“I’m happy here!” Ivy said for the millionth time. “I… I don’t want to just go back to being a Malfoy again!” She looked very frail and vulnerable, hunched over in her chair between Mr. and Mrs. Potter. It was always easy to tell when Ivy was troubled because her expression would turn pinched and her face even paler than usual, and her voice would never rise about a whisper. At the moment, she showed all three of the symptoms.
Haley was crying without shame, her tears splashing onto the official papers from Uther Smith-Smythe in small, salty pools. “How could someone with such a silly name do something so mean! The Wizengamot better not put Pansy Malfoy in charge of you, or else they’ll have ME to deal with!” she exclaimed loudly, brandishing a ceramic kitten. “There’s no way they’ll ever think she’d be better at taking care of you than Mum and Dad.”
“Yes,” Jordan said gravely, “but you have to realize that Mrs. Malfoy was in Azkaban when Ivy was adopted, and she couldn’t give her consent. She didn’t even know her daughter had been adopted until this year, so it’s understandable that she’s a bit upset.”
Ivy sighed. “But why does she even want me around again? She hates me.”
Ginny stroked her daughter’s hair. “Oh, that can’t be true,” she said soothingly. “No one could hate you, especially not the woman who gave birth to you.”
Ivy’s eyes looked hard. “She hated me,” she repeated.
“Look,” Ted told her comfortingly, reaching across the table and taking her hand with one of his ridiculously long arms. “I’m pretty sure the Wizengamot will keep things the way they are. Everyone knows your dad. Besides, you’ll be seventeen in April. It’s, like, less than eight months until you’ll be old enough to live on your own if you want to. Just tell that to the Wizengamot.”
“Yeah,” agreed Emma. “You’re tough when you want to be, seriously. You stick up for yourself. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
Ivy, who had never exactly seen herself as ‘tough,’ gave her friends a watery smile. “Thanks,” she whispered, shaking her fringe out of her eyes. She remembered when she was in her first year, hearing Haley talk about her parents and all of the things that she did with her family, and wishing she could have a family that let her be herself without fear. After spending her first summer with the Potters, she’d constantly wished and dreamed that she could have been a member of their family”she felt more at home than she’d ever felt at her so-called ‘home.’ And now that she was a true member of the Potter family and finally felt like she’d finally adjusted, Pansy wanted to take her away again.
She didn’t sleep that night.
The day of Ivy’s court appearance, everyone was nervous and neurotic. Jordan isolated himself in his room with the door locked (better that than expose his true emotion seemed to be his logic there), Haley chattered nonstop, Emma wouldn’t stop shouting at anybody who dared speak to her (including a Muggle plumber who accidentally came to their house instead of Giorgi Anderson’s next door), Ted cracked lame jokes, and Ivy herself was totally silent.
She descended the stairs neatly but plainly dressed in a crisp white blouse tucked into a dark blue wool skirt. Her hair was pulled back and braided more tightly than usual, and her bangs were scraped back from her face with barrettes. Her hands were clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white, her eyes downcast, and her cheeks bloodless.
“Oh, Ives!” exclaimed Haley, running up and hugging her. “Don’t worry, you know nothing’s going to go wrong! I can just feel it. Really! Now, why are you wearing that? You can borrow some of my things if you want. I’m smaller than you, but with skirts, it doesn’t really matter”I mean, I have this pink dress that””
“It’s a court appearance, not Godric’s Hollows’ Next Top Model,” snarled Emma, snatching a piece of candy out of Haley’s hand and eating it.
Ginny set down a plate of food for Ivy, all of her favourite dishes, but she didn’t even touch her breakfast. Her father sat down next to her, sporting the serious expression that he usually wore when he was about to discuss his own past. It was at times like this that Ivy remembered that her father had done much more in his teenaged years than almost anyone accomplished in a lifetime; he usually seemed so energetic and content with his life that it was easy to forget all of the challenges he’d faced.
“I know exactly how you feel,” he said in a low voice. “When I was fifteen, I had to sit before the Wizengamot”definitely not fun”and it was just the same. They wanted me expelled from Hogwarts, and Hogwarts was my home. And I know you don’t want to have to leave your home, either.”
