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Draco could hear Shacklebolt drumming his fingers on the podium as he looked pensively at Weasley. He continued with his address with a more thoughtful tone, "The thing I am having trouble deciding is if your actions are a result of mental instability and you should receive treatment instead of a prison sentence. Whether therapy will help return you as an upstanding, productive member of society." |
Shouts of protests rose up across the room among the spectators and tribunal alike. Shacklebolt banged on his gavel, the sharp raps echoing across the room. His booming voice called for order and threatened to clear the room. |
Hermione had turned ghostly pale. She gripped his hand, so hard Draco felt the bones grind together. All hope of stoicism had fled her expression. She looked terrified. And enraged. Harry was visibly incensed. His face was a mottled red. The redheaded Auror beside him was having a difficult time restraining him. Draco thought his own expression probably mirrored Harry's. It would be a cold day in Hell before Draco allowed Weasley to skip by on a reduced sentence in the psych ward at St. Mungo's. Draco was mentally preparing everything they would need to kidnap Weasley from St. Mungo's and install him in the Malfoy dungeons. |
Draco noted that the Weasley family stayed silent throughout the commotion. A hopeful expression had entered Molly Weasley's countenance at the prospect of her son being sent to a psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's instead of prison. |
The room quieted, and Shacklebolt spoke again, hints of anger in his voice, "We will hear testimony before deliberations, and a vote is taken. We'll start with," Shacklebolt scanned the room. His gaze lighted on Hermione before he spoke in a cold voice, "Hermione Granger." |
A buzz traveled around the room as Hermione stood from her seat. She was still pale, and Draco noticed the tremor in her hand as she smoothed down her dress. Draco squeezed the hand he held and mouthed "Have courage" to her. She nodded and straightened her shoulders, once again the proud Hermione Granger. A hush descended the room as she walked past Weasley without looking at him and made her way to the witness box perched near the Minister's podium. |
Hermione sat down on the chair provided and looked up at Shacklebolt waiting for him to begin. |
Without preamble, the Minister started his questioning, "What was your purpose for being at Lavender Brown's townhouse on December twenty-third?" |
Hermione took a deep breath and answered the question in a clear, firm voice, "We, Ronald Weasley and I, came to a visitation agreement for my daughters over the holiday break. That day was the first time Ronald was allowed any unsupervised visitation with either of my daughters." |
"You say you weren't allowing Ronald Weasley unsupervised visitation," Shacklebolt stated, then asked, "Why is that?" |
Hermione glanced over at Weasley; her mouth tightened in anger. "He attempted to kidnap my daughter, Rose, in early November. She was afraid of being around him after that." |
"How can a father kidnap his own child?" Shacklebolt asked incredulously, looking around the room for support. |
Feminine murmurs of outrage rose up around that question. Quite a few men looked disapproving at the Minister. The fear of not knowing where your children were was not something the lifelong bachelor would understand. |
"When he has no intention of letting the mother of his child know where she is," Hermione answered sharply. "Minister Shacklebolt, I am not the one on trial here. Ronald Weasley attacked with the intent to kill. By his own admission, he planned on killing me, then Draco Malfoy, and then tell my daughters that we abandoned them." Hermione looked beseechingly at the Minister, "He planned on killing us. He almost succeeded in killing Draco." |
"But was he driven to his actions by your very public affair with Draco Malfoy?" the Minister retorted. |
Hermione gripped the front of the stand. Her eyes narrowed at the Minister. "Draco and I are not some extramarital fling. Ronald Weasley was abusing me, prior to my finding out about his affair on the Hogwarts platform on September first." |
Hermione looked over at Draco and her expression softened. "Draco saved my life. Not just on December twenty-third when he stepped in and took a curse meant for me. That day on the platform, he saved me from a lifetime of abuse, of eventually losing all sense of self as Ron continued to obliviate me. He saved me a few days later when I confronted Ron about his infidelity and Ron once again tried to take my memories away from me." |
"So, you're with Mr. Malfoy out of some sense of gratitude?" Shacklebolt asked. |
Hermione's gaze snapped back to the Minister in irritation. "I am with Draco Malfoy because he is my soulmate. We love each other and he treats my daughters as his own." |
"That's quite a dramatic statement," Shacklebolt scoffed, "I'm sure many young witches have made that claim about some young wizard at some time or another." |
