It seemed impossible that twelve hours ago, Harry had left this house for what he had been sure would be a dull and uneventful day at work. He felt oddly separated from everything that should have felt familiar, from the shoe rack under the window to the porcelain drawer pulls on the hall table. How could everything still look so normal?

He heard footsteps and turned just in time to fold his arms around Ginny as she stepped in for an embrace that he surmised was more for him than for her.

"I got your note - and Professor Sprout sent a letter to all the parents - should we take the kids out of school? I know the place is crawling with Aurors and the murderer's probably long gone by now, but -"

"Arrested, actually," Harry said heavily as he extracted himself from his wife's arms. "I brought him in myself. Not two hours ago."

"Oh, thank Merlin," Ginny said, her shoulders falling as tension leaked from them. "So it was murder, then? The letter from the school was rather vague..."

"It was murder." Confirming it made Harry's heart grow heavy. "I can't tell you much more than that. The case is still open."

"Right." His wife's brow wrinkled. "Who would even do something like that? And Marcus - wasn't he involved with Neville's daughter? I remember the name from Christmas at theirs."

Harry bobbed a single short nod, dread unfurling in his chest like ink in water. He didn't want to tell her. He didn't want her to have to deal with this burden. But she'd discover it sooner or later. One of their children would write with the news, and if nothing else, the Daily Prophet would announce it on the front page in the morning. "It was Longbottom," he forced himself to say, the words heavy on his tongue.

Ginny blinked, and then her eyes went wide. "I'm sorry?" she asked sharply as though she had misheard.

Closing his eyes, Harry summoned the words forth, feeling strangely detached from them. "I arrested Longbottom a few hours ago for murder. The evidence - it couldn't have been anyone else. And I'm sure they'll just find more as the investigation continues."

"No." Ginny had gone pale behind her freckles, her face flat. "That can't be - you've made some sort of mistake. He wouldn't. He - Harry, we know him."

Still feeling as though someone else was saying the words, Harry shook his head. "Longbottom was the only one with -"

"Stop calling him that," Ginny interrupted forcefully, her eyes flashing. "His name is Neville. We've known him for thirty years. We've eaten at his table. And he'd never -"

"Do you have any idea how many times I've heard that from the friends and families of people I've arrested?" Harry demanded, his tenuous grasp on self-control slipping. "It's always a surprise. It's always devastating. Nobody wants to believe that about their friend or their father or their husband, but it happens. It happens all the time." He suddenly felt weary, right down to his marrow. "I've just - the last time I was on this side of it, it wasn't nearly this difficult."

"This is different," Ginny insisted, taking him by the arm and moving him into the sitting room. "We do know him. Even during the war, he hated hurting people. He needed therapy for years afterwards." Her eyes widened and then narrowed as though something had just occurred to her. "You're not actually on the case, are you?"

"No. I took myself off." It was only now that he was in his wife's arms, being lowered onto his sofa in his home, that he felt himself begin to unravel. "I thought I knew him, Ginny. I know he's protective of his daughters, but..."

"I won't believe it," Ginny said firmly. "Obviously, you just made a mistake. He'll get off, and you can go back to finding the real killer."

Shaking his head, Harry wrenched off his glasses and lowered his face into his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. "You didn't see the evidence against him."

The conversation skipped a beat and Ginny huffed a frustrated sigh. "Of course you can't tell me what it is, but - is it really that bad?"

"It gave me no choice but to arrest someone I called a friend," Harry responded gravely. "It's not just a little bit bad. It's about as bad as it could get without him doing it in front of a dozen witnesses." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes hard enough to see sparks. "The look on Hannah's face when she came to Headquarters. And Maggie's. Allison's probably already on her way home from Versailles." His hands were shaking now, and his stomach roiled. "I've seen what something like this does to families. I..."

"Stop that," Ginny said, pulling him close. "It's not your fault. It's - it's the fault of whoever did this. And you're going to find who it is."

His explosive sigh left him feeling weak. "I already did. As much as I don't want to believe it - I already did."

"It can't be," Ginny began, but Harry waved a tired hand.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's going to be hard enough to deal with at work."

"But you said it's no longer your case," Ginny said, perplexed.

"I'm still head of the department. I'm not investigating anymore, but I'll still get to see every bit of evidence that comes across the table, and I'll probably be called in to his trial as his arresting officer." He yanked his hands away from his face almost forcefully, shoving his glasses back onto his nose. "I'm going to bed."

