Chapter 1.

Amelia Bones

Amelia Bones had been head of the department of Magical Law Enforcement for one short month. Crouch had lost the position five years previously, following the scandal involving his son, and his replacement had just lost his re-election campaign against her. In the last month she had been going over the files dating from just after the war, and she had come to the unfortunate conclusion that she had her work cut out for her. Her immediate predecessor had been responsible for the trial of the Malfoy family, which, as far as she could tell, was a badly covered up case of outright corruption. It was one the departments' worst kept secrets that the Malfoys had bought their way out of jail. She gained only slight comfort from the fact that they had paid dearly in galleons for their freedom. Lucius Malfoy at the very least deserved to be rotting in Azkaban, and his wife probably belonged in the next cell over, with her sister and cousin; A family reunion of sorts.

In her campaign for election, she had heavily criticized both Mr. Crouch and Mr. Smith for their lack of regard for regulations, in Mr. Crouches case, and suspected corruption in Mr. Smiths. Unfortunately she couldn't retry the Malfoys for the same crimes they'd already been on trial for, and many similar cases had the same problem. Amelia couldn't change the past; she'd just have to make sure she did a better job in the present. And if she was to have the chance to fix things within her department, she needed a way to satisfy the press. She had promised the public that she would do better than those that came before her. She needed something from the past to make an example of. She needed something that would draw attention, and prove her point to the media. She dearly wished she could put the Malfoys on trial, but it just wasn't an option.

She selected a fat file from her desktop, and sat quietly for a moment contemplating the likely consequences of her actions. She tapped the stack of papers on the hard oak of her desk, frowning in thought. If she went forward with her actions, it could be a wildly successful statement to the beginning of her term, or it could be the beginning of the end for her career. She gripped the file firmly and stood up, pushing back her chair, and heading resolutely toward the door.

Bringing Sirius Black to trial would show people that she was intent on following ministry's every regulation, that she wouldn't turn and look the other way. It was a politically motivated move, for she had no doubt of his guilt. Her statement would say that she followed the very letter of the law; the outcome would show that her justice was firm. It had been long enough since the end of the war that bringing up the past wouldn't be political suicide, but could instead be used as a tool for building the future.

As she called a meeting of her department leaders, she could never have guessed that the outcome of her plan could be so radically different than predicted.

Two months later, Amelia was seated behind the center podium in courtroom ten, surrounded by the full Wizengamot. The stands designated for civilian spectators were full to bursting, and reporters for the Daily Prophet snapped photos with a feverish enthusiasm. It was a zoo, which she had more or less expected.

This was something she had to get through before her real work began, but it made her feel like a charlatan putting on a farce for the pure benefit of political advancement. She sighed, shifting uncomfortably on her high bench, and motioned to the Aurors at the doors. They nodded solemnly and swung the double doors wide, admitting two dementors holding an emaciated man between them.

Six years in prison had not been kind to Sirius Black. His hair was long and matted, his frame skeletal, his eyes haunted. She has seen the marks left by Azkaban on others, and he was no exception. Unlike others she has seen however, he did not hunch his shoulders, or look down at the ground as he walked. His steps were confident instead of faltering, and his eyes were searching the stands above him. He spared her barely a glance, his gaze lingering instead on Dumbledore to her right, and on the bench to the left, where witnesses for the prosecution were seated. She thought she heard Remus Lupin hiss slightly under his breath, and felt a stab of guilt for dragging up something this painful for the man. She remembered that he had been good friends with the Potters and Pettigrew.

The dementors deposited their charge in the manacled chair in the middle of the room. The chains glowed softly and wrapped themselves securely around their prisoner. The crowd broke out in murmurs, and then fell silent. It was time to begin.

"Sirius Orion Black, you have been brought before us today to stand trial for fourteen charges of homicide, and two counts of conspiring to commit homicide. How do you plead?"

"Not Guilty."