A round of patronizing chuckles resounded throughout the room from the older men. |
Hermione rolled her eyes at them. She brandished her cuff at the Minister. "Do you see this cuff, Mr. Shacklebolt?" At the Minister's nod, she continued, "This is no ordinary bauble. This cuff acts as a magical identifier for the males of the House of Malfoy. It only shows up when they've kissed their soulmate. Draco Malfoy is my soulmate." |
Gasps of surprise resounded throughout the room. Draco's friends on the Wizengamot all displayed a myriad of expressions. Elation from Tracey. Daphne looked like she wanted to punch him for not telling her sooner. Theo was trying to hide a smile behind his hand so as not to draw the ire of his wife. Blaise was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. |
"As interesting as your tale is, Mrs. Granger," Shacklebolt drawled in a bored tone, "I fail to see how that relates to this case." |
"Quite right, Minister," Hermione answered smartly, "I also fail to see how my relationship with Draco Malfoy has any bearing on this case, but as you are the one that brought it up, maybe you would like to clear that up," Hermione answered with impertinence, causing the Minister to huff in annoyance. |
"How had Ronald Weasley acted when you dropped off the girls?" Shacklebolt asked, trying to regain control of the situation. |
"Relieved to see them, and angry at Draco and I," Hermione answered. |
"You took Mr. Malfoy with you to drop off your children. Don't you think that's rather like pouring salt on an open wound?" |
"Being as how I was taking my children over to his mistress" house, I didn't really stop to consider how Ron would feel about seeing Draco," Hermione answered archly and titters of amusement followed her answer, "And there was no way I was going to be alone with Ron, given his proclivity for using Memory Charms to get his way." |
The Minister looked irritated by her cheek but continued with his questioning, "How did he seem to you when you returned later that day?" |
"Angry again, which wasn't abnormal for our interactions, but it seemed like a different type of angry." |
"How so?" the Minister prodded. |
"Usually Ronald was a bit irrational in his anger, just lashing out, asserting that I was his property and trying to get me to fall in line. His anger was different. Determined. More focused." |
The Minister nodded at her answer. He looked down at the stack of papers and shuffled them around. His eyebrows rose minutely as Shacklebolt read whatever was there. He looked over at Hermione then and asked, "I see in this statement from Lavender Brown that your daughters disappeared from the Brown residence shortly after the attack and were found at Malfoy Manor when Auror Potter went looking for them. Did you leave to take the children away?" |
"No," Hermione answered, not offering further explanation. |
"Then how did they disappear?" the Minister persisted. |
"They were taken by the Malfoy house elves back to the Manor," Hermione answered with a sigh. |
"So you called them?" |
"No," Hermione answered again. |
The Minister was getting frustrated with her answers and lack of explanation. Draco could see the vein at his temple starting to throb in annoyance. |
"Then how did they know to take your daughters away moments after the attack?" the Minister asked impatiently. |
"They were already there," Hermione answered. |
"Why?" the Minister barked. |
"The two house elves were there for the protection of my daughters with instructions to take them away should they be in any danger. Since the two house elves knew that Draco and I were at the Brown residence and that Draco had been hurt, they would've taken them to the Manor and Narcissa Malfoy," Hermione answered succinctly. |
"So the children's unsupervised visit wasn't actually unsupervised?" Shacklebolt asked. |
"No," Hermione answered. |
"And you say that they were there for the protection of the girls?" |
"That is correct." |
"When you took them over to the Brown residence, did you feel that they were in any danger?" Shacklebolt asked. |
Draco was getting impatient with this line of questioning. It wasn't even centering around Weasley's attack. It seemed to Draco that the Minister was trying to win sympathy for Weasley. |
"I wouldn't have taken them over there if I thought that Ron might be a danger to them, but I wasn't taking any chances. Rose was reluctant to go and Minerva was pretty adamant about not going. I convinced them to go and give it a try but told them that they could leave if they hated being there." |
"Since they appeared to have stayed the duration of the visit, am I correct in assuming that things went well?" Shacklebolt asked. |
"Minerva got into an argument with Ronald at some point. Rose seemed to enjoy her time, mostly playing with Lavender's youngest children." |
"What did Minerva get into an argument with her father about?" Shacklebolt asked. |