"You haven't eaten -"

"I'm not hungry." He was, but despite the fact that Ginny had inherited her mother's talent for cooking, he knew that anything he tried to eat right now would taste like ash and make him want to choke. He kissed his wife on the forehead, trying to make it as much an apology as a bid goodnight, and turned wearily. Ginny squeezed his shoulder reassuringly before he slipped out of her reach and began to trudge up the stairs.

Sleep was a long time coming, the events of the day swirling about in his head as though trying to find a place to land. Despite the logical progression of information, disbelief kept preventing him from dissecting the facts and laying them out for proper inspection.

FACT: Neville Longbottom not only had access to the poison that killed Marcus Akers, it had been in his private greenhouse and shown evidence of having been harvested hours before the murder.

FACT: The poison had been hidden within the liquorice sweets Longbottom kept on his desk, which had then been discovered in the pockets of Akers.

FACT: Akers and Longbottom had had a heated discussion that had upset Akers a great deal just before his death.

THEORY: Longbottom and Akers had been discussing Akers's involvement with Magnolia Longbottom, during which Longbottom lost his temper and -

Harry's eyes flew open, his breath catching in his throat.

They'd been treating it as a crime of passion, with rage being the motive. Neville hadn't been capable of sound judgement. And yet, the preparation of poisoned sweets hours ahead of time? That was premeditation. Premeditated crimes of passion just didn't exist - it was either an instantaneous decision or it wasn't.

It wasn't a large hole in his logic, but it was still a hole. The possibility that he'd made a wrongful arrest rarely comforted Harry so.

 

 

Harry's eyes felt gritty with lack of sleep, and the Portkey to Azkaban was not the most pleasant thing one could do early in the morning. He blinked hard as he tried to find his centre of balance upon landing, both to ward off the sleep in his eyes and to adjust to the dim light of the prison's antechamber.

"Auror Potter," the gaoler behind the desk said, straightening. "I didn't know you'd be coming today. Questioning?"

"No," Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck to ease the strain the Portkey had put on it with its spinning. "Visitation. With Neville Longbottom."

The gaoler's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "That's - unusual," he said finally. "I - do I sign you in and everything?"

"I'm a civilian right now," Harry confirmed. "Treat me as such."

"Yes, sir. Er - yes. Very good." Still looking bewildered, the gaoler handed Harry a quill and inkpot to sign the ledger of visitors. Harry's stomach did a sour twist when he saw Longbottom, Hannah and Longbottom, Magnolia on the sheet.

"Are his wife and daughter still here?" he asked as he signed the ledger.

"No." The gaoler shook his head. "Their thirty minutes was up about an hour ago."

Harry froze. "He only gets thirty minutes?"

Shrugging, the gaoler took back the quill. "Standard procedure for homicide."

Thirty minutes a day. Harry pressed his lips together. "You may be getting a memo from me about that. When is his bail hearing?"

"I don't know, sir. I was under the impression he wasn't to have one."

"I see." Harry mentally added that to the list of things he was going to have to talk with McKinnon about. "I might need more than half an hour. Yes?"

The gaoler looked conflicted. "Of course. I'll have him brought to Chamber Nine."

Chamber Nine at least had a window, albeit one barred so heavily it seemed that even the sunlight had a hard time getting through. The chairs were cushioned, as well: thin, inadequate things, but a damn sight better than the metal stools in the other chambers. The table was even wood, and it wasn't bolted to the floor. This was the visitation chamber where low-risk criminals were brought. Harry very much doubted that Neville's previous visits with his wife and daughter had happened here, and his suspicions were confirmed when another gaoler let Neville in and his eyes widened at the relative luxury of the space.

Harry cleared his throat. "He's not to be bound," he said sternly.

The gaoler looked stricken. "Sir, I - I don't have the authority to unbind him. And he's to be bound for all visits. Boss said so."

Biting back a cutting response, Harry nodded curtly. It wouldn't do any good to upset the chain of command. He'd already strained procedure enough as it was. "And I suppose private visits are right out?"

"Yes, sir."

"Fine." He held back a sigh of frustration. "Neville, have a seat."

"Oh, it's back to Neville now, is it?" Neville asked in a bitter tone that Harry was not used to hearing from him. He flopped awkwardly into the seat opposite Harry, bringing his bound wrists to rest on the table between them. "I'm so glad we're pretending to be friendly."

"I'm not pretending," Harry said flatly.

"You kind of arrested me for murder. That doesn't strike me as a particularly friendly gesture."

"I -" Harry began, but Neville shook his head before lowering his chin to his chest in a defeated posture.

"No. I know. You were doing your job. Just like you're doing it right now."

