For one brief, grasping moment, Harry thought it was Sirius playing a joke to ease his nerves.
But then he saw the look on the Weasleys' faces.
Fury tangled with anguish. Disbelief shot through with wavering doubt. It was raw, unguarded emotion of the kind that no actor, however brilliant, could manufacture on demand.
"This is a joke, isn't it?"
Ron looked as though the full weight of what was happening had passed straight through him and taken everything with it. His expression was terrifyingly blank.
"This has to be an April Fool's prank. It has to be."
Hermione had her hand pressed hard over her mouth. Beneath her thin dressing gown, her shoulders were shaking in small, helpless tremors. She stared at Remus with wide, burning eyes, and in the trembling tears gathered at the rims of her brown irises, the candlelight wavered and danced.
Harry turned to look at his two best friends and felt utterly, completely lost.
With the hearing date drawing ever closer, he had to admit that he was slowly losing his grip on himself. Terrible thoughts had been rising in him over the past few days, the kind he couldn't say aloud to anyone. The kind he could barely admit to himself.
Why wasn't it Hermione or Ron who'd been targeted? One was a famous Triwizard champion whose name was known across countries. The other, a scion of a pure-blood wizarding line that stretched back centuries.
But now that his dark, half-formed wish had twisted itself into reality, he found he felt nothing remotely like relief. Only a cold, spreading horror that was entirely different from the one he'd been carrying before, and considerably worse.
Ron and Hermione were his closest friends. The only ones who had stuck by him through every disaster, every catastrophe, every impossible thing the wizarding world had chosen to drop on his doorstep.
He wanted what he had with them to be like what his father, his mother, Sirius, and Remus had shared—something that lasted long after school ended.
What he did not want was to be their cellmate in Azkaban.
"Do any of you have any idea what this is about?"
Remus's voice was careful and grave. From the expressions alone, he clearly already had his answer—but he asked anyway, his eyes moving between the three of them.
"Unless Fudge has gone completely mad, he must have something on all three of you. Some piece of evidence—real or manufactured—that he thinks he can use."
"If it's something that happened at Hogwarts..." Sirius's voice dropped. "Some adventure you got mixed up in..."
Even Sirius—who was supposed to be unconditionally, unshakeably on Harry's side—was questioning them.
The cold of it settled in Harry's chest like ice. He wanted to speak. He wanted to defend himself, to defend Hermione and Ron, to say something that would make this make sense. But it was as though a spell had locked his voice away somewhere he couldn't reach. His lips moved, and moved, and nothing came out but silence.
"We didn't!"
Hermione cried out. The sobs she had been holding back by sheer force of will finally broke free all at once, tearing through her composure like water through a dam. "We didn't—I—we—we never broke the law—we never killed anyone—no!"
"It isn't murder, Hermione."
Remus seemed to remember something suddenly. He turned back to the kitchen table with quick steps and snatched up three letters Harry hadn't noticed lying there, scanning each one with rapid eyes before a deep crease formed between his brows.
"Hermione, Ron—what the Ministry sent you only mentions a violation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy—"
He pressed the relevant letters into Hermione's and Ron's shaking hands. When he reached Harry's, his voice dropped half a tone.
"As for you, Harry... yours still says: charged by the Wizengamot with the murder of a Muggle."
Harry's face went as blank as freshly-wiped slate. His joints moved as though they had rusted overnight.
He took the letter from Remus's hands and read it—read it again—read it a third time.
Dear Mr. Potter,
The Ministry of Magic has obtained detailed evidence linking you to the death of a Muggle in London.
Accordingly, the Ministry is initiating formal proceedings against you. You have been expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
You are required to present yourself at the Ministry of Magic no later than eight o'clock in the morning on the twentieth of July, at which time the full Wizengamot will hear your defense.
Yours sincerely,
Mafalda Hopkirk
It was as if all the air had been pulled from the room at once, leaving behind a vacuum that pressed in on his eardrums and made the candlelight seem very far away.
The kitchen—the crowded, warm, familiar kitchen tilted slightly on its axis. Harry felt the world tip and spin around some fixed point at the center of his chest.
Tonks caught Hermione as her knees buckled, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and steadying her before she could crumple entirely to the stone floor.
"Think carefully, all three of you." Remus's voice remained controlled. "Is there anything you might have overlooked? Anything that seemed small at the time? This is critical."
Hermione's face had drained to the white of snow. She shook her head in small, rapid motions, her wet eyes were wide and searching the middle distance for something she couldn't find. "No... oh, I don't know, I can't think, I can't think of anything—oh—expelled—"
She broke into fresh sobs, muffled against Tonks's shoulder.
Harry desperately hoped Hermione could come up with something. She was the sharpest of the three of them by a considerable margin; if there was a connection to be made, a thread to be pulled, she would find it before any of them.
But he couldn't blame her for falling apart. He was holding himself together by the thinnest of margins.
Before today, being expelled from Hogwarts had probably been the single worst thing Hermione Granger could imagine befalling her. She had said as much, in various ways, over four years.
