lomonaaeren

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Chapter Thirty-Four—Bring Forth the Prisoner

“Thank you for coming to see us, Mr. Evanson.”

As usual, Euphemia Potter sounded suspicious of him. Harry held his face as blank as possible, something he had been practicing with Orion, while he stepped out of the fire. “You’re welcome, Mrs. Potter.”

Euphemia turned and gave a quick glance to Fleamont, who was sitting on a couch across from the fireplace and already looked tired. Harry glanced around, but saw no one waiting to ambush him. It was a large, bare room, entirely made of wood, with the only furniture being the couch where Euphemia went to join her husband and the chair across from them that he was obviously meant to take.

Harry made sure that the chair was what it looked like, casting a few Detection Charms, before he sat down, but the spells only returned wood and cloth and stuffing. He sat down and snorted a little at the looks on the faces of the Potters.

“You don’t like me, and I don’t like you,” he said. “And I’ve already seen the way that you’ve encouraged Aethelred to act. So forgive me for not trusting you.”

Euphemia and Fleamont exchanged glances again. Then Fleamont leaned forwards and said, “We’d like an explanation of why you won’t give us the formal renunciation of Charlus’s money.”

“Because Aethelred told me it would take blood and flesh. I don’t know everything about what kinds of magic you can perform with those items, but I know enough. Which means I’d need to have a formal oath from you before then, to make sure that you weren’t going to use them to do me some kind of mischief.”

Euphemia caught her breath. “I have never been so insulted in my life.”

“You probably don’t have that much experience.”

“That is enough, Mr. Evanson!” Fleamont cut in, looking furious. Harry turned to him, and found Fleamont looking more furious still, probably because he’d called Harry by that “false” name they all hated. “I’ll thank you not to insult my wife!”

“You could use more practice, too.”

Fleamont shook his head and closed his eyes, visibly retreating to some kind of inner meditative mindset, from the way his breathing slowed. Harry kept his wand out, across his lap, and saw Euphemia focus on him for only a minute before she turned to the fire.

Finally, Fleamont forced his eyes open again, with what looked like an effort. “The kind of magic that uses blood and flesh is Dark Arts.”

“Ah. Thanks for explaining to me.”

“You insulted my wife by assuming we would practice those if you gave us the blood and flesh to seal the oath.”

Harry smiled a little. “I have no reason to think you wouldn’t.”

“You should trust us more!”

“And you should trust that I really don’t want Charlus’s money, and that you don’t need this extremely formal renunciation that requires pieces of my body to trust that I won’t make a claim to it.” Harry raises his eyebrows a little. “Impasse.”

Fleamont fumed quietly, but Euphemia broke in. “If you really don’t want to be Charlus’s heir, then you should have no trouble handing over the blood and flesh to us.”

“I already told you why I wouldn’t. But we can solve this by you swearing the oath that you won’t use the blood and flesh against me.”

Euphemia folded her arms. Harry nodded slowly. Orion was the one who had told him about the flesh and blood magic, and the fact that the Potters refused to swear an oath not to use them or accept a less formal renunciation of Charlus’s fortune from him did, in fact, strongly suggest that they were planning to do something with those things.

“We only want to stop the rumors that are spreading about us,” Fleamont said, tapping his foot on the floor for a moment. No house-elves jumped out and tried to grab him, so Harry decided it wasn’t some sort of special code and he could probably relax. “People think that you’re a Potter bastard we treated badly when we did nothing of the sort.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “A renunciation of his money wouldn’t stop that. I don’t know why you think it would. Probably some people would just assume that you’d forced me to make it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know how the press works,” Harry said, a little bitterly. Thank Merlin they didn’t pay as much attention to him here as they had in his original timeline.

“We need to get our reputations back. We want you to stop bothering our family.”

“I’ve offered to leave you alone. And I’ve told you what the conditions are for me making the formal renunciation.” Harry smiled, and knew it was slow and sharp from the slightly frightened glance Fleamont gave him. “Why are you so reluctant to swear the oath that you wouldn’t use the flesh and blood against me, if you don’t practice the Dark Arts?”

“Because it’s insulting our honor by implying that we would ever use them that way!”

Harry spread his hands. “Again. Impasse.”

Fleamont and Euphemia held a silent conversation with their eyes. Harry waited. He hoped this would reach an end one way or the other today, whether that was with their mutual oaths or their agreeing to just ignore him in the future.

He wasn’t a Potter here, not in the way that everyone else thought. He never would be again.

And now, instead of mourning his previous timeline, all he could feel was a profound sense of relief. Harry Potter’s life had never been easy, and half the time, Harry had often felt as if it belonged to the public anyway, not to him.

Fleamont finally turned back to Harry, visibly gritting his teeth. “We just want to know who you are. That’s all we would use the blood and flesh for. We would perform—certain tests on us that would tell us. That’s all.”

