Chapter 6

Author's note: I own nothing, and just happen to have the habit of borrowing characters and playing around with them.

As to why the world is the way it is in this story, please c/f to author's note in chapter 1.

Description of murder(s) and politics herein may be gory and unpalatable to readers. If blood and gore offends you, and if depictions of any kind of non-western or non-modern-democratic government offends you, this story and the original AU murder mystery on which it are based are not for you. I do not say this to alienate my readers. I am merely giving fair warning.

Politics of Academic Murder

Chapter 6

The unsettled anxiety on both the arithmancer's and alchemist's faces lifted when they Apparated to the Ministry of Magic. Where any other investigator would be pleased on solving a murder and uncovering the suspect, our pair was much chagrined by what they were about to do. After much cover-up by the Ministry of Magic, the investigation on the true nature of Dumbledore's death had finally come full circle, and our pair was now face-to-face with the person who had commissioned and endorsed final account – Harry Potter. It would not be easy speaking to the Minister who had officially sanctioned the theory that itinerant undesirable elements of wizarding society had done away with the venerable Dumbledore, but the two academics managed to keep their equanimity when ushered into the Minister of Magic's office.

Upon the briefest of salutations, Hermione started the ball rolling by apprising the Minister on their findings and their late encounter with Chancellor Flitwick.

'You mean Flitwick didn't do it and that it was suicide?' exclaimed Harry in disbelief as he leaned forward in his chair. 'I was sure the undesirables had killed off Dumbledore.'

'Filius Flitwick's insistence on his innocence was confirmed by Legilimency,' admitted Severus, declining the Minister's offer of a seat and settled for leaning on the wall next to his companion and fellow academic.

'So it was suicide then?' ventured a nonplussed Harry.

Hermione, who was looking out on the London skyline from his office sighed in dissatisfaction. 'Professor Dumbledore was murdered. But not by your undesirables. He was murdered by a member of the Ministry and a person with whom we are intimately acquainted.'

'It's fine if the Undesirables didn't do it this time, but how can it be anything other than suicide? Dumbledore was hanging from a beam!' reiterated Harry, pushing his spectacles up his nose bridge.

'The Chancellor had sought to cover up what he thought was Dumbledore's suicide and hide the nature of his work. The Chancellor did not kill Dumbledore,' expounded Severus in a slow and bored voice in a manner that expressed his opinion of the Minister possessing sub-par intelligence.

'How did you realise that?' pursued Harry. 'There was little enough to go on to start with!'

'As Professor Snape and I had discovered, the thing that misled us was the fact that Professor Flitwick and the real killer both shared a fear of the nature of Professor Dumbledore's work. I dare say you would have feared his work too if you had known the nature of his current research and writings which disparaged the political philosophy of your regime.' Hermione paused and exchanged a faint ironic curling of the lips with Severus. 'When the killer struck, he or she wanted to make it appear that Professor Dumbledore had committed suicide; and in so doing, discredit him. However, Professor Flitwick, believing that Professor Dumbledore's suicide was genuine, feared that the suicide would therefore bring discredit upon both wizarding Britain and the wizarding division of the University of Cambridge. Accordingly, he then tried to disguised the perceived suicide and blame the itinerant undesirables for murder.'

'I don't follow. Who killed Albus Dumbledore then?' demanded the Great Leader, Harry Potter. 'And how? There was only one key and according to Snape, you guys said you found it in the room.'

Severus eased himself by the edge of the desk nearest to the Minister. 'Still can't follow the tapestry of this intrigue? Very well, let me first explain why Dr Granger and I do not think Dumbledore took his own life. The obvious point was that it was physically impossible for him to do so. His health had been failing for the past two years. He was old and frail, and needed help even to rise from bed and go for breakfast. I stood on the bed and reached to the ceiling beam holding up the roof. Since I am a tall person, I was able to reach it with ease. But for an elderly and frail wizard, and one who was a half head shorter than me, it was impossible for him to stand on the bed, tie the rope and hang himself.'

