Rosalyn dressed in formal clothes that morning. It was time for her hearing. She and Arthur left the house at six o'clock, when Molly and Izzy were the only ones up.
"Good luck," Molly wished Rosie, hugging her tightly.
"Show those arseholes," were Izzy's words of wisdom as she got in to give the girl a squeeze.
Finally, she and Arthur left the house and walked the short way to their nearest underground station.
"Trains! Underground! Genius, these muggles!" Arthur had always had a bit of an obsession for muggles, and he was fascinated by the escalators. Rosalyn sighed, having a fleeting memory of when she was six and Arthur asked her and Ron if they could come and collect plugs with him. It didn't go well.
Once he got off the escalator, Arthur went towards the ticket gates. He tapped the ticket scanner with his hand and tried to walk forward, but the gate stopped him. He tried this again, but it didn't happen.
"Er-" Rosalyn said, scanning the ticket. The gates opened and Arthur scooted through them, completely surprised.
After a very long train ride, in which Arthur decided to ask about four muggles what they thought of rubber ducks and playing cards, they finally got off near the Ministry. They climbed the stone steps out of the station and Arthur, to Rosalyn's surprise, lead her to a secluded street where a single red telephone box stood.
"Here we are," Arthur said as he held the door open for Rosalyn. "I've never used the visitors' entrance before. Should be fun."
"I'll just get my muggle money," Arthur siad as he put two hexagonal coins into the slot labeled cash.
Suddenly, the phone box began to move downwards. "Ah," Arthur said, satisfied.
They sunk lower and lower until they hit the ground. Arthur opened the door.
The first thing Rosalyn registered was that there were lots of voices and even more people. She and Arthur had joined a general flow of wizards and witches in the middle of a huge space. There were grates all around the room, and people appearing in them, covered by green flames. Rosalyn knew that they were travelling by floo powder, having done this a few years previously.
There were goblins sitting on benches at the side, talking in hushed voices, several groups of people conferring with each other stood throughout the room. There were random people as well, and there were some sellers as well.
Someone was shouting. "Daily Prophet, anyone? Anyone for Daily Prophet? Dumbledore, is he daft of is he dangerous?"
Rosalyn saw the front page of the paper and saw that exact headline, plus a poster glued to the front of the table with all the Prophets on it.
Rage filled Rosalyn. She and Dumbledore were getting made out to be attention seeking weirdos.
"Don't, Rosalyn," Arthur said, as Rosalyn had indeed been wanting to say something to the man.
"Fine," Rosalyn said resentfully.
They walked on. Rosalyn saw a huge flag with Cornelius Fudge on it, the letters M.O.M. in the corner.
"Really loves himself, doesn't he?" Rosalyn whispered to Arthur.
"Rosalyn, I'm at work, I can't just say that about my boss-"
"But you're thinking it," Rosalyn smirked. The man before her sighed but didn't answer.
Arthur lead Rosalyn to a nearly full lift situated in the Atrium. They crammed into the lift and Rosalyn stood still. All euphoria about anything had vanished now, all that was left was fear. "Morning Arthur," someone with a white beard standing next to him said.
"Morning, Bart," said Arthur happily, whilst Rosalyn stood awkwardly between them.
Suddenly, these black paper aeroplanes zoomed into the lift. Rosalyn looked at Arthur in question.
"Inter departmental memos," he said. "We used to use owls, the mess was unbelievable."
Rosalyn smiled slightly as the person she recognised as Kingsley Shacklebolt shoved his way into the lift. He murmured something to Arthur.
"Thank you, Kingsley," Arthur soon said. He leant forward to the redhead in front of him. "Rosalyn, they've changed the time of your hearing."
"When is it?" Rosalyn asked as the lift started to close.
"In five minutes."
The lift started to move, but not upwards or downwards, it moved backwards at first. Rosalyn sighed, her hearing was originally supposed to be in half an hour, so she and Arthur were going to go to his office then go down to the courtrooms, but no. She had to go now.
She wasn't prepared for this.
The lift stopped and said. "Department of Mysteries."
Rosalyn didn't know what that was, but she got out the lift promptly. They walked along the corridor slowly. Rosalyn felt like each foot was a brick, or they were encased in ice. She honestly wished they were.
Halfway along the corridor, she saw Cornelius Fudge and Lucius Malfoy talking along the corridor. They both glared at her as she passed.
"Is it a crime to turn up at a hearing you've been invited to now?" Rosalyn said loudly as she passed.
"Rosalyn!" Arthur hissed.
"I'm sorry, okay? But I can't just get glared at like a weirdo when I'm not, can I?"
Arthur sighed. He was secretly proud of his adopted daughter, standing up to people that were a lot older that her and had a lot more influence than her. However, he couldn't let her know this, not when Malfoy and Fudge were right there, and when Fudge could fire him in a second.
They eventually got to a large black metal door. "Remember during the hearing speak only when you're spoken to."
"A- aren't you coming in?" Rosalyn asked, trying not to let him hear the shaking of her voice.
"I'm not allowed, Rosie. I'm sorry, keep calm, you've done nothing wrong. Good luck, as the muggles say, truth will out!"
The courtroom was a big round space. There was a large circular space in which one chair was. Rosalyn sat in this chair, looking up at the Wizenagemot. This actually turned out to be just a bunch of witches and wizards in black and red robes with matching colour hats on.