When Sirius spoke, it sounded more like a croak that an answer, but the words were still clearly discernable. She supposed six years in a solitary cell in Azkaban didn't give one much cause for speaking. Disuse and poor physical and mental conditions had turned his voice unrecognizable from his pre-Azkaban days. She raised an eyebrow at his response, but she hadn't really expected him to confess.

"Very well. The prosecution will present their case and witness testimony will be given. If you have anyone you wish to call to speak in your defense you may do so, any witnesses you call for the defense will be questioned by myself and Albus Dumbledore. Do you wish to have a public attorney, as is your right as a defendant?"

"I will speak in my own defense."

She was happy with that response; she would have pitied the poor bloke who would have been called in to speak in Blacks defense; mass murders weren't usually what public attorneys had to deal with.

The trial progressed with much of the same testimony that had been given to the court after the war being reiterated. Dumbledore gave testimony implicating him in the deaths of the Potters, law enforcement officers that had been present at the time of arrest gave their accounts of the carnage found in the muggle street. Eye witness reports from muggles not in attendance were read and presented. Pettigrew's mother even tottered up to the box to bemoan the loss of her son. Amelia thought she saw Blacks eye begin to twitch at this point. Remus Lupin gave testimony that Black had been spying on the Order of the Phoenix, passing on information for a year before the Potters death.

Blacks' hands curled and uncurled over the arms of the chair, his eye was definitely twitching, and his face looked like he was chewing a lemon peel. So it was a surprise, when it was his turn to speak, that his croaky voice came out sounding entirely rational.

"I request to be questioned with the use of Veritaserum. I willingly submit to being examined with Legilimency."

His words were met with dead silence, followed shortly by the buzz of murmurs breaking out around the stands of the circular room. Amelia blinked in astonishment. The use of Veritaserum during a trial was not unheard of, but as the defendant had to willingly submit to it (there was a clause in the Ministry's constitution that no witch or wizard could be compelled to give evidence of self-incrimination) it was rare.

Only those who were very sure of their own innocence volunteered to be dosed with the truth potion. The use of Legilimency was not banned outright, though some claimed that since it came from the mind of the accused, it was a form of self-incrimination. The paper work it took to get it approved for trial was often tedious however, and there had been enough damning evidence in this case that it had not been bothered with. Volunteers to undergo an examination of the mind were even more rare than those willing to be dosed with truth serum. It was an extremely intrusive procedure, and a skilled examiner could ferret out any memories that had been tampered with.

She was stunned. He had sounded so sane, but was it possible that he truly had lost his mind? She glanced at Dumbledore, and saw that he was leaning forward in his seat, his brow furrowed in a frown, one hand braced on his knee, the other rubbing thoughtfully at his mouth. It was the only point during the trial so far that he had given any kind of reaction. It told her that she was not the only one caught off guard; he was as surprised as she. Besides a vague notion that Black had gone barking mad, she didn't know what to make of it; by the look of Dumbledore however, he was busy thinking through a dozen theories. He caught her eye after a moment and inclined his head slightly; she nodded and stood up behind her podium, addressing the room once more.

"Very well." She said. "You will be questioned under Veritaserum, and Dumbledore will perform Legilimency afterward to confirm you words."

One of the Aurors' present scurried out of the room to fetch the potion required. Black nodded stiffly, and his gaze shifted again to Remus Lupin.

One of Amelia's main concerns when she has begun the proceedings to bring Black to trial had been the hell she knew she was going to be dragging the people Black had betrayed through. His cousin Andromeda was present with her husband; Amelia knew her daughter was still attending Hogwarts. Of Blacks old supposed friends, only Remus was alive to witness history being hauled up again.

A new feeling of uneasiness at the recent turn of events joined her original feelings of guilt for bringing an old wound into the light again. Immediately following her assumption that Black had gone mad in Azkaban, was a small, nagging, and persistent thought that something had been missed all those years ago. She was going over the file in her mind, and she just couldn't see how it was possible. However, this was a world of strange magic and seemingly impossible things and Black had never had his side of the story told. For the first time since he had been arrested, a tiny amount of doubt crept under her skin.