"According to Minerva, Ronald was giving her a hard time about Draco teaching her to fly. Minerva became angry with Ronald because he was the cause of her initial fear of flying. Draco helped her conquer her fears, and their flying lessons made an appearance in the paper. She told Ron that Draco was a better father than he was." |
"So this argument is probably what led Ron to attempt to take your lives. A desire to remove the competition in his children's lives." |
Hermione stood up and pointed angrily at the Minister, the cuff on her arm sparkling in the light of the room, the reds of the alexandrite seemed to further accentuate her anger. If her hair had been down, Draco could imagine that it would be crackling in her fury. "Don't you dare try to place the blame for his attack," she pointed angrily at Weasley, "on my child. He is responsible for his actions. He should be held accountable for them and for you," she pointed back at Shacklebolt, "for you to try to say that he did it because of a mental illness is ludicrous. This attack is the culmination of a long line of abuses. He obliviated me for the majority of our marriage, but I won't get justice for that. By his statement, before we walked into this courtroom, he's done worse to me than try to cover up his affair with Lavender Brown, and I won't get justice for that either. I asked you for help, Minister Shacklebolt after I found out that he was obliviating me and you wanted nothing to do with it. You shooed me out of your office, saying you weren't going to get involved because it was up to the husband to discipline his wife as he saw fit. The only reason he's on trial now is because he almost killed Draco Malfoy and I'll be damned before I let him walk away without punishment for at least that." |
Hermione turned and gazed up at the MLE judges sitting there watching her, "I can see by your faces that many of you still agree that a woman is the property of her husband." She gestured to the room at large, "This is what happens when we allow domestic violence to go unchecked. When we continue to allow a husband to abuse his wife, the violence escalates and people die. Families are torn apart. The children are traumatized." |
She turned to face the crowd and Weasley, "We cannot allow this man to go free. We cannot allow him to attack and cite jealous rage or mental instability as the reason for doing so. We were not lenient on the Death Eaters at the end of the last war and we cannot be lenient now." |
Heads were nodding among the crowded courtroom. Harry leaned over and whispered in Draco's ear, "That was bloody magnificent." |
"Enough!" Shacklebolt boomed, "You're excused, Mrs. Granger." |
Hermione left the witness stand with the shadow of a smirk on her face. Her hands were trembling though, from nerves or adrenaline Draco didn't know. |
"Draco Malfoy, to the witness stand, please," Shacklebolt announced. |
"How the hell am I going to follow that?" Draco murmured to Harry before he stood up. |
Draco caught Hermione gently around the waist as she moved by him to resume her seat. He could see the lines of irritation and worry clouding Hermione's face. She was probably starting to doubt that Weasley would go to prison. He cupped her cheek as he gazed down and asked her if she was okay. Draco received a slight nod, and he let her go sit down between Harry and his mother. |
Draco waltzed over to the witness stand, letting the Malfoy arrogance and entitlement show in his posture and walk. These people needed a reminder of who he was, it seemed. Draco made a show of adjusting his Wizengamot robes as he took his seat on the witness stand. He looked expectantly up at the Minister. |
Shacklebolt gazed down at him, the animosity evident in his eyes. Draco was always one of the few people not afraid to stand up to the Minister. |
"You interfered in the marriage of Ronald Weasley and his wife, Hermione Granger on September first?" the Minister asked as his opening salvo. |
So that's how he wanted to play this then. |
Draco looked up at the Minister with narrowed eyes, "What is the relevance of this question on these proceedings?" |
The Minister's lip curled into a sneer as he said impatiently, "Answer the question, Mr. Malfoy." |
Draco arched an aristocratic brow at the Minister and answered him, his voice dripping with disdain, "Mr. Shacklebolt, I refuse to answer that question as it has no bearing on this trial." |
"Mr. Malfoy, did you seek to provoke Mr. Weasley by parading around your affair with his wife?" |
Draco heaved a sigh of great reluctance, "Mr. Shacklebolt, my relationship with Hermione Granger is not relevant to this trial but I'll deign to answer your question as that seems to be your primary focus for this trial. As she stated earlier, our relationship isn't an illicit affair, certainly not like Ronald Weasley's own relationship with Lavender Brown. In answer to your question about whether we sought to provoke him, no. Ronald Weasley and his feelings meant very little to us in our daily lives." |
Draco could hear the Minister huff a little under his breath. Draco could tell the crowd and the tribunal were getting impatient with this line of questioning. There was much shifting around and mutterings every time the Minister asked a question that seemed to focus more on his relationship with Hermione than the attack. The crowd didn't seem to like how the Minister was treating the victims of this case. |