Ivy nodded. “Dad, you’re coming with me, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? Of course I am! I’m testifying.” He smiled, rather sadly. “I don’t want you to leave any more than you do. What, do you think I want to get rid of you?”
Ron looked up from the Potters’ stove, where he was making a futile attempt to cook some bacon. “Harry, if you’re testifying, who’s taking your place in the Wizengamot?” He flicked his wand to help the bacon cook, but his preoccupied mind muddled the nonverbal incantation and transfigured the bacon into evil-smelling green strips of festering dragon meat.
“Hadrian Bellowes, I think,” replied Harry. “I know he’s a git, but he’ll do the job.”
A loud CLANG! resounded throughout the house. Emma had just dropped the pot she’d been washing out, her eyes as wide as those of a hypnotized deer.
Everyone jumped at the sudden noise, and Ron inadvertently flicked his wand and transfigured the dragon bacon into a swarm of live bees.
“Right,” said Ted, jumping to his feet, grabbing the pot full of bees, and setting them free outside before they could hurt anyone. It was a little odd, really, what a close rapport Ted had with animals of any kind. His parents referred to him as the Pied Piper of Hogwarts, and insisted that he could be just as efficient an exterminator, except for the fact that he would rather eat his own liver with fava beans than kill another animal.
Harry checked his watch. “It’s about time for me and Ron to floo to work,” he mentioned as Ted returned with the now-empty frying pan. “Ivy, it’s two hours before you have to be at the courtroom. Do you want to come with us now?”
Ivy nodded silently and stood, smoothing the wrinkles out of her skirt. As she walked past little Holly and Jonathan, they hugged her legs and presented her with a ‘good-luck charm,’ which turned out to be one of Jordan’s old guitar picks strung onto a piece of smelly pink yarn. She suddenly realized how very much she would lose if Mrs. Malfoy won the custody battle, and it frightened her.
The rest of the room seemed to realize the same thing at the same time, because before she knew it, Ivy was buried under a mass of people hugging her and whispering tearful words of encouragement.
“There’s no way you’ll lose!”
“Don’t worry, Ivy.”
“We all love you!”
“Especially Ted!”
“Tell Pansy where to stick that custody arrangement, and give Bellowes a nice swift kick in a soft spot for me, will you?” (That was Emma.)
“Everything’s going to be all right.”
Jordan, who didn’t believe in hugs”any physical contact with people made him feel uncomfortable”looked up at his sister with serious eyes. “I have no doubt,” he said in almost a whisper, wetting his dry lips with his tongue, “that you’ll be allowed to stay here.”
Comforted by these optimistic words from her chronically pessimistic brother, Ivy almost smiled. “I’ll see you soon, I guess,” she whispered. And with that, she took the floo powder down from the fireplace, tossed it into the flames, and disappeared.
She’d been to the Ministry before, but it was still a dazzling sight, preoccupied though she was. A cavernous entry all came spinning into view as she stumbled out of one of the many fireplaces lining the walls, her father and uncle not far behind.
The ceiling was as blue as the sky on a clear and perfect day, but unlike the sky, it sparkled with gold symbols that constantly whirred and spun like a carousel. Countless flickering candles illuminated the dark wood walls; it was a room where everything moved and changed along with the crowds hurrying about its interior.
“You’ll need to register your wand, of course,” her father told her, trying to flatten his hair for a more professional appearance and only succeeding in making it look worse than ever. “They used to just do a background check, but now they won’t let visitors with wands inside any Ministry-run building. Security’s gotten a lot tighter since the Malfoy attack on St. Mungo’s twelve years ago; they…” He seemed to realize exactly who he was speaking to and stopped talking, instead leading her to the security desk where a thin, slightly paranoid-looking man was registering wands.
“Hullo, Chester,” Ron greeted the paranoid-looking man, his voice a little too friendly. “Harry and I are keeping our wands because we work here, but””
“Wands, please,” Chester demanded somewhat shrilly.
