Chapter 26.6- Doom Days

“No. What is that?”

“In simple terms, it’s the idea that the simpler answer is almost always right for a complex question. The question here is who is lying. Either Sirius Black has found a way to deceive an oath used by this body for centuries, or you who swore no oath are lying. The distinguished representatives here are far too intelligent to believe the former, when the latter remans a possibility.”

“How dare you? I am the Minister for Magic. Boy,—“

“I would advise you not continue with that sentence, Cornelius” I hissed, feeling rage suppressed across two lifetimes rear its head.

“Rein yourself in, Mr Potter” Dumbledore barked, jolting me from staring at the Minister who had been cowering from my gaze. I smelt something burning and flinched away from the small table in front of me. My fingers had left burn marks etched into the wood.

“Apologies, Supreme Mugwump. Distinguished delegates. It just offends me to see obvious lies paraded before an august body like this one” I said. Cornelius Fudge still looked frazzled, and if I were being honest, I wasn’t at a 100 percent either. What the hell had that been? The ritual?

“Now, returning to Mr. Fudge here. Please tell us when you found out Mr. Black hadn’t had a trial?”

“Objection— asked and answered”

“Sustained”.

“Winter 1992, then. Please tell me who brought it to your notice”

“What?”

“Who brought Sirius Black’s lack of a trial to your notice?” I asked.

“Wel-well, it was Delores Unbridge, my undersecretary”

“Why did she go to you instead of Madame Bones?”

“I am the Minister for Magic”

“As you seem keen on reminding us all today” Cue the chuckles.

“How did she find out?”

“What?”

“How did she find out that Sirius Black hadn’t had a trial”

“I suppose she noticed it in his file”

“And what was she doing there? He was incarcerated over a decade ago at that point. Surely his file could not have been top of the pile so why did she go looking for it?”

“She was looking through the files as part of our annual winter audit of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“I assume from the word, annual, that this audit takes place every year?” He nodded.

“A yes or a no, Mr Fudge. Out loud”

“Yes.”

“Good. So why did she not notice any previous year?”

“Well, you’d have to ask her”

“Seems like there’s a lot of things only Miss Umbridge can educate us on. A shame that you haven’t brought her here to testify, then”

“Was there a question there?”

“No. But there is a question here— Why did you not involve Madame Bones while preparing the trial?”

“It is fully within my powers as—“

“Minister for Magic, we know. But the question was not whether you could exercise the power, but why you did so in the first place. Why did you not inform Mmadame Bones of the trial for Sirius Black”

“I had no duty to inform her.”

“So you never do things you have no duty to do?” I asked but he remained silent. That was fine.

“Who was in charge of the investigation?” I asked.

“What investigation?” He looked genuinely confused.

“You do know that in order to have a trial that the Prosecution must attempt some sort of investigation to gather evidence and the likes”

“Everyone knows he did it”

“Sadly not enough for a trial, Mr. Fudge.”

“Who was the Prosecutor?”

“We hadn’t chosen one yet” He finally said after a minute of staring at the man who had been defending him. He’d forgotten his own lawyer’s name, hadn’t he?

“No investigation, no lead prosecutor, no department of magical law enforcement involvement. Almost sounds like this trial was a figment of your imagination. Or more likely a made-up excuse to hide the depths of incompetence from your ministry in leaving an innocent man in Prison” I surmised.

He remained silent.

“Do you recognise this newspaper?” I said, offering the newspaper Sirius had testified about.

“No”

“So you tell me that if I use the priori possessio spell on this newspaper, it will not show that you once had custody of it?”

“You can do what you wish” He said, glaring. I smiled and clearly enunciated the spell before stabbing my wand at the newspaper. It caught on fire. The Priori Possessio spell, when used on an object, destroyed the object in its entirety, so it wasn’t useful for things that had much value. It also showed the order in which the object traded hands but if a person handled it multiple times, then it only showed the first time they did so. The fire created smoke, moving to spell out some names, going through quite a few before it got to one we could recognise as relevant— Delores Umbridge, Cornelius Fudge, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Harry J Potter, Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore. I couldn’t deny it, I gasped. The rest of the hall did the same as well. Bones was near on her feet, staring at the name that stood there defiantly against our attention. Pettigrew had touched the newspaper? When? I couldn’t remember it, but it had clearly happened.

“I do believe that is enough for me to rest my case here. That will be all for this witness” I said with a bow.