamot, Madam
//Bones, you may relinquish the position; we can easily find another to serve in
//your place. The will of this Hall is clear. For the monstrosity of her crimes,
//the girl is to be tried as an adult and punished accordingly; ten years in
//Azkaban, the justice for attempted murder.”

// 14414
//When the old wizard spoke again, his voice was lower. “Is there no alternative
//to this, Lucius? We may retire to my chambers to discuss it, if need be.”

// 14415
//The tall man of the long white hair turned, then, to regard where the old
//wizard stood at the podium; and the two stared at each other for a long moment.

// 14416
//When Lucius Malfoy spoke again his voice seemed to tremble ever so slightly, as
//though the stern control on it was failing. “Blood calls for repayment, the
//blood of my family. Not for any price will I sell the blood debt owed my son.
//You would not understand that, who never had love or child of your own. Still,
//there is more than one debt owed to House Malfoy, and I think that my son, if
//he stood among us, would rather be repaid for his mother’s blood than for his
//own. Confess your own crime to the Wizengamot, as you confessed it to me, and I
//shall -”

// 14417
//“Don’t even think about it, Albus,” said the stern old witch who had spoken
//before.

// 14418
//The old wizard stood at the podium.

// 14419
//The old wizard stood at the podium, his face twisting, untwisting -

// 14420
//“Stop it,” said the old witch. “You know the answer you must give, Albus. It
//will not change for agonizing over it.”

// 14421
//The old wizard spoke.

// 14422
//“No,” said Albus Dumbledore.

// 14423
//“And you, Malfoy,” continued the stern old witch, “I suppose all you really
//wanted this whole time was to ruin -”

// 14424
//“Hardly,” said Lucius Malfoy, his lips now twisting into a bitter smile. “No, I
//have no purpose here but my son’s vengeance. I only wished to show the
//Wizengamot the truth behind this old man’s pretended heroism and his praise of
//that girl - that he would hardly think of sacrificing himself to save her.”

// 14425
//“Cruelty worthy of a Death Eater indeed,” said Augusta Longbottom. “Not that
//I’m implying anything, of course.”

// 14426
//“Cruelty?” said Lucius Malfoy, the bitter smile still on his face. “I think
//not. I knew what his answer would be. I have ever warned you that he only plays
//his pretended part. If you believe in his hesitation, the more fool you.
//Remember that his answer was the same.” The man raised his voice. “Let us vote,
//my friends. I think a show of hands will suffice for it. I do not imagine there
//will be many who choose to align themselves with murderers.” The voice went
//cold, on the last note, the promise in it very clear.

// 14427
//“Look at the girl,” said Albus Dumbledore. “See her, see the horror you are
//committing! She is -” The old wizard’s voice broke. “She is afraid -”

// 14428
//The Veritaserum must have been wearing off, because Hermione Granger’s face was
//twisting beneath the slackness, her limbs trembling visibly beneath the chains,
//as though she were trying to run, run from that chair, but was pressed down by
//weights larger than the enchanted metal links that bound her. Then there was a
//convulsive effort and Hermione’s neck moved, her head twisted, enough to bring
//her eyes into line -

// 14429
//She looked at Harry Potter and though she didn’t speak, it was absolutely clear
//what she was saying.

// 14430
//__Harry__

// 14431
//__help me__

// 14432
//__please -__

// 14433
//And in the Most Ancient Hall of the Wizengamot an icy voice rang out, speech
//the color of liquid nitrogen, pitched too high for that it came from too young
//a throat, and that voice said, “__Lucius Malfoy.__”

// 14434
//In the ancient and hallowed halls of the Wizengamot, people looked around and
//it took their eyes too long to find what they sought. It might have been high
//in pitch, it might have been under-loud for the words being spoken; and yet
//even so, you wouldn’t have expected to hear that voice from a child.

// 14435
//It wasn’t until Lord Malfoy spoke in return that people even realized where
//they should be looking.

// 14436
//“Harry Potter,” said Lucius Malfoy. He did not incline his head.

// 14437
//Heads spun, eyes moved, and people focused on the messy-haired young boy
//standing near the weeping older witch. The boy stood merely chest-high with his
//shoes on, dressed in short robes of formal black. Though unless your eyes were
//keen indeed, you couldn’t have seen, from all the way across the Hall, that
//famous and deadly scar beneath his messy hair.

// 14438
//“This folly does not become you, Lucius,” said the boy. “Twelve-year-old girls
//do not go around committing murders. You are a Slytherin and an intelligent
//one. You know this is a plot. Hermione Granger was placed on this gameboard by
//force, by whatever hand lies behind that plot. __You__ were surely
//intended to act just as you are acting now - except that Draco Malfoy was meant
//to be dead, and you were meant to be beyond all reason. But he is alive and you
//are sane. Why are you cooperating with your intended role, in a plot meant to
//take the life of your son?”