Ron laughed rather insincerely. “No, no, we’re Aurors. We need our wands in case there are dark wizards on the loose. Remember when we were talking about it yesterday? And, er, every day for the last twelve years?”
Chester looked both confused and put-out.
“But don’t worry,” Ron added quickly, “because we do have a wand for you to take care of today. Isn’t that right, Ivy? Ivy?” With a bit of prompting from her uncle, Ivy took her wand from her pocket and placed it in Chester’s hand, which immediately closed tightly around the wand like a bear trap. He laid it with extreme care on a vibrating brass instrument, and before long, it spit forth a thin slip of paper. Chester tore it off and squinted at it, his spidery fingers still clutching the wand.
“Ten and a half inches, unicorn hair core, cedar wood, been in use for five years.”
“That’s right,” whispered Ivy.
Chester narrowed his protuberant, twitching eyes. “Of course it is. I’m never wrong.” He attached the slip of paper to the wand and stowed it away in a drawer, which he then locked with a series of nine keys.
“We’ll be back for that later,” said Harry. “Thank you, Chester.” As he led the party of three toward the lifts, he told his daughter, “He’ll take good care of your wand, Ivy.”
Ron guffawed. “Yeah, it’s getting back the wand that’s the trouble.” He hunched his shoulders. “I’m sorry, but he always gives me the creeps.”
“Poor man,” sighed Harry. “Chester Ollivander’s the grandson of the man who made my wand, but when Mr. Ollivander got taken by Death Eaters, Chester basically snapped.”
“Yeah,” put in Ron, “I heard he always wanted to run his family’s wand business, but he couldn’t because he’s a Squib, so he just registers wands now. He’s terrified of magic, of course, seeing as he can’t put up a decent fight or anything.”
“That’s so sad,” sighed Ivy, looking back over her shoulder at Chester. Checking wands all day long, knowing that he’d never be able to use one and constantly living in fear that someone wouldn’t register their wand and would use it to kill him… she felt sorry for the man.
She and the Aurors climbed into a lift that would take them down to Level Two, which held the Department of Magical Law Enforcement (rather handily including both the Auror offices where the men worked and the Wizengamot administration services).
“Normally, cases like child custody aren’t decided by the Wizengamot, of course,” Ron mentioned, “only this is a bit bigger deal than most, seeing as it’s a toss-up between the bloke who saved the wizarding world and a woman whose only contribution to the wizarding world was springing Malfoy out of Azkaban.”
Ivy nodded. A lump rose in her throat”not a sentimental lump, but a cold lump of fear”as it struck her that she’d be facing Pansy and Ophidias Malfoy again. She’d almost forgotten that she’d have to stand in the same room as them in just a few short hours.
As the elevator descended steadily, Harry grumbled, “This case shouldn’t be taking place at all. The Ministry knows better than to let Pansy Malfoy take care of you. And the only reason she’s out of Azkaban at all is Tancred Apple. He always felt sorry for everyone he tried when he was on the Wizengamot, and he always gave them these ridiculously short sentences if they cooperated in court.”
“It’s all good now, though,” said Ron. “I mean, now he’s in Azkaban himself doing a long sentence…”
The golden grilles slid open, allowing the threesome and the others occupying the lift to step out into a hall that led up to a pair of heavy oak doors.
Ivy had never been inside Auror Headquarters before, though she knew Haley, Emma, and Jordan had on several occasions, and she’d always imagined it to be a quiet, dimly-lit place with an air of mystery about it, gleaming and bizarre magical artifacts everywhere the eye could see. But when her father pushed the doors open, she saw a sight completely unlike anything she’d envisioned.
It was early and most of the Aurors had not yet arrived, but even so, the office was bright and noisy and full of people working, talking, and even (in the case of two young Aurors) standing on their desks practicing dueling over the walls that separated their cubicles. It was a very large open room marked by a distinct disorganization”clearly properly-filed paperwork was not a top priority in the Auror office.
As they passed the desktop duelers, one stopped abruptly and pretended to be fixing the ceiling fan, while the other toppled backward off his desk.
