The Trial

by stealacandy

Description: Fudge puts Harry on trial. He and Malfoy have planned something along the usual lines of what you could expect in the prologue of (or a flashback in) a cliched Azkaban!Harry fic. Only Harry doesn't seem to play along, nor to take it quietly.

Preface:

March, 2014

I wrote this story about 6 years ago, posted it on Caer Azkaban, and only posted the first chapter here. I sent it to a beta, got a preliminary edit of chapter 1 and posted it here, the rest were lost somewhere in between. Soon thereafter my computer was stolen, and that was that. except, it wasn't. The story was on Caer Azkaban, and someone got it together and sent it to me. I've been meaning to edit and publish it ever since, but never got around to doing it... until now.

I did a spell check and a (very) rudimentary, basic editing job on the story, being to lazy to do anything more than that, but I did write a new scene.

Originally, when I wrote the story, I didn't know which spells Harry used in the Ministry of magic - other than the torture curse he tried to put on Bellatrix Lestrange, which lead to this story being written in the first place - so I skipped the Ministry's expert's testimony, leaving it for later. Later, when people wrote to tell me what those spells were, I still didn't know how to fill the gap, as I was too lazy to do some research on real life testimonies from forensic experts which I wanted to use as the basis for my fictional expert's testimony. Nor was I inspired enough to come up with something completely original for the procedure. So I left it at that, and since I soon lost the story, the question was moot, anyway.

A couple of years ago I downloaded the story - again - from my e-mail server and did some editing, writing new dialogs, even new scenes, but didn't post it to the web because I was still missing the expert witness testimony. Soon after that, my hard drive suicided, and all my work was gone, putting me off this story completely. Lately I was reminded of it and so I edited a little bit, ran it through spell check, a more comprehensive overhaul to parts of the 4th chapter, and then put it aside, once again because of the missing testimony. I did some more work, but I really don't know where I saved it, certainly not where I thought I have, so I wrote it off in the end.

I thought of posting what I now had of the story, as is, here on , missing part and all, and washing my hand off it, but, once again, I was too lazy to actually do it. Once upon a time, uploading stories to this site was a simple process, but eventually they decided to complicate it as much as they could... and I haven't posted anything since.

Until now, I was looking through my downloads folder and noticed the story's file, and had the idea of writing the testimony part not from the narrator's or chronicler's point of view - that of a spectator, but from that of Harry himself. Not as a spectator, either, describing what he heard, but his innermost thoughts, describing what he thought and remembered during the testimony, along with tiny snippets of the dialog popping up here and there.

This is a departure from the literary style of the rest of the story, I know, giving the story a wholly different tone, and you have my apologies for it. I figured, however, that maybe it was better to write something different and out of place than to not write - or publish - at all, so I'm writing it as we speak. That is to say, as I write this note, I'm taking a break from writing the missing scene. Just finished the batted in the DoM and stopped right before Sirius dies. I took the story in another direction, now I have to decide how far down that road I want to take it. Right now I'm deliberating between going all the way and writing a mushy, nostalgic, sentimental piece, or going the other extreme, skipping it altogether and moving straight on to when Lestrange runs away, with Harry giving chase. There are, of course, various options for anything in between, and I can't make up my mind. Perhaps I'll leave it for another day. Or year, given my history with this story so far.

Then again, perhaps I should just get it done and over with, or I might never do it at all. Suppose I should just touch and mention Sirius's death and get on with the program after that.

Anyway, since I'm writing a preface, I feel obliged to thank, once more, everyone who helped me with ideas, information, research and proof-reading this work, as well as everybody who read the first chapter over these past years, not to mention paced it on their alert of favourite lists in the vain hope I would someday finish it. Usually I disappoint my readers that way, so it is with great pleasure that I present this story in its fullest version. I would also like to thank everybody else who read this story - or is reading it right now - especially if they take their time to review. As I mention in the disclaimers to the various chapters, as this is fanfiction, I don't get any recompance for writing, and having others read it is my only gratification. Having them review, doubly so.

So enjoy, everybody,

stealacandy