The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

The Trial of Sirius Black

It took Harry Underhill a mere twenty-three minutes to bring down the court ruling on Sirius Black's case. James sat in the chair where he was assigned to be seated as Underhill's assistant, a spot they'd chosen specifically because James was in full view of Sirius while he sat in the chair in the center of the room, where the accused was meant to sit during the trial, where the full wizengamot could see his reactions to the accusations and testimonies given. James was armed with a box full of files that Underhill had pulled together in the three weeks a lotted him to prepare his case, and the volume of documents, interviews, evidences, and articles of research that Mr. Underhill had compiled was stunning.

James realized as he paged through that he had been involved in hardly any of it, despite long hours of running about the Ministry, pulling files and having them copied by Sean Buckner. He'd trailed along with Underhill to two or three interviews and even given one himself on Sirius Black's character, but there were dozens here. James flickered through everything in the box and glanced up at Harry Underhill, completely in awe of master work that had been done on Sirius's behalf - all while fighting to have the whole process expedited.

This box, he realized, represented not only hours of his own time and hours of time Underhill had spent during regular office hours, but also hours and hours of personal time spent, likely a good deal of long nights, and more thought and heart than James reckoned he'd put into much else in his entire life.

He was reminded forcibly of his father, when Charlus had taken up the case for Jasper Odair.

And also of Sirius himself, when Sirius had decided that they ought to become Animagi for Remus Lupin.

He remembered Sirius telling him about Underhill visiting him in the holding cell that night, playing cards and giving him back his cigarettes. The image had never felt quite right in James's mind until that moment, looking over those files and realizing that Underhill had invested himself in the case so thoroughly.  The look in his mum's face earlier that morning, singing praises for Underhill and talking about Charlus and Ottalie stuck in James's mind, too.

This, James realized with a jolt, was not just a brilliant bit of detective work, but this was a work of art. A work of love - an honest desire to see another person done right by - and his heart swelled with pride at the knowledge 

What an honor it must be, James thought, to use the talent that you were born with to help someone else in whatever way that you can... to use your passion and change the life of even one other person who needed what you had to give.

Underhill wasted no time in calling for the testimony of Ms. Hestia Leonards, getting the worst of the evidence against Sirius out of the way up front like tearing off a bandaid. 

The pinched woman walked up to the small podium that stood before the wizengamot, carefully keeping her eyes avoided from Sirius Black, and she recounted tearfully a story about sitting at her lovely tea table outside of her home while the degnoming was being done, sipping tea and talking with her friends. She couldn't recall how the subject of werewolves came about, but they hadn't spoken harshly, she insisted, and one of her friends had asked her about the policies at the University and she had shared that she'd been dealing with a boy thought to be infected with lycanthropy that very week - a boy who had snapped at her when she had spoken to him about his tardies. She claimed Sirius had come up out of the flower bed wild eyed and screaming, calling her a beast and threatening her life and the lives of her friends, saying that he had a werewolf and he would turn the wolf on her at the full moon because she deserved to be bitten. 

Underhill let it rest without pressing the matter and James could see Sirius closing his eye and counting as Underhill had very strictly told him to do during the testimony. "Whatever you do," Underhill had said during their pre-trial talk in his office, "Do not fight or look angry or react in anyway. Keep your mind on other things."