“Please, keep dueling!” called Harry. “It’s good practice. Merlin knows this job isn’t about the deskwork.” He helped up the man who had fallen off of the desk, clearly a very new Auror with a scraggly goatee and a few pimples. “Better work on those reflexes, Sipperly,” he added with a smile. “If seeing your own boss made you fall off your desk, I’d hate to see what a couple of dark wizards would do to you. Excellent shield charm, though.”
“Thanks, Mr. Potter,” said Sipperly genuinely, brushing marshmallow fluff off of his robes. It was then that he spotted Ivy for the first time. “Hi,” he said. “Are you his daughter?”
Ivy nodded. “Yes, I am.” For the time being, she added mentally.
“You’re a lucky girl,” grinned Sipperly. “He’s a pretty cool guy.”
“Thanks,” replied Harry. “My son Jordan would tell you a different story, though.”
Right around this time, Ron turned to the Auror still pretending to fix the ceiling fan. “Is that broken again?” he asked. “Funny, I thought we just got it fixed.”
The fan-fixer blinked. “Yeah, well, you know how these things are, they just keep””
Ron flicked his wand and the fan sprung to life, nearly chopping off the man’s fingers. “Aurors are observant people, Mullgrew,” he said, leading Ivy to the other side of the room. It was not the first time Ron had used people’s lack of faith in his intelligence to his advantage.
It was obvious that everyone in the room--especially the Head and Deputy Head of the department”enjoyed their jobs, and approached them with a mixture of enthusiastic playfulness and dedicated seriousness. All of the Aurors seemed to have great respect for their superiors, even those who were older and more experienced.
“Now, see,” said Harry, unlocking the door to a glass-fronted room that branched off from the main Auror Headquarters, “This is the best thing about my job. I get my own office where I can do whatever I want and periodically pop my head out to terrorize the trainees.”
Ron’s office was adjacent to it, and sported some highly blackmail-worthy photos plastered on every square inch available. Most of them featured a chubby baby with inquisitive brown eyes and a halo of reddish curls, usually dressed up as a princess or a fairy or a cat.
“Is that…”
“Yes, that’s Emma,” replied Ron. “I don’t dare put up pictures of her nowadays anymore”last time I tried that, some sick little trainees started falling in love with her, and I didn’t want to have to keep cleaning up all the blood each time that happened.”
Ivy smiled. Emma and her father were highly similar people, which caused them to fight quite a lot, but they also loved each other very much, to the point of violent overprotection. She could just imagine Ron beating up Auror trainees for ogling pictures of his daughter.
“If you think that’s bad, look at this,” added her father, pulling a large photograph from his desk drawer.
The photograph featured four babies between the ages of six months to a little over a year, all dressed in their Christmas best and clustered around one another. The chubby, curly-haired toddler now sat happily in the back, flanked by two scrawny dark-haired babies. The boy had a downy tuft of jet-black hair and wore a grumpy pout that caused his face to wrinkle up like a ham. The girl’s wispy black hair was tied into a ponytail sticking straight out of the crown of her head with a pink ribbon, and she was planting a kiss on the cheek of the smallest of the group, a tiny little boy delightedly smiling a toothless smile that was so big that his light blue eyes were nearly shut.
Harry smiled fondly. “It’s hard to believe that that was almost sixteen years ago,” he said. He pointed to the grinning, toothless baby. “That was Ted, if you can believe it. Back then, being seven months younger than Emma was a big difference. And of course, Ted was born a bit early, so he was always small for his age when he was a baby…that’s a far cry from now, of course.”
A strange feeling passed over Ivy as she realized what a very short time she’d actually known these people. Her four closest friends had been together since birth, had been inseparable their whole lives. She’d only met them five short years before, and she hadn’t even been a member of the family for two years. Unlike the rest of them, she had not watched Ted take his first steps, had not heard Haley’s first words, had not been there when Jordan learned to read or when Emma took to the air with her first broom. There were times when she almost forgot about her life before Hogwarts, and when she remembered, she felt cold and uncomfortable.
“Is there a ladies’ room I can use?” she asked.