If there was one thing she knew to be true, it was that in a world of dragons, fairies, goblins, giants, and magic, you could never be sure what was going to happen next. If there was a second thing she could be certain of, it was that if Albus Dumbledore had a look of great concern on his face, and if his eyes were flashing fiercely over the top of his half-moon spectacles, any reasonable person should be breaking out into a cold sweat. She refused to dab at the drops forming on her brow, and kept her expression impervious; if this went to hell in a hurry, as she was half expecting it to, she was determined that her picture under the headline not look like a frightened NEWT student sitting his first examination.

The Auror returned, and made her way to the center of the room. The dementors withdrew a few feet, allowing the woman access to the chained chair Black was seated in. She unstopped the small glass vial and Black obligingly tilted his head back and opened his mouth. Almost as soon as the potion was swallowed, Black went limp, his head dropping down to his chest. When he looked up again his eyes were glossy and unfocused, staring straight ahead of him unseeingly. Dumbledore rose from his seat and made his way down to the floor, until he was right in front of him.

"What is your name?" He asked in a clear and ringing voice.

"Sirius Orion Black," Blacks voice was still a hoarse croak, but now he spoke in a monotone.

Amelia was familiar with the effects of Veritaserum, and he showed every sign of the trance-like state it put people under.

"At what point during the war did you begin to pass information on the Order of the Phoenix to Voldemort?"

"I never passed information on the Order to Voldemort."

Amelia felt her heart drop to her stomach, and in the dead silence of the court room, she thought she could hear it beating from where it had joined her lunch. Dumbledore was not going to allow any wiggle room for dodging the truth. He rephrased his question quickly.

"Did you at any point during the war, give information about members of the Order of the Phoenix to anyone you knew would inform Voldemort?"

"I never betrayed the Order. I was never a spy for Voldemort."

Amelia resisted the temptation to sink her head into her hands.

"When it was discovered that Voldemort was seeking Lily and James Potter, you were made their Secret Keeper for them and their child, were you not?"

"I was never Secret Keeper to Lily and James or their child."

Amelia allowed her composer to break just enough to close her eyes and let out a deep sigh.

Dumbledore spoke quietly when he continued. "Please explain, Sirius."

"I was willing to be their Secret Keeper when they first asked me. I would have died for them. But I knew I was the obvious choice; everyone was expecting it to be me, everyone knew how close I was to James and Lily. I came up with a new plan, I convinced James to go along with it. We would tell everyone that I was Secret Keeper, and I would go on the run, draw their fire and create a diversion from the real Keeper. I picked someone we trusted, someone no one else would guess we'd pick; Peter Pettigrew.

For a few weeks it seemed to be working, we hid Peter out of harm's way, and in a few months I had been attacked multiple times. I checked in on Peter whenever I could, tried to keep his spirits up, make sure he was safe. The night James and Lily died, I had gone to check on him. His hiding place was empty, but there were no signs of a struggle. I knew in my heart that something was wrong; I set out for Godric's Hollow immediately, and arrived to find their house in ruins, both of my friends' dead, and their baby, crying alone in a blown apart nursery. I was there with the child, trying to think clearly, trying to decide what to do, when Hagrid arrived. He told me Dumbledore wanted him to take the child to him, to Lily's sister, where the blood wards would provide protection. I agreed that the safety of the child was our first concern.

I gave my motorcycle to Hagrid so that he could travel faster, and in my rage I set out to find the man who had betrayed us. I tracked him to the town where his uncle had lived; I knew he'd inherited a house there. I found him in the middle of a public street full of muggles. I had been intending to kill him for his betrayal, but I hesitated to use magic in front of so many muggles. And he had been my friend. I was still hoping for some kind of explanation of what he had done, some way to make sense of it. I underestimated how far he was willing to go, how evil he had become, and I underestimated his magical ability as well.