Hermione chose this moment to break in after nodding vigorously at her colleague's surmises. 'Yet, someone very close to Professor Dumbledore had gone to considerable and elaborate lengths to draw attention to the nature of the work in which Professor Dumbledore was then engaged. This person was so cunning as to feign approval while hinting that Professor Dumbledore was so overawed by his discoveries and regrets that he could not bear to face the fact of his complicity in the destruction of ancient texts on wizarding philosophy and political thought as well as the eradication of a society with soul, creativity and verve, that cared more for meaningful pursuits and socio-political engagement than economic prosperity. This person even said that Professor Dumbledore had approved of a quotation by Pliny, which this person cunningly left for us to find, having whetted our curiosity. The book Naturalis Historia contained a piece of parchment in Professor Dumbledore's hand. The killer was very cunning.'

Severus interjected at this juncture since his colleague was not getting to the point. 'Because this same book also contained a passage where Pliny famously stated, "Amid the suffering of life, suicide is the gods' best gift to men." A happy coincidence? I think not.'

'Then who murdered Dumbledore, if you two are so smart and already know everything?' snapped Harry waspishly.

'Your wife,' Hermione declared in a bored voice.

'Ginny?' Harry looked at her in amazement. 'But she was only there as Dumbledore's personal assistant, to make sure he did nothing to contrary to the policies of my government.'

'Precisely because she was his personal assistant, she knew all about his work,' lectured Severus, narrowing his eyes at the paling Minister. 'One of the mistakes Mrs Potter made was in pretending she had no knowledge of Latin when, as Chancellor Flitwick had testified, she knew enough to accuse Dumbledore of wrong interpretation.'

'But there is one thing you cannot explain,' Harry pointed out unsteadily, 'and in this your whole argument falls apart. There was only one key and that you confessed earlier to finding instead Dumbledore's room.'

Hermione smiled knowingly. 'I think you will find a second key.'

'And where will I find this key?' snapped Harry irritably, pointing a menacing finger at his old school friend.

'Please put aside your finger, Minister, it is not nice to point at a lady,' mocked Severus with scorn in his eyes and vitriol in his voice. 'The answer to your question, Minister, lies in your wife's duties as Dumbledore's "personal assistant". Or did she not report that to you?'

'On top of checking whether he was publishing seditious material and reporting his movements to me, she had to be his peon,' spat the Minister, who was evidently displeased at his wife being used in this fashion. 'She even had to help him rebind books. What has that got to with it?'

'I don't mean to be pejorative, Harry,' said Hermione with another knowing smile, 'but you don't know what occurs in the old medieval way of binding books, do you?'

'What?' His voice trembled as if he were trying his best not to scream.

'I think he doesn't know what pejorative means, Dr Granger,' sneered Severus with a mocking look in his eyes.

'Oh?' Hermione raised a brow at her colleague. 'Then I shall educate you on the book binding process. A medieval book binder makes metal book plates and book shrines, casting them from moulds in silver or gold. The whole process may be done magically save one – the actually casting of the book plate. This is because the book plate may be set to magically close the book to all but its owner. In her role as overall scribe and assistant to Professor Dumbledore, and given that he had taught her how to bind and rebind the old books, it would not be beyond her capability to cast a second key, having made a mould from the first. You simply take the key and pres it into wax to form the mould from which you will make your cast. Since this would be a magically bespelled key, magically creating another key would be unacceptable as the old key would be rendered null and void. This key was also bespelled by Dumbledore so that it was necessary to unlocking the door. A simple Alohomora would not have worked on the door. Furthermore the wards were not undone in Professor Dumbledore's room because they had recognised her. The wards only worked to keep out visitors whom he did not know.'

Severus curled his lips disdainful at Harry. 'The key that I am now handing you Dumbledore's own key. You will note, as we did, the key was covered in grease. A search of Mrs Potter's chamber or study...'

'Or her kiln where she makes pottery for your office,' cut in Hermione. 'Or her person should bring the second key to light if she does not confess when faced with the rest of the evidence.'

'I see,' came the defeated voice of the Minister as he slumped backwards into his seat. 'I thought it was...; that it was an accident, so...'