Harry nodded. “Use the one down at the end of the hall, though”in the Auror bathrooms, all of the toilets are booby-trapped with different jinxes every day. Encourages constant vigilance.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
It wasn’t long after Ivy had left in search of the ladies’ room that quite a different person swung open the door to Harry’s office, where Ron was also seated and enjoying a cup of coffee.
“Potter, Weasley,” he said curtly, inclining his head full of slicked-back silver hair. He was a short man with cartoonishly wide shoulders, a long, bony face and a long, bony nose that was sharp enough to cut the toughest of steaks. His slitted eyes were very pale blue and as sharp, piercing, and cold as icicles.
“Bellowes,” Ron shot back just as curtly. “I read the news last week. Interesting article.”
Hadrian Bellowes smiled, though there was no warmth in it. “Oh, good,” he replied in a strange sort of low-pitched nasal drawl. “I thought the public might find it enlightening.”
“What brings you here today, Bellowes?” asked Harry, getting to the point as he noticed that Ron’s ears were turning an ominous red.
Bellowes tilted his chin in the air. “To borrow your Wizengamot robes. I will be filling in for you today at the hearing, after all,” he reminded the Head importantly. He then paused and sniffed sharply, causing his long nostrils to inflate to the size of walnuts. “And also to report some unproductive horseplay. Sipperly and Mullgrew are dueling on their desks, causing a dreadful racket and shirking their duties. It’s very childish and unprofessional behaviour, in my”and I’m sure your”opinion.”
“On the contrary,” responded Harry, folding his arms behind his head and resting casually against the back of his chair. “Being an Auror is about combat. I think Sipperly and Mullgrew are using their time very wisely; in fact, I encouraged it.”
Bellowes sniffed again, as though Harry’s office smelled like rotting cabbage. “Well, those are exactly the sort unorthodox training methods that I’ve always found disgraceful. We never had this sort of hullabaloo under Dawlish. He ran a very tight ship, Dawlish. It’s all gone downhill since then, if you ask me.”
“Well, we don’t ask you,” interrupted Ron, picking up a plum-coloured bundle and throwing it at the Auror. “Here are Harry’s robes. Doubt they’ll fit you, but what can you do. Good day.”
“Good day,” Bellowes hissed in tones that strongly suggested that he would love it if Ron had an extremely bad day indeed.
He stormed off, ranting under his breath, “Dueling on desks, loose papers everywhere, bringing children in on field trips, jinxing toilets… I’m going off to find a bathroom without attack chickens, thank you very much…”
“Good riddance,” Ron muttered.
Ivy was on her return trip from the restrooms and heading back toward Auror headquarters when she accidentally walked directly into a short, bony man who had disproportionately broad shoulders and a disproportionately long, prominently-nosed face. “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed hastily, stepping back.
The man did not respond with a typical ‘that’s quite all right’ or ‘no, no, it was my fault.’ Instead, he narrowed his eyes appraisingly. “Why are you here?” he asked in a smooth, icy voice. “Why are you infiltrating the Auror headquarters? I could have you thrown in Azkaba””
“I’m a visitor!” Ivy explained quickly. “I’m the Head Auror’s daughter.”
“Please, do not try to use your feeble excuses on an Auror,” hissed the man. “I have unfortunately met Harriet-Lily Potter on several occasions, and you are obviously not she.”
Ivy gaped. This was like a bad joke. “I’m not Haley, I’m Ivy!” she explained. “I’m here for a court appearance?”
His expression changed immediately, his thin eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. “Ahhh, the little Malfoy girl. Yes, I will be serving on the Wizengamot today,” he informed her. “I am Hadrian Bellowes. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
“Yes, I have,” Ivy said, politely neglecting to mention that none of what she had heard had been good.
Bellowes gave her a thin-lipped smile that did not reach his eyes. “Mmm, I daresay you read my article in the Prophet?”
“I did,” Ivy replied, then paused and added, “Uncle Ron would never kill a person for no good reason. He’s a good person. I mean, he’s got pictures of his daughter all over the walls of his office, and””
Bellowes cut her off, smirking. “Yes, well, that’s hardly defence material for his case. If I am not mistaken, I believe Draco Malfoy made a habit of carrying a photograph of his precious little girl at all times, did he not?”