After tonight, she would have to add being imprisoned in Azkaban to that list—and unlike Harry, who had grown up knowing nothing could be relied upon, Hermione had grown up believing that the world was, at its core, fair.
That belief had just taken a serious blow.
Sirius stood with his grey eyes blazing, jaw clenched, clearly fighting to keep himself in check. His hands were very still at his sides, which was, with Sirius, always a warning sign.
Harry could see the enormous effort it was taking. He strained to make out what Sirius was saying beneath the flat, relentless buzz that had filled his ears since reading the letter. Only gradually did his hearing come back to him.
So many times, he had watched Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson exchange pleasantries with senior Ministry officials—easy, relaxed, entirely at home.
He had sat beside Sirius and Remus and the others as they raged about the stupidity of Fudge, and he had laughed along with them, cursed along with them, never once stopping to think:
The people in power at the Ministry might be foolish. They might be contemptible, short-sighted, self-serving, and afraid. But they were not enemies any of them could actually fight—not in the open, not without consequences that would fall on heads far younger and less armored than their own.
"Hopkirk used to work in the Improper Use of Magic Office."
Amid the churning dread that had settled over the kitchen like fog, Kingsley Shacklebolt's voice remained steady as rock.
"But yesterday afternoon, Umbridge had him reassigned directly to the Senior Undersecretary's office." He paused, his dark eyes moving from face to face. "And then there are the notices sent to Ron and Hermione."
He fixed his gaze on Harry with the calm of a man who had interrogated people professionally and knew how to read what they didn't say as easily as what they did.
"Could it be something you did without thinking? Some prank that went further than intended?"
"Have you ever used anything of Fred and George's on a Muggle?" Mr. Weasley asked. Harry had never, in four years of knowing Arthur Weasley, seen him look quite so grave.
"No, Dad." Ron's voice was very flat. The expression on his face was numb. "I swear it. We never tormented any Muggles. Not once."
Whoosh
A silver phoenix appeared without warning in the centre of the kitchen, hovering motionless in the air with its wings spread wide.
Professor Dumbledore's Patronus.
Harry's spirits surged before he could stop them. A flicker of something returned to Ron's hollow eyes—recognition, relief, the same desperate clutching at any solid thing. Hermione, who had her face buried in her hands with tears still streaming silently through her fingers, looked up at the phoenix with an expression that was very close to prayer.
The phoenix swept its gaze slowly over the three of them and somewhere far away, Dumbledore sighed.
"You still have no idea what this is about?"
All three shook their heads. Sirius let out a furious, contemptuous breath through his nose.
"At a time like this, what do you expect them to remember? Besides—Fudge is obviously framing them. This is a stitch-up. Whatever evidence he claims to have, it was put there by someone."
"We—I—"
Hermione stared through tear-blurred eyes at the phoenix's vivid blue gaze, as though looking directly at Dumbledore himself.
"We've been expelled, haven't we, Professor Dumbledore."
It wasn't quite a question. Her voice was very small, and very steady like preparing herself for the worst.
"Not yet, Miss Granger—"
The phoenix spoke with Dumbledore's familiar calmness.
"Cornelius would very much like more authority over Hogwarts' affairs—he has wanted it for years. But unfortunately for him, expelling students remains the sole prerogative of the headmaster of the school, unless he can actually prove you guilty of something."
"Albus—"
Molly spoke to Harry for the first time all evening—or rather to Dumbledore. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, and she was practically pleading.
"Help them. Please. You can convince the Minister to drop the charges—he listens to you, he always has. He can't involve children in this—whatever this is really about—they're only children—"
The phoenix blinked. Harry was certain he saw a flash of something fierce cross those bright blue eyes.
Bang Bang Bang
Before the phoenix could open its beak to reply, a sharp, urgent knocking broke out against the back door of the kitchen.
Sirius disappeared for twenty seconds. The kitchen held its breath. When he reappeared, he was holding a letter.
"Bryan already got word. An owl just brought his reply—"
He held it up for everyone to see, then broke the seal and read aloud while the others crowded close.
"'Send Ron and Hermione to the hearing as the Ministry requires. Do not worry about the rest. I will handle it'."
When Sirius finished reading, the phoenix's gaze shifted subtly.
A silence stretched through the kitchen.
Remus looked at the Patronus, hesitating only for a moment.
"What do you think, Albus? Should we...?"
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were all watching the phoenix too.
None of them could have explained why those two sentences—terse, almost dismissive in their brevity—had done what they had done. But something in the absolute confidence of them, the quiet certainty that required no further explanation, had changed the texture of the air in the room.
"We have no reason not to trust Bryan."
Dumbledore's words, spoken through his Patronus in that calm and final way, settled the matter the way a key settles in a lock with a definitive, quiet click that left no room for further argument.
The silence that followed lasted perhaps ten seconds.
Then Molly drew a sharp, unsteady breath and turned to face Ron, Harry, and Hermione, forcing onto her face a smile that broke their hearts.
"I'm going to go iron your best clothes. Put them on tomorrow morning, and make sure you wash your hair properly before you leave—"
She looked at each of them in turn.
"A good first impression can work miracles."
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