'Still,' ventured the alchemist, 'I must say it was wrong of either you or the Deputy Commissioner of the Aurory to disguise the manner of Dumbledore's death.'

'What do you mean?' gasped Harry as he trembled in shock, his eyes widening alarmingly. 'You mean Ron assisted Ginny in the murder?'

Hermione settled into a window seat, crossing her legs and looking at Severus. 'Judging from his reaction, it seems that Ron indeed covered up for her.'

A nerve throbbed at the corner of his mouth. 'I will be the judge of that,' he snarled. 'Now, Minister, if you please, I need to access your memories.' Harry could only nod his assent dumbly in shock. When the task of using legilimency was done, Severus turned to Hermione. 'He's clean. It is Weasley.'

'It makes sense,' muttered Hermione, neatly folding her hands in her lap.

'Will you two stop talking among yourselves and tell me what is going on?' demanded Harry.

Severus spun around to face the Minister. 'Yes, gladly,' he quietly said. 'Flitwick genuinely believed that Dumbledore had committed suicide. In believing this, he thought that if news of the suicide got out, the nature of Dumbledore's work would be revealed. His rationale was, "Would you rather wizarding society know that one of its greatest movers and shakers committed suicide in protest at being responsible for the destruction of the socio-political order and the destruction of higher education?" A not altogether unsound rationale.'

'Professor Snape and I are of the opinion that it was better for British wizarding society to learn from such acts of destruction,' Hermione stated.

'I think it is a greater offence of Flitwick to fabricate false evidence,' announced Harry in his holier-than-thou speech giving tone.

'You must understand that he thought so doing would save Professor Dumbledore from condemnation,' explained the arithmancer.

'Bah!' Severus flicked a stray lock of hair away from his face. 'Had Dumbledore truly resorted to suicide, then he would have been condemned for his action – what an ignoble way of dying.'

'Please don't tell me you are going to quote Martial,' pleaded Hermione with laughter in her eyes.

'Marshall? What has a military got to do with any of this?' enquired the bewildered Minister loudly.

'Don't encourage him, Harry,' cautioned Hermione with a kindly smile.

Severus took that as his cue to go ahead with that which he wanted to say. 'Not Marshall the rank, Martial the person. The lines go:

When all the flattery of life is gone,

The brave however live on.'

'I don't see what this has got to do with anything?' demanded Harry, thumping his desk in frustration.

'Dumbledore was a brave man,' reasoned Severus with a narrow glare of contempt for the younger wizard. 'He would have lived to argue his case before the Wizengamot and to you if he had not been murdered.'

'But what was the case he would have argued? What did he write that was so offensive that Flitwick had to burn his papers and Ginny had to kill him?' asked Potter, his voice hoarse in desperation.

Hermione rolled her eyes and answered, 'The note we found in Pliny's Naturalis Historia in Dumbledore's handwriting, which read, "The administration should know that the truth and acceptance of that truth is the only means of ensuring the survival of our world – By despising the other sectors of the wizarding world that are not deemed profitable or useful to society or the economy, and by disavowing their existence, we will simply teach this and future generations to despise our beliefs and way of life." That in itself should tell you enough.'

'That he was opposed to your draconian policies and the way in which you manage wizarding Britain as if it were a police state. He was deeply opposed to it and a part of him regretted putting you in power and grooming you to what you are now,' Severus simply said, brushing a speck of non-existent lint from his robes. 'Flitwick burnt Dumbledore's notes to prevent a more extensive paper on this tirade against your government from getting out for fear of what you could do to the wizarding division of the University of Cambridge.'

'Ginny knows all your policies by heart and is your most fervent believer. To her, you can do no wrong,' Hermione added, as she rose from the window seat and took Severus's arm. 'She objected vehemently to Professor Dumbledore's writings and must have had an altercation with him. She must have threatened to report his "potentially subversive" writings as your government would have put it. Knowing Professor Dumbledore, his eyes would have twinkled annoyingly as he told her to do what she thought right just as he would go ahead and do that which he thought right. In her mind, Dumbledore failed to heed her reason.'