// 14439
//A storm seemed to be raging inside Lucius, the face beneath the flowing white
//hair threatening to crack open and spill something unguessable. The Lord of
//Malfoy seemed to almost speak once and then twice again, swallowing three
//unheard sentences before his lips parted for true. “A plot, you say?” Lord
//Malfoy said at last. His face was twitching, hardly controlled. “And whose plot
//would that be, then?”

// 14440
//“If I knew,” said the boy, “I would have said so a good deal earlier. But
//anyone who had ever been Hermione Granger’s classmate could tell you that she
//is a most unlikely murderess. She does, in fact, help Hufflepuffs with their
//homework. This was not a natural event, Lord Malfoy.”

// 14441
//“Plot - or no plot -” Lucius’s voice was trembling. “This mudblood filth has
//touched my son and for that I will end her. You should know that full well,
//__Harry Potter__.”

// 14442
//“It is questionable,” the boy said, “to put it mildly, whether Hermione Granger
//actually cast that Blood-Cooling Charm. I do not know the exact circumstances
//or what spells were involved, but simple trickery would not have sufficed to
//make her do it. She did not act of her own will, and perhaps did not act at
//all. Your vengeance is being misdirected, Lord Malfoy, and deliberately so. It
//is not a twelve-year-old girl who deserves your ire.”

// 14443
//“And what do __you__ care for her fate?” Lucius Malfoy’s voice was rising.
//“What is __your__ stake in this?”

// 14444
//“She is my friend,” the boy said, “as Draco is my friend. It is possible that
//this blow was aimed at me, and not at House Malfoy at all.”

// 14445
//Again the muscles jumped in Lucius’s face. “And now you are lying to me - as
//you lied to my son!”

// 14446
//“Believe it or not,” the boy said quietly, “I never willed anything but that
//Draco should know the truth -”

// 14447
//“__Enough!__” cried the Lord Malfoy. “Enough of your lies! Enough of your
//__games!__ You do not understand - you would never understand - what it
//means that he is my son! I will not be denied this vengeance! No more! Never
//again! For the blood this girl owes House Malfoy, she shall go to Azkaban. And
//if I ever find another hand at work - even if it is your own - that hand shall
//be cut off as well!” Lucius Malfoy raised his deadly silver cane as though in
//command, his teeth clenched and his lips drawn back in a snarl, like a wolf
//facing a dragon. “And if you have nothing better to say than that - be silent,
//Harry Potter!”

// 14448
//Harry’s blood was hammering even beneath the ice of his dark side, the fear for
//Hermione, the part of him that wanted to lash out at Lucius and destroy him
//where he stood for his insolence and his __stupidity -__ but Harry didn’t
//have the __power,__ he didn’t even have a single vote in the Wizengamot -

// 14449
//Draco had said that Lucius was scared of him, for some unknown reason. And
//Harry could see it in the rictus that Lord Malfoy’s face had become, drawn and
//tight, that it was taking all his courage for him to tell Harry to shut up.

// 14450
//So Harry said, his voice cool and deadly, hoping to hell that it meant
//something, “You will earn my enmity if you do this thing, Lucius…”

// 14451
//Someone in the lower rows of what was evidently the blood-purist side of the
//Wizengamot, who was looking down at the young boy rather than up at Lord
//Malfoy, laughed in outright incredulity. Other plum-colored robes began to
//laugh as well.

// 14452
//Lord Malfoy gazed at him with hard dignity, as that laughter spread. “If you
//want the enmity of the House of Malfoy, you shall have it, __child__.”

// 14453
//“Now really,” said the woman in too much pink makeup, “I think this has gone on
//quite long enough, wouldn’t you say, Lord Malfoy? The boy will miss his
//classes.”

// 14454
//“Indeed he will,” said Lucius Malfoy, and then raised his voice again. “I call
//the vote! By show of hands, let the Wizengamot acknowledge the blood debt owed
//to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy, for the attempted murder of its
//last scion and ending of its line, by Hermione, the first Granger!”

// 14455
//Hands shot up one after another, and the secretary who sat in the bottom circle
//began to make marks on parchment to tally them, but it was obvious which way
//the majority had gone.

// 14456
//And Harry screamed inside his mind, a frantic call for help to any part of
//himself that would offer a way out, a strategy, an idea. But there was nothing,
//there was nothing, he’d played his last cards and lost. And then with a last
//convulsive desperation Harry plunged himself into his dark side, pushed himself
//into his dark side, seizing at its deadly clarity, offering his dark side
//anything if it would only solve this problem for him; and at last the lethal
//calm came over him, the true ice finally answering his call. Beyond all panic
//and despair his mind began to search through every fact in its possession,
//recall everything it knew about Lucius Malfoy, about the Wizengamot, about the
//laws of magical Britain; his eyes looked at the rows of chairs, at every person
//and every thing within range of his vision, searching for any opportunity it
//could grasp -