Ivy’s fingernails bit into her palms. She did not like Hadrian Bellowes one bit, she decided.
Two hours seemed to fly by like seconds, and before she knew it, Ivy found herself walking toward the Wizengamot office for her nine o’clock court appearance. Her face was deathly pale, her face tight and pinched, and her brow glistening with nervous perspiration, and her hands, too, were clammy as she clenched them together nervously. She didn’t even like speaking in front of her classes to deliver an oral report. To be the focus of a roomful of strange adults was a terrifying concept.
“It’ll all be fine,” her father assured her. He looked strange without his Head Auror badge pinned to his work robes”the badge was now prominently displayed on Ron’s chest back at the office, where he was temporarily filling in as Deputy Head Auror. He took a deep breath. For all his comforting words, his hands were just as clammy as his daughters, and his heartbeat resounded through his ears, sounding unusually fast and loud.
He swung the door open. The room that awaited them was nothing like the austere dungeon that had greeted Harry on his own court appearance in his fifth year; it was much smaller and resembled a waiting room, and the fifty or so members of the Wizengamot sat on a series of benches at eye level. Chairs for Harry and Ivy waited on the left hand side of the room, and two similar chairs on the opposite side of the room were occupied by…
Ivy froze. There were Pansy and Ophidias Malfoy, unchained and unrestrained, not even accompanied by a guard. Mrs. Malfoy looked older and thinner, her sleek dark bob now flecked with grey and her face bare of makeup, but her posture and carriage were as regal and as confident as always.
Ophidias, however, was different. He was hunched over uncomfortably in his chair, looking down at his folded hands. He’d always been a good-looking boy with classic Malfoy colouring, but more strongly built and -featured than his fine-boned father. But now his handsome face looked tired and ill, wearing a curious expression that was somehow both softened and hardened compared to the Ophidias Ivy had known for so long. His previously sleek and lush white-blond hair was buzzed off into a bristly stubble on his scalp, and he was dressed in plain black robes. He looked so different that Ivy had to force herself to stop staring.
As soon as she entered the room, Mrs. Malfoy sprung up from her chair. “Oh, my darling!” she breathed. “What a beautiful young lady you’ve grown into!”
Ivy knew the woman was lying through her magically whitened teeth for the Wizengamot. Not a single day had passed in the fourteen years she’d lived as a Malfoy that Pansy had not made disparaging comments about her appearance”her ‘plain’ face, her tight braid of hair, her overly reserved tastes in clothing.
She sat down next to her father, who squeezed her shoulder anxiously. The gesture made her feel more nervous than comforted.
Her uncle Percy, the Minister of Magic, addressed the room from his seat on the bench. “Without further ado, let us begin, shall we?” He cleared his throat and nodded at a young scribe to begin taking notes.
“Custody case of the twenty-second of August, for the legal parentage of Ivy Cassiopeia Potter, previously Malfoy, of Number Seven, Griffin Circle, Godric’s Hollow. Pansy Lacerta Malfoy versus Harry James Potter, the honourable Uther Malvolio Smith-Smythe presiding, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Other interrogators: Percy Ignatius Weasley, Minister of Magic; Lampetia Alethea Hilcox, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister; Hadrian Augustus Bellowes, Auror Department; and Antoninus Pius Duvall, court scribe.”
Uther Smith-Smythe shuffled his stack of papers. “The child in question, who will be of age in eight months, was legally adopted by Harry and Ginevera Potter two years ago when Mrs. Malfoy was committed to Azkaban prison and unable to care for her. Upon Mrs. Malfoy’s release from prison, she wishes to once more become her daughter’s legal guardian. Correct?”
Pansy got to her feet. “Correct,” she spoke, with the polished and rehearsed air of a woman who had practiced her speech in the mirror until it was absolutely satisfactory. “I was unaware that my little girl had been permanently adopted until last week. I had arranged that should anything happen to me, my children were to fall into the care of Blaise Zabini, and I assumed that imprisonment would merit the same results. Naturally, I was shocked.”