'And so, she took it upon herself to murder Dumbledore lest he make known his views to the Wizengamot, and thence wizarding society. This would give rise to much questioning over the way you have led wizarding Britain and could lead to widespread protests. If the junta in Burma are unable to quell the people who are undeterred by the high cost of getting involved in social movements, why should the people of British wizarding society? Where the people of Burma had monks playing a major role in Burma's politics because monks are traditionally considered influential community leaders, we have Albus Dumbledore,' continued Severus in his professorial voice.

'Exactly.' Hermione nodded in agreement. 'In Burma, the political behaviour of the people are in part fundamentally shaped by the socio-political character of monks, whose dajaka or lay disciples they are. The same may be said for us in the United Kingdom. Professor Dumbledore is to British wizarding society what the monks are to the Burmese peoples.'

'Mrs Potter must have feared something similar happening, for should the wizarding population of Britain rise up against you, you could be overthrown from power. While this would be most inconvenient to you, it would be extremely distressing to her,' Severus explained in a sneer.

'Because she would no longer be the wife of the Great Leader, enjoying all the power and privileges she now has,' Hermione concluded. 'Question Ginny and you will know this to be true.' When Harry remained dumbstruck with his head cradled in his hands, she softened her voice, 'We have concluded our investigation. All that remains for you to do is the right thing, namely –

'Arrest Mrs Potter and her brother, and let the course of the law take its course,' recommended the older wizard as he bowed to the Minister.

The two former Unspeakable Unspeakables smiled sadly at Harry; rather, one smiled sadly at him, and the other looked pitingly at the man as they turned towards the door.

'Must it all come out?' called out Harry in a strangled voice. 'Must all be revealed?'

'That is for the law and the courts to decide,' replied Hermione, glancing back. 'Professor Snape and I are academics. It is not in our purview to make such moral judgements on what took place. I hope that you will do the right thing.'

As they stepped out of the Minister of Magic's office, they heard a muffled cry of dismay.

'Well,' said Severus, his visage expressionless when they stepped into the street and met with a blast of rain. 'This means I would have to flee from Britain. I doubt the Minister will let me off for insulting him this afternoon.'

'It is as if you have foreseen it,' replied Hermione, transfiguring her pen into an umbrella and opening it. 'Easter term lapses in two days, and you are free to head the alchemy school at the Paris-Sorbonne University.'

Taking the umbrella from her and checking to ensure that she was at her usual perch by his elbow, he riposted, 'The same may be said for you. I heard you have been offered an associate professorship in the Assas arithmancy department for the August term.'

She turned to him with a smile and huddled close to him under the umbrella. 'Touché, Severus,' she laughed. 'You were right. We did win by one moku; your hiraki and old joseki paid off. You do know what this means.'

He affected a mock groan of dissent. 'I will be plagued with your company and your insistence that we compare notes of the dunderheads we teach in Paris.'

* * *

'Have you read this?' enquired Hermione, setting down her copy of the Daily Prophet to Severus as they sat outside sipping coffee before the medieval structure of the original Collège de Sorbonne.

'What?' came his terse reply. He did not look up from his marking and was still scowling over his students' papers when he continued, 'Are you going to tell me, or will I live through the happy experience of never finding out?'

The arithmancer donned her best BBC newscaster guise and began to read aloud, 'The time now is fifteen hours GMT. This is "Wizarding Britain Today", broadcasting from the basement of Bush House, London. In a surprising move, the Minister of Magic, Harry Potter, has stepped down from office and announced his retirement from politics. The news came after the verdict of guilty was issued on his wife, Ginny Weasley-Potter and his brother-in-law, Ronald Weasley, the former Deputy Commissioner of the Aurory. Mrs Potter had been apprehended two months ago for murdering Albus Dumbledore, one of the key shapers of wizarding Britain, with a modified killing curse.