Keep it up, old man, Draco thought, you'll be out of a job soon if they really start taking Hermione's side. |
"On the day of the attack, what did you and Mrs. Granger do?" the Minister asked. |
Draco left out their early morning activities. No one needed to know that they'd made love in the early hours of the morning, that he'd probably gotten her pregnant then. |
"We had breakfast with the children. There was an argument because Minerva didn't want to go to Ronald Weasley's house." |
"Why?" the Minister interrupted. |
"She said she had a bad feeling. She also didn't get along very well with Fred Brown," Draco answered. |
The Minister gestured magnanimously. The old goat needed to be knocked down a peg or two. "Continue, please." |
Draco answered him in a succinct voice, "After breakfast, the girls got ready to go. At nine o'clock, Hermione and I took them over to Weasley's house. He was there waiting for us." |
"What was his mood like?" the Minister interrupted again. |
"He seemed relieved to see the girls." |
"Why do you think that is?" |
Draco allowed himself to sound thoughtful by the question. A hint of hesitation entered his voice as he answered. "I'm not sure. He'd had a visit with Rose earlier that week but he hadn't seen Minerva since the first Parents" Day at Hogwarts. She was distraught and didn't want to talk to him. I think maybe he thought they wouldn't come over or Hermione wouldn't hold up her end of the agreement. I think he said something to that effect to Hermione." |
"Then what happened?" |
"He and Hermione exchanged words. She reminded him about their agreement." Draco held up his hand imperiously when Shacklebolt looked like he wanted to interrupt again. "When they discussed visitation over the holidays, she stipulated that he and Lavender not talk badly about Hermione and myself during the girls" visit and that the girls weren't forced to stay if they wanted to come back home. Weasley got mad about this. Didn't like to be reminded that he had to play nice for the sake of the girls. Asked us to leave since it was his time with the girls." |
"After that, what did you do?" |
"We left. Went back home. Scorpius and I had some Christmas shopping to finish up. We went back to the Brown residence at five like they'd agreed on. Weasley was waiting for us. His behavior was off. He was usually snarling at us, lashing out at any perceived slight. He was more determined, focused. The girls weren't in the room when we got there. He told us they were helping pick up the playroom. Hermione turned slightly and he pulled his wand out. I stepped in front of her just as he cast the curse. I fell in a heap on the floor. Thought I was dying. I probably was. Felt like my chest had been ripped open. The last thing I saw before everything went black was Ronald Weasley advancing on Hermione. She was on the floor, focused on me. I thought for sure he was going to kill her. That we were both going to die at the hand of Ronald Weasley and leave our children orphaned." |
Draco let his emotions show. A Malfoy usually didn't let anyone see behind the carefully erected façade that they presented to the world, but he let the courtroom see his anguish. The fear he'd felt for her as he lay dying. How he'd felt when he thought her dead. He looked over at Hermione, who was wiping tears from her eyes and longed to go over and embrace her. To envelop himself in her scent. To feel her heart beating next to his. |
Silence descended on the courtroom. A sniffle could be heard here and there. Someone cleared their throat behind him. Draco let his gaze drift to Weasley, bound to the chair in the center of the room. He'd hoped to find an ounce of remorse in his face, but all he saw was the fervent wish that he'd managed to succeed in killing them. Draco hardened his gaze. Even now when his freedom stood on the line, Weasley couldn't find the error of his decisions. Draco wondered if maybe he was mentally ill, not that he thought it should get Weasley out of prison. |
The Minister's voice cut through the silence like a knife, "Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Malfoy. You may resume your seat." |
"Auror Potter, please take the stand." |
Harry stood up, his face looking grim. Harry made his way over to the stand, his back ramrod straight, his gait stiff and clipped. The sound of his heavy military boots echoed off the walls around them. The medals pinned to his uniform jingled slightly as he made his way to the stand. Harry sat stiffly in the chair. His gaze turned thunderous as he looked over at his former friend. |
The Minister's voice cut through the stare-down going on between the two, "You are friends with the accused?" |
"No," Harry answered coldly, not taking his gaze from Weasley. |
Excited murmurs rose from the spectators. |
"Why?" Shacklebolt asked. |
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