He wanted me to find him in a public place, he shouted for the whole street to hear that I had betrayed Lily and James, and as I drew my wand to put an end to it, he blew up half the street. He must have had his wand behind his back, because before I could stop him, he had killed all those people in an explosion, and escaped into the hole he had opened into the sewers. I watched, stunned by the blast, as he chopped off his own finger, and transformed into his animagus form. Looking back on it, we should have guessed that any man who's form was a rat would turn out to be a turncoat. The Aurors arrived almost at once, and I was not in my right mind. I was exhausted, sleep deprived, and grieved beyond words could say. As they dragged me away to prison, my only thought was that it was my fault, all my fault… I never betrayed my friends; but I am the reason they're dead. It's my fault…"

His words trailed off at the end, leaving the room in silence once again. Amelia didn't think she could speak at the moment, her throat felt constricted, and her eyes stung. How could this be happening? She had been angry at her predecessors' deficiency in following regulations, but she had never doubted Blacks conviction. How very wrong she had been.

Dumbledore spoke again after a moment, his voice quiet and clear.

"How long has Peter been an Animagus?"

"Since fifth year of school. James, Peter and I all managed the transformation after two years of studying. Peter needed all the help we could give him, he barely managed it as it was. My form is a large black dog; James was a Stag, and Peter a rat. We used our ability to roam out of bounds at night, to explore the forests and Hogsmeade. We never reported our forms to the registry, to our minds that would have defeated the purpose."

"Do you know where Peter is now? Do you believe he is still alive?"

"Yes. But he would never risk being seen and found out. He would wait as a rat, not a human, until he thought there was a safe opportunity to return. If Voldemort ever reemerged and gained power, he would make his move. He has always sought the safety of those more talented than himself; he wouldn't dare make a move on his own. He changed sides during the war when he thought we were losing, and the very night he showed his true colors his lord was defeated. I wouldn't be surprised to find someone's pet rat had a toe missing from his right paw. I assumed that the truth would come out during my trail. I waited for years. When they came into my cell today, I thought I had finally given in to the dementors and gone insane."

Dumbledore bowed his head, and when he turned back toward her, Amelia was not surprised to find tears in his eyes. She felt a bit like crying herself.

He cleared his throat and said, "I think that will suffice, do you agree?"

"Of course."

She nodded to the Auror standing by with the antidote, and she moved forward to administer the dose. Black shuddered as it worked its way through his system, and when he opened his eyes again they were clear and focused once more.

"Dumbledore, if you would perform your Legilimency screening now, I would like to be done with this."

She was proud that she kept her voice steady. Dumbledore stooped over Black, and looked him directly in the eyes. They remained in that position for several minutes, until, with a deep sigh, Dumbledore stood straight once again and turned to face the seats lined with the Wizengamot.

"What he has told us is true. This man was never a traitor, never in league with Voldemort. There has been grave error within the Ministry that this has gone uncorrected for six long years. Madame Bones, I motion to clear the Subject of all charges."

"I second that motion."

She spoke now to the rows of witches and wizards of the Wizengamot, "those in favor of clearing the defendant of all charges?"

Every single hand rose high into the air, and the snap of the media's cameras was joined by the loud buzzing of the crowd, as the stands erupted in loud conversations. She could see Rita Skeeters' bottle blond head and acid green robes amongst them, and could hardly image what the headline of tomorrow's paper was going to be.

"Defendant is cleared of all charges!"

The chains on Blacks chair disappeared, though her pronouncement had been lost to most under the din of the crowd. The dementors retreated reluctantly through the double doors, and Black stood looking dazed and uncertain of what to do. As the crowd of reporters converged on him, two people got to him first; Remus Lupin and Dumbledore took either side of him and marched him quickly out of the room.

Amelia steeled herself and marched forward to meet the press of reporters who, after seeing that Black was out of their reach for the moment, had turned their attention to her instead. It occurred to her that though today had not turned out as she had predicted, she would be able to ride the wave of this scandal, and use it for the betterment of her department. The mistake had been made by those who had come before her, and she had righted it just a few short weeks after taking office. The fact that it had gone beyond what she could ever had planned for was irrelevant; her risk had been rewarded.