Harry coughed. "Actually, I'm not." The look of disbelief on Neville's face as he snapped his head up made something inside Harry's chest twitch. "I'm not here in an official capacity at all. I'm not even carrying my badge."

Neville's mouth worked for a few moments as though he were trying to work out what to say. "Why?" he asked at last.

"Because I'm visiting my friend who has had a very bad couple of days." It took everything Harry had to not bite his lip at the wash of gratitude that softened every line on Neville's face.

"Harry, I - I don't know why I'm here," Neville said in a lost voice as he craned his neck around, looking at his surroundings. "I don't understand any of it. I didn't do anything."

The gaoler at the door was pretending very hard to not listen to the conversation. Harry licked his lips. He might regret saying this, but he wasn't on the case anymore, was he? It didn't matter. "I know."

Neville's blinked "What?"

"I know you didn't. At least - I think I know you didn't." Shaking his head, Harry continued, "I don't know what to think either way. My gut is telling me one thing, but years of doing this job is telling me the exact opposite."

"I didn't do it," Neville said plaintively. "They won't even tell me how I'm supposed to have done it."

"Well, no, they wouldn't. Not until you have a counsellor present. It's to protect you." A thought occurred to Harry. "Do you have a counsellor?"

Neville shook his head. "I mean, Hannah knows one that does all the legal stuff for the Leaky, but this is more than a bit out of his league."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "The Ministry will appoint one if you don't have one, but try to get Hannah to contact Chang first. She's the best defence counsellor I know."

"Cho Chang?" Neville sounded surprised. "I didn't know she was in law."

"She's a partner in her own firm," Harry confirmed. "She's overturned more of my arrests than I care to count." He smiled grimly. "Usually, I wince when I see her name on the docket."

"Why are you doing this?" Brows furrowed as he studied his bound hands in front of him on the table, Neville sounded utterly confounded. "You arrested me. Now you're trying to get me off?"

"Not exactly." Harry glanced at the gaoler. "I'm just trying to give you a fighting chance to prove your innocence."

Neville swallowed. "It's that bad?"

Reluctantly, Harry puffed out a sigh. "Yeah. It's bad."

"So - you're going to be finding evidence against me, and hoping I'm innocent at the same time?" The incredulity of the question made Harry want to smile, inappropriate as that would be.

"I took myself off your case."

"Because you think I'm innocent?" Neville sounded hopeful.

Harry shook his head. "No. Because despite all I've seen, I still want to believe you're innocent."

Blinking, Neville thought about that for a moment. "I can't work out whether that's good or bad."

The laugh that escaped was a little rueful. "Yeah. Neither can I." Harry cleared his throat to break the momentary silence that followed. "I'm not going to be able to visit you very often. It's already dodgy that I've done it once. And I can't talk about your case in any detail, either."

Neville nodded. "I understand. Thank you," he added belatedly. "For wanting to believe me. That's something, at least."

Rising from the chair, Harry signalled to the gaoler that he was finished. "Have Hannah contact Chang. I have the address if she needs it."

Neville did not answer; he appeared to be steeling himself for the walk back to his cell. Harry felt a twist of guilt. The Dementors were no longer part of Azkaban's punishment, but the dark, windowless cells where Neville was almost certainly being kept were still not a pleasant place to be.

After signing out on the ledger, Harry squared his shoulders as he turned to face the Portkey back to the Ministry. The next conversation he needed to have was even more necessary and would likely be far more unpleasant.

 

 

Harry did not have to wait long outside McKinnon's office before being admitted. It was not the first time he'd been in his colleague's office, but it had changed drastically in the intervening years. What had once been bare walls were now covered with maps and photographs. Some of them were of crime scenes or suspects, but on the wall next to McKinnon's desk were, surprisingly, photographs of him with his family. He was smiling. There was even a pennant for a Quidditch youth league pinned above a photo of a young boy missing his two front teeth.

"Potter." The greeting was short; McKinnon sounded displeased. "I hear that you visited Longbottom today."

"That was fast," Harry admitted. "Yes. I did. Just came from there, in fact."

"Don't you think that's a little - inappropriate?" McKinnon pressed.

"Actually, no. I don't." He hadn't been invited to sit, but Harry did anyway. "I'm no longer on that case, and murder suspect or not, he's my friend." His eyes narrowed. "The gaoler at the desk mentioned that Longbottom's not getting a hearing for bail. Why's that?"

McKinnon raised a single eyebrow. "Did you miss the part where he's a murder suspect?" he asked slowly.

"Did you miss the part where everyone except dangerous criminals gets the option to make bail?" Harry countered. "He's practically pissing himself in Azkaban. He's not dangerous."