'The trial, which had just concluded this morning, sentenced her to death for planning and executing a murder. With Potter no longer Minister of Magic, it is very likely that the Wizengamot will commute her sentence to life imprisonment in Azkaban instead. Her brother, Ron Weasley was sentenced to life imprisonment for the charges of colluding to make the murder resemble a suicide by hanging the body from the ceiling, publishing a false report on Dumbledore's death, and hiding the truth from Minister Potter. As it surfaced in the trial, Dumbledore's murder stemmed from Mrs Potter's fear that he would stir dissent in her husband's administration and undo all the good he has done therein for our society. Some of Dumbledore's secret papers uncovered in the course of the trial revealed that he had become disillusioned with the Potter administration and its severe curtailment of socio-political freedoms.

'The various social movements in wizarding Britain rallied around this fact and had called for the Minister to resign, and resign he did today in a press conference immediately upon the verdict of his wife's trial. Harry Potter, former Minister and saviour of the British wizarding society expressed his wish to retire to a cottage in Ayr, Scotland where he would be able to visit his wife frequently should her sentence be commuted to life imprisonment at Azkaban. Fresh elections for the position of Minister of Magic will be held in three month's time. In the meantime, wizarding Britain will be administered by a caretaker government formed from members of the Wizengamot.'

'You could have made broadcasting your alternative career choice,' muttered Severus sotto voce as he replaced his students' scripts in his bag and looked up at his companion.

'Not stimulating enough, I'm afraid.' The arithmancer rewarded him with a grin as she tossed the newspaper in her capacious book bag.

He responded by drinking deeply from his coffee cup. 'That's over, thank goodness.'

'While all seems to have ended well, I am disturbed that no one suggested Potter had colluded with Ginny and Ron to keep the murder under wraps,' Hermione ventured, pinching her nose to stifle a sneeze. 'A part of me suspects that he did know the published report on Dumbledore's death was not all it seemed. Yet despite suspecting so, he endorsed the slipshod account. Was he trying to protect Ginny or was he trying to protect Ron?'

'Very likely both,' he said evenly, rising and straightening the scarf around his neck. 'Very likely, he suspected one of them but did not want to know which. That he had already suspected foul play, I do not doubt. I rather like to think he chose to be a mystery even to himself.'

'You're being cryptic again,' Hermione chided him on taking his arm.

'I am always cryptic. It comes from playing Go all the time with a person favouring the new joseki,' he purred with a smirk. 'Shall we go to Carrefour then? There's a sale on Portobello mushrooms and I have a sudden craving for your cream of mushroom soup.'

The only reply nearby pedestrians would have heard was his rich laughter in the air and the sounds of Hermione's smart smacks on his arm.

~Finis~

FOOTNOTES:

Everything here on wizarding politics is entirely made up. It may be disturbing but I just write what I know.

Readers may object to the 'Secret Department of Unspeakable Unspeakables'. I call it thus, as I explained in the first story, Christmas Presents Undisguised, because the agents there are more unspeakable than normal unspeakables. They are so unspeakable that they are secret.

Views on Burma stem from my own research and are culled from a paper I am currently co-writing with someone.

Hiraki - For explanation, please c/f footnotes in Ch 2.

Joseki- For explanation, please c/f footnotes in Ch 2.

Moku- For explanation, please c/f footnotes in Ch 2.

Assas refers to L'université Panthéon-Assas Paris II. It is also known as Paris deux. I call it Assas after its other name because it is headquartered at the rue d'Assas. It is one of the 13 universities descended from the University of Paris. I have arranged for Hermione to lecture there because Assas students mainly study law, business administration, economics, social and political sciences – all fairly quantitative fields like I picture arithmancy to be.

Paris-Sorbonne University, or Paris IV as a friend there likes to call it, is one of the 13 universities descended from the University of Paris. I have arranged for Severus to lecture there because the school is traditionally for the faculties of Arts and Human Sciences, where I think alchemy belongs.

Carrefour means 'junction' in French and is a chain of very large supermarkets – my favourite supermarket to be exact.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to my beta (the lovely Su) and preliminary readers (Lawrence and Pius) for taking the time to go through this story.

Sincere gratitude is also extended to my esteemed patroness, JuneW, who is in every sense of the word - a lady.

And thank you, dear readers, for welcoming me back after the long hiatus from the fandom, and sticking with this very short murder mystery.

best,

Lady Strange

3rd January 2008