Smith-Smythe glanced over at the senior undersecretary, a striking and powerfully built woman who nonetheless looked all business. “Ms. Hilcox, what was the nature of Mrs. Malfoy’s imprisonment?”
“Mrs. Malfoy aided in her husband’s escape from Azkaban prison. Draco Putorius Malfoy had been given a life sentence for mass murder, but he managed to recruit the Dementors guarding to allow him to escape. Because the prison was guarded by humans as well as Dementors, Mrs. Malfoy distracted the guards by pretending to be a pregnant woman in labour. Previous chief warlock Tancred Llewellyn Apple gave her a sentence of two years.”
Smith-Smythe bobbed his head. “Mrs. Malfoy…”
Pansy stood again. “I know it sounds horrible, but I was distraught! I missed Draco so much. I had no idea that he would start up the Overseers or try to harm anyone!”
“Objection,” said Percy Weasley. “Mrs. Malfoy’s offences have already been discussed in court. Mrs. Malfoy, you may continue.”
Pansy patted her hair. “So really,” she finished up, “Imagine my horror when I learned that my little girl was being cared for by strangers and that these people had been legally named her parents by this court, without informing me. I gave birth to her; I should be allowed to keep her.” She took a seat, doing a very poor job of suppressing her smug expression.
The young scribe continued scribbling down notes, and a brief silence settled over the room.
“Will that be all from you, Mrs. Malfoy?” asked Percy in clipped, business-like tones. Pansy nodded, making a bit of a show of dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief that was emblazoned by the Malfoy family crest. “Then, Mr. Potter, please give your testimony.”
Harry stood up and faced the Wizengamot, meeting their eyes as he began. “The first time I met Ivy, she was a terrified and incredibly shy eleven-year-old who had been invited by my daughter Haley to spend Christmas holiday with our family. She was so nervous and tense, and she never spoke a single word unless she was prompted, and even then she only whispered.
“Although I initially had my doubts about allowing Draco Malfoy’s daughter to visit my house and spend time with my children, I quickly realized that she was a sweet and sensitive girl whose feelings were easily hurt and whose self-esteem was miserably low. The only thing she would ever mention about her family was, ‘my mother hates me.’ She did not want to stay at her own home, and instead spent as much time as possible with my family.
“But she’d been sorted into Gryffindor for a reason, and over the next several years, I watched her grow into a confident, kind, and passionate young woman with excellent manners, a high regard for ethics, and strong moral beliefs. She can even be quite stubborn at times, if you can believe it. The entire household came to view her as one of the family”it’s easy to forget that she hasn’t always been a Potter”and Ginny and I love her just as much as any of our other children.
“Her younger brother and sister, Holly and Jonathan, have known her their whole lives. She was there the day they were born, and she was the first person to hold them after the Healer, Ginny, and myself. She’s also the only one who can get them to stop crying; they seem to like her better than anyone else they know, even their Uncle Ron who lets them eat cookies for breakfast.”
He smiled fondly, and several Wizengamot members’ faces reflected his own. “Ivy’s a very talented girl. She’s intelligent and hardworking and open-minded, and she’s a Prefect and a registered Animagus… in fact, she registered at age fifteen, which is really impressive. Her circle of friends includes two werewolves, a Muggle, and numerous people of less than pure ancestry.
“And you have to wonder, if she had spent all of her adolescent years in a household where her ideas and feelings were suppressed and her views were opposed, would she be the same strong person she is now? Because when she heard that Mrs. Malfoy wanted custody of her, she became that shy, pinch-faced little creature again. I don’t know what her home life was like before”all I could ever coax out of her was ‘my mother hates me.’ But when my daughter’s happy, I’m happy, and I want to keep her as safe and as comfortable as I can. I’ve never for a second regretted taking her in.” He glanced around the assembled Wizengamot once more and took a seat.
Ivy’s eyes swam with tears. It was slightly embarrassing to be spoken of in such glowing terms in front of everyone, but it was also the highest praise she could remember getting. Her dad must have practiced his speech at least as hard as Pansy had, because he’d never been particularly good with words, but he sounded ten times more sincere and genuine, not at all rehearsed.