Fudge was in the middle of all this, banging his hammer and saying. "Disciplinary hearing on the twelfth of August. Looking into offenses commited by Rosalyn Lily Potter, resident at the Burrow on the outskirts of Ottery St Catchpole. Interrogators Cornelius Oswald Fudge, D-"
"Witness for the defence," said a voice, and Dumbledore walked in, he wandered behind Rosalyn's chair for a moment before saying his name. "Albus Percival Wulfric, Brian, Dumbledore."
"You- you got our message that the time and place of the hearing had been changed, then?" Fudge asked.
Of course he flipping did, Rosalyn thought, irritated already. Otherwise he wouldn't be here.
But Dumbledore didn't pick Fudge up in this, he simply said. "I must've missed it, but by a happy mistake, I arrived at the Ministry three hours early." He then asked plainly. "Charges?"
"The charges against the accused are as follows," Fudge began. "They are that she did knowingly, and in full awareness of the illegality of her actions, perform a patronus charm, in the presence of a muggle. Do you deny producing said patronus?" He fired at Rosalyn.
"No, but-" she began.
"And you were aware that you were forbidden to use magic outside school while under the age of seventeen?"
"Yes, but just listen-"
"Witches and Wizards of the Wizenagemot-" Fudge began to declare.
"I was only doing it because of the bloody dementors attacking me!"
There was a silence that seemed never ending. Rosalyn winced and said again. "They attacked me and Harry and my idiot cousin! If I hadn't conjured my patronus-"
"Dementors?" Asked a woman whom Rosalyn didn't recognise. "In Little Whinging?"
Rosalyn went to answer, but was interrupted by her so-called Minister, who, for some reason, was chuckling. "Very clever. Muggles can't see dementors can they, girl? Highly convenient-"
"You think I'm lying?" Rosalyn asked, barely believing her ears. "There were two of them, one strangled me and my cousin was nearly kissed-"
"Enough!" Fudge called and Rosalyn silenced. "I'm sorry to interrupt what I'm sure would've been a very well rehearsed story, but since you can produce no witnesses of the event-" he tapped his hand on his table.
Rosalyn was about to argue, but Dumbledore stepped up. "Pardon me, Minister, but, as it happens, we can."
Next thing Rosalyn knew, she was off the witness chair and on a bench at the side, and Mrs Figg was sat where she had been just a few moments ago.
"Please describe the attack. What did they look like?" The woman that had been nice to Rosalyn, who Fudge had called Amelia Bones, said to her.
Bones... Rosalyn thought, where do I know that from...
She then thought... Susan Bones! That must be her mother or aunt, Rosalyn thought as Mrs Figg answered.
"Well, one of them was rather large, and the other two quite skinny-"
"Not the children," said Fudge impatiently, "The dementors."
"Oh right, right, well," Mrs Figg changed track. "Big, cloaked, and then everything went cold, as though all the happiness had been drained from the world."
"Now look here!" Fudge chuckled yet again. "Dementors don't just wander into a muggle suburb and happen across a wizard. The-the odds are astronomical!"
"I don't think anyone believes the dementors were there by coincidence, Minister," Dumbledore said simply.
"Hem hem."
Rosalyn looked round and saw a woman dressed in black robes but with an obvious fluffy pink cardigan under them. She spoke to Dumbledore in a sweet and simpering voice, but her tone was laced with other things too. It sounded fake.
"I think I must have misunderstood you, Professor," she began. "Dementors are, after all, under the control of the Ministry of Magic. So silly of me, but it sounded, for a moment, as if you were suggesting that the Ministry had orchestrated the attack on this girl?"
"Who says you didn't?" Rosalyn asked loudly. "You've spent the whole summer putting in the Prophet that I'm a liar-"
"Thank you, Rosalyn," Dumbledore said, as the pink bitch, as Rosalyn decided to call her, swelled with fury. Dumbledore addressed her now. "That would be disturbing indeed, Madam Undersecretary. This is why I hope that the Ministry will be launching a full scale investigation on why those two dementors were so far from Azkaban, and why they mounted an attack on an innocent girl.
"Of course there is someone who might be behind the attack," Dumbledore stepped forward, looking up at Fudge. "Cornelius, I implore you to see reason. The evidence that Lord Voldemort has returned is incontrovertible-"
"He's not back!" Fudge hissed, leaning over his table to see Dumbledore.
Dumbledore sighed, moving backwards and addressing the whole Wizenagemot. "In the matter of Rosalyn Potter, the law clearly states that magic may be used before muggles in life threatening situations."
"Laws can be changed if necessary, Dumbledore!" Fudge snapped.
Dumbledore replied quickly. "Clearly, as it's already become practice to hold a full criminal trial for a simple matter of underage magic!"
There was a silence. Rosalyn, for one, wanted to hear Fudge worm his way out of that. But he didn't need to.
Amelia Bones, though she had no authority, suddenly said. "Those in favour of conviction?"
Quite a few people put up their hands, Fudge included. Rosalyn also saw the pink bitch put up her hand. I swear she hates me, Rosalyn thought, she hates me so much...
"Those in favour of clearing the accused of all charges?"
More hands. More and more. Rosalyn tried to count them but she couldn't see everyone. But she wasn't stupid. This was majority.
"Cleared of all charges," Fudge said reluctantly, banging his hammer on the table.
Dumbledore swept away, cloak trailing behind him. "Professor-" Rosalyn said.
She wanted to tell her headmaster exactly what she thought of him. She wanted to tell him she hated him for cutting her off but she was so grateful for him today. She wanted to scream every foul word at him and then ask him why he did it. She just wanted to know why.
But she never got the chance. Dumbledore swept out the door and disappeared from sight.