“And would you be willing to swear an oath to that effect?”

“No! We are more honorable than you are!”

Harry rolled his eyes and stood. “Then this meeting is at an end.”

“Why do you think you have the right to say that?” Euphemia stood up and folded her arms, glaring at him. “Why are you so intent on taking away the money that should go to James and Aethelred?”

“I’m not at all,” Harry said. “But I’ve spent enough time with people whining about my lack of trust in them and demanding that I should do things for them just because they ask. I’ll continue to tell anyone who asks that I’m not a Potter child, bastard or otherwise, because that’s true. But I’m not going to submit to your unreasonable demands.”

“At least we have an established family!”

Harry laughed aloud at that, thinking of the way that they wouldn’t have had that if he hadn’t shattered the timeline. It was an oddly freeing thing for Harry to think, that his father was alive and had his parents because of Harry’s actions. “I can’t tell you how little that matters to me, when I have my own family.”

“Who? You’re married? You have children?”

“No, but I’ll be married someday,” Harry said simply. “And I have a child who matters dearly to me in ways that surpass blood, and others who may come to be my stepchildren.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I assume my suitor will make his intentions known clearly enough in the Prophet at some point.” Just imagining the fuss that Orion was likely to make over their wedding because he thought it would be appropriate made Harry shudder.

“That’s what Black meant when he scolded us about you!”

“Yes, likely. Good-bye.” Harry turned towards the fireplace.

They were saying something else, something about how their requirements were simple enough and he should have honored them and trusted them to keep their word, but Harry ignored them and cast the Floo powder into the fire. “Grimmauld Place!”

It was five minutes until the beginning of his lessons with Severus. There was no way that Harry would miss them.

*

“Bring forth the prisoner.”

Albus leaned forwards a little as the Aurors marched Gellert, complete with the chains that would restrain his magic, into the courtroom. He wouldn’t be presiding over this trial, of course, due to his massive conflicts of interest. But there was no way that he could sit there and feel nothing while the Wizengamot prepared to put his husband on trial.

Gellert turned his head once and met Albus’s eyes. Then he stared grimly forwards as he took his seat and Griselda Marchbanks, who would be serving as the lead questioner, rose to her feet with a delicate little cough.

“You are charged with crimes of attempted treason and attempted time travel, Gellert Grindelwald.”

Gellert sneered and said nothing. Albus closed his eyes for a moment.

“As is traditional, you are allowed to speak in your own defense, or are allowed to speak through a lawyer, as you prefer.”

Gellert sat up and was obviously staring at Madam Marchbanks, although from the angle Albus was sitting at, he couldn’t see Gellert’s eyes. “I will speak once in my own defense, and then allow my lawyer to handle things for me.”

Madam Marchbanks blinked. “Very well.”

“All of you,” Gellert said, his head turning back and forth as his eyes swept over the Wizengamot, “are living in a society that is more and more stagnant. You shut down inventors and spellcrafters and experimental Potions brewers because of your fear of what they might discover. You spend more time placating Muggles and the parents of Muggleborns than you do looking forwards into the future. Yes, I have done some Dark Arts in my time. But I did them because I am a proud wizard, and the thing that matters most of all is creating and furthering new knowledge.”

He turned, and Albus became abruptly aware of how Gellert was looking at him. Oh. So the Wizengamot wasn’t the audience for this little speech after all, as Albus had thought. He looked steadily back at Gellert.

His husband licked his lips and said, “And yes, I did things that might seem intolerable to some of you in the name of furthering knowledge. Know that I never found them so. So what if a few Muggles or Muggleborns or magical creatures die in the laboratory or on the dissecting table? How can we use the new Healing knowledge and spells unless we know for sure that they work?”

He swept his head back and forth for a moment, as though making sure that none of the Wizengamot were going to interfere, and then turned back to Albus with a satisfied expression.

Albus folded his fingers into his palm, and answered as steadily as he could. “I have always believed that the lives and the free wills and the destinies of the people you would have sacrificed are more important than any knowledge to be gained, Gellert.”

“So you believe the Ministry should be stagnant?”

Albus waited for someone from the Wizengamot to interfere, but no one did. Then he saw Madam Marchbanks’s face, and grimaced. It seemed that he was to have one last debate with Gellert.

Maybe they thought they were offering him closure. Albus thought it more likely that the motivation of most of the Wizengamot was prurient curiosity.

“Why didn’t you search out some other way of attaining this new knowledge and testing these new spells and potions than poisoning and cursing and vivisecting these people and creatures?” Albus asked softly. “I know you are brilliant, Gellert. I never believed that another method of testing them was beyond your knowledge. Instead, I know that the motivation of those who followed you, and to some extent yours as well, was cruelty. And lack of compassion. And lack of belief that these other creatures and humans had their own free wills, or that those free wills mattered.”