On the bench, Hadrian Bellowes cleared his throat pompously. “Excuse me, but are the Potters truly acceptable parents? Was it not at the Potters’ house thirteen years ago where a man was murdered on the front porch? In full view of a small child, no less? Was it not at the Potters’ house two years ago where a fourteen-year-old boy was brutally attacked by a werewolf and had to be rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with full-blown lycanthropy?”
Amazingly, Mr. Potter kept his cool. “The man who was killed on the front porch was Fenrir Greyback, who, along with several other former Death Eaters, were attempting to assassinate me. The racket awoke my daughter, Haley, who’s a very light sleeper, as well as Ron Weasley, who lives next door. Naturally, he ran over and tried to get the situation under control, killing Greyback in the process”in self-defence.”
He paused and looked Pansy Malfoy in the eye as he continued. “And as for the werewolf attack, it was ordered by Draco Malfoy. The only other werewolves ever spotted in Godrics’ Hollow are Remus Lupin, a highly respected member of the magical community; Fenrir Greyback on the night of his death; and Ted Lupin himself, the victim of the attack at my house, and a very good friend of my children. There have never been reports of feral werewolves in the woods before. It was outside our control.”
“Well, if you want to keep this girl””
Ivy was tired of hearing people discuss who got to ‘keep’ her, tired of all of this talking about her. Without even realizing what she was doing, she stood up, straight-backed and tall. “Excuse me,” she heard herself say in clear, ringing tones. “Er… I’m nearly of age. Shouldn’t I have a certain amount of say in this?” She couldn’t help but glance over at Mrs. Malfoy, who had gone very near to falling out of her chair.
“When I was small, I was told that Muggles were monsters who would hurt me, and that everyone with Muggle or non-wizarding blood was dangerous. I was told that my father was a hero who accidentally made a mistake and accidentally hurt too many people when he tried to avenge his father’s death by stopping the evil blood traitor who had killed him.
“But when I realized that all ‘Muggle’ meant was someone who couldn’t do magic, and that there were more of them than wizards and just a tiny pool of purebloods, I got confused. I also learned that ‘blood traitors,’ which sounded like such a horrible name to me, were just purebloods who thought of Muggles as… as people. And I decided that if that was all it was, then a blood traitor was what I wanted to be.
“I never said anything about it, not to their faces. I was too afraid to”but I still thought it. And I still do. I just don’t belong in that family. I love being a Potter, and I love my family, and I really don’t want to go back. So that’s just, er, what I had to say.”
She sat down, her cheeks flaming furiously. She was so embarrassed about standing up and relating her feelings and ideas to a room full of so many people. She’d absolutely hated having all of those Wizengamot members staring at her. But she knew that she’d done the right thing, because of the Wizengamot members were mumbling thoughtfully to one another.
At last, Smith-Smythe banged his gavel. “We have come to a verdict,” he announced.
“Full custody to the Potters! That’s great!” exclaimed Ted that afternoon, giving Ivy a little twirl in the air and kissing her lightly on the end of the nose.
“Ew, PDA!” squawked Haley, who was lying on the floor under the dining room table. She jumped up and gave her sister a hug of her own. “I’m so glad you get to stay with us! Aren’t you? Why do you look so glum?”
Jordan looked up from the book he was reading. “I’m assuming she still has to visit the Malfoys,” he said.
The girl in question’s pale eyebrows furrowed. “Yes… that’s right, how did you know?”
“Knowledge is power,” answered Jordan cryptically, his eyes still not leaving the pages of his book. “It helps to follow Wizengamot cases. There’s all sorts of precedent.”
Ivy sighed. She knew she should have been happy, but the Wizengamot required her to make two weekend visits to Malfoy Manor, one over Christmas holidays and one over Easter holidays. The truth was, she was scared. She didn’t want to be left alone with the Malfoys, fresh out of Azkaban, for an unsupervised weekend. And she had a feeling that the Malfoys would not take too kindly to the fact that she’d been one of the main players in Draco Malfoy’s downfall.