"I don't think you're impartial enough to determine that, Potter." Folding the parchment he had been writing upon, McKinnon matched Harry's glare evenly.

"Maybe not. But I don't determine that, do I? That's what the hearing is for." Harry leaned forward. "And you don't get to decide whether he gets a hearing. That happy responsibility is ultimately mine. He gets a hearing."

"You'd just let a murderer walk free because he's your mate from school?" McKinnon challenged.

"Merlin's arse, McKinnon!" Harry burst out. "I arrested the man! It's my job to make sure everything follows the law and that justice is served. And that includes justice on the part of the accused as well. Or did you forget that he has rights as a prisoner?"

"He told me to be worried about my daughter," McKinnon said in a low voice. "And he's already poisoned one child who strayed from his moral compass."

It took a moment for what McKinnon was saying to sink in. "Were we listening to the same conversation?" Harry demanded incredulously. "That wasn't a threat."

"Maybe you didn't hear it as such, but I certainly did," McKinnon said stiffly.

"Fine. Take it as a threat. He's not going to be free to traipse about Hogwarts if he's granted bail. He'll have a Trace so strong he won't be able to weed his garden without us knowing. He won't be able to leave his house." Harry stopped before his anger turned this from setting out the facts into a legitimate rant.

"His daughter -"

"No," Harry interrupted bluntly. "His daughter will be at Hogwarts, in all likelihood. And even if she's not, he allegedly did this to protect her. Or had you forgotten that, too?"

"You're doing a fantastic job of defending him," McKinnon said acidly.

"Innocent until proven guilty, McKinnon." Dimly, Harry realised that his voice had taken on that veneer of authority that he adopted only occasionally. "And that's for a jury to decide, not us."

"He did it," McKinnon said flatly.

"Good. I envy your unshakable belief. Now do your job and find the evidence that will convince a jury of the same." Inwardly, Harry forced himself to calm down. McKinnon was not an enemy. In fact, if he did his job right, McKinnon could be Neville's best ally in this investigation. "We're not working at cross purposes. We both want to be absolutely sure that the right person is put away for murder. I know you'll do everything in your power to ensure that."

Amazingly, McKinnon nodded. "I would appreciate it if you stayed away from my suspect," he said in the very formal tones of someone graciously accepting something they did not agree with.

"Fair enough," Harry conceded. "I'll try not to interfere with your investigation. But - there is one thing I need to bring up."

Irritation was clearly warring with curiosity in McKinnon's mind; the curiosity won. "Yes?"

"Was it a crime of passion, or was it premeditated?"

McKinnon did not look surprised at the question; clearly, he had already considered it. "Why else do you think I believe Longbottom is dangerous, Potter?"

The answer chilled Harry straight down his spine. Wordlessly, he nodded a goodbye as he rose from the chair and left McKinnon's office.

So lost in thought was he that Harry did not remember the walk across the floor to his own department, but he was startled from his reverie by Altair, who was hovering in front of Harry's office door in that nervous way he had when things were not going according to plan. "Sir, Rothchild is waiting for you in your office," he said hurriedly as Harry approached.

Harry blinked. "From Missing Persons? Why - no, never mind. Thank you, Altair." He pushed open his office door, wishing desperately for some time to just sit alone and think. That was, apparently, going to have to wait.

"Auror Potter," the woman said, rising as he entered. The severe bun her blonde hair was pulled into made her appear several years older than she actually was. "I hope you don't mind that I waited in your office."

"No, no, not at all." Harry waved at her to sit; she did not. "What do you need?"

"I have a warrant to search a certain house, sir, and I need your cooperation."

Bemused, Harry cocked his head to one side. "I don't have anything to do with search warrants. Go ahead and search it."

"Sir, I'm afraid you have everything to do with this one." She unfolded the square of parchment and handed it to him. "The warrant is for Twelve Grimmauld Place, which is under the Fidelius Charm with you as primary Secret Keeper."

He did not realise that his mouth had opened until he snapped it shut as he looked up from the warrant into the no-nonsense face of Rothchild, who drew a breath and continued in her businesslike tone. "Under Section Twelve of the Magically Concealed Residences Act, refusal to aid in searching this house is considered Third Degree Obstruction of Justice and is grounds for immediate arrest."

"Nobody has been in that house for years," Harry said slowly. "And no one can get in without -"

"Without the express invitation of a current Secret Keeper," Rothchild interrupted. "Which is why we require your cooperation." She narrowed her eyes. "Incidentally, depending on what we find... you may want to have your defence counsellor on hand, Potter."