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[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

Title: She Knew He Would Return
Author: Vegablack62
Rating: PG
Beta: Oddnari
Characters: Augusta Longbottom, Bellatrix Lestrange
word count: 1440
Summary:  How did Augusta know that Voldemort would return? She listened to Bellatrix Lestrange.

 

Augusta Longbottom had insisted on a seat as close to the accused as possible and because the ministry pitied her they were inclined to give her what she wanted.


She sat just below Crouch, facing the four Death Eaters. If she desired (and she did) she could look right into the eyes of her son's attackers. The guards had confiscated her wand

and had searched her for every possible magical weapon, before they would allow her to take her seat. She had stood calmly while they passed a Probity Probe and a Secrecy Sensor over her; since the tragedy, she had grown used to enduring indignities. The guards believed she was plotting revenge, because they could come up with no other motive to explain her behavior.


They had no imagination.


She wanted to see the Death Eaters who had ruined her son, really see them, to their very bones and know them for what they were. She wanted them punished, but she wanted the Ministry to do it. If she took revenge herself, then the tragedy would become something small and personal, and Augusta wanted it to be the whole Wizarding World's catastrophe. Frank was an Auror and he had taken risks for everyone. Everyone had damn well better thank him for it, even if it was just by punishing his attackers.

Crouch had hesitated over seating her in such a prominent place. He had worried that she would break down and cause a disruption in the proceedings, but Augusta knew she would be calm. If he could watch and listen, so could she. In truth, he had more to fear from what would be said than she did. She was proud of her son. She would rather have him, ruined as he was, than that shameful piece of trash that was Crouch's son.

She listened dry-eyed to every sordid moment of it. Moody and Robards had prepared her for the testimony, telling her what would be revealed ahead of time to lessen the shock. But hearing the words spoken in public was nothing like listening to her son's Auror friends explain things at her kitchen table. At times she wanted her wand so she could silence the room, because she didn’t want anyone to hear what she knew was coming.

She could hear Frank's in-laws cry as they listened to a recounting of what was done to Alice. She felt for Helen and Trevor; she thought it must be harder when it was a daughter.

Rita Skeeter furiously took down every detail, every painful morsel, stopping only to look up and gauge Helen and Trevor’s reaction or Augusta's, hoping to add pathos, as if the situation needed more. Of course, Skeeter had another character to generate pity - the Crouch boy’s mother. They said she was ill and that the knowledge of her son’s cruelty was killing her. Augusta, too, felt great pity for a woman who knew that the child she had carried inside her own body, and had nurtured and loved with her whole soul, had done things so vile.

A Ministry expert on Priori Incantatem described the tests he'd done on the captured wands of the accused, and the curses they'd cast. Augusta had no need to look at the man; she already knew all that he would say. She watched the accused. Her eyes roved from one to the other and back again, wanting them to notice her, to know who she was, wanting to see their reactions. She was not disappointed.

The older Lestrange brother, stout and jowly, schooled his features in to a dull, blank look. He never took his eyes off the elder Crouch, the most powerful person present. His rat-faced brother's eyes skittered around the room, roaming through the crowd as if searching for a hole to scurry into. He would never find one. She could feel the silent hatred thick in the air around her. He could feel it too and she was glad. They'd found Frank's wand hidden in the rat's robes when they captured him.

The Lestrange woman was no dissembler, though. She savoured the description of the degradations inflicted on Frank and Alice, and she didn't care who knew it. She