“What else could we have done?” Gellert countered, his sneer growing. He probably thought that by debating Albus, he was distressing him in some acceptable way. “How were we to gain knowledge of new Healing techniques and the like?”

“Testing them on yourselves.”

Gellert stared at him as if he had never heard this argument before. Albus was sure that he must have, but he seemed utterly unprepared to defend against it. “The most brilliant Healers and Potions masters do not do that,” he scoffed, looking around for a second as if he thought someone from the Wizengamot might speak up to support him. “They advance their knowledge and others play their part for the greater good—”

“The Healers at St. Mungo’s often ask those who are living with chronic diseases or pain to participate in the testing of potions or spells that might help them,” Albus said quietly. “Why did you not ask for people like that?”

“We didn’t need to ask.”

And there it was, Albus thought, the chasm that lay between them. Gellert was firmly convinced that he would never need to ask, and that power alone gave him that right. Albus sat back with a small shake of his head as Madam Marchbanks looked at him. He had no stomach for more debate with Gellert.

“Did you wish to say anything more in your defense, Mr. Grindelwald?” Madam Marchbanks asked, turning back to the chair.

“My husband knows very well the kind of stagnant world we’re living in,” Gellert said bitterly, staring at Albus. “And he has chosen to give up and sink into the mud that comprises the biggest portion of it. No, I have nothing else to say.”

Albus breathed out slowly. Pain throbbed through him like a second heartbeat. To know that he had meant so little to Gellert that years of being married to him had simply resulted in Gellert’s contempt…

Well. It did hurt. But it also meant that he could finally stop deluding himself that he was responsible for imprisoning the man he loved.

The man he loved didn’t exist anymore.

*

Mariana closed her eyes and took a moment to center and clear her mind, steadying it as best she could. Then she opened her eyes and walked into the little holding cell that waited beyond the closed steel door.

Seneca turned around the instant he saw her. He was on a couch in the far side of the holding cell, and in between them glowed a ward that resembled a glassy, blue-tinged partition dividing the room in half. Mariana sighed. “You already attacked someone, didn’t you?”

“They have no right to keep me here.”

“That’s a yes, then.” Mariana folded her arms. “They’re letting me have one more farewell, as your wife. They did ask if Severus wanted to come, but I said no. He doesn’t need to have his last memories of his grandfather be the hate-filled one that I suspect you’re going to make with me.”

Seneca visibly checked what he wanted to say. Mariana went on staring at him. She could remember, just barely, the young man he had been once, the genuine love he had seemed to have for her, the genuine joy he had seemed to feel at Eileen’s birth.

It had withered, all of it. And while Mariana knew now that some of that had been her own extreme fear which had held her back from acting against him or leaving him and had ruined her daughter’s life, some of it was just that Seneca had changed. He hadn’t achieved the power he’d wanted, so he’d turned to using his frustration like a lash on his family.

“They tried me and found me guilty,” Seneca said in a subdued voice. “They didn’t tell me what was going to happen next.”

“They’re still debating your sentencing. On the one hand, some of them are saying that since you were mentally manipulated, you’re not fully responsible for your actions. On the other, they’re saying that you still tried to collaborate in time travel that would have destroyed the world. So.”

Seneca clenched his hands in front of him. It occurred to Mariana, distantly, that this was probably better torture than any revenge she could have dreamed up. Seneca had to sit here and wait for someone else to tell him what to do, and to a man who had always valued control over everyone and everything around him, it had to be torment.

“You love me,” Seneca said.

“Past tense.”

“What?”

“I loved you, probably until the first time you seriously threatened Eileen. After that, I just feared you, and stayed with you because I couldn’t imagine a life for me outside of you.” Mariana shook her head, still touched with wonder at the thought. “I don’t know why I felt that way now, but I know I did.”

Seneca stared at her again. Something finally seemed to click and fall into place behind his eyes, the way the iron door had. “You’re not going to beg for mercy for me.”

“No.”

Seneca stood up and lunged forwards. The ward bounced him off it, and the sizzle made him howl. There was a slight burn on his bare arm, Mariana saw. She folded her own arms and watched him.

“Why not?” Seneca snarled, rubbing a hand over the burn.

“Because even now, when you’re defeated and your choices are the Kiss or Azkaban, you’re still trying to attack me,” Mariana said simply. “Good-bye, Seneca.”

She turned, ignoring something that might have been her name, and left the holding cell. The Auror who was on guard gave her a suspicious look and searched her with a spell to make sure that she hadn’t smuggled anything out for her husband. Mariana endured it. They couldn’t know what she knew.

That, right now, for the first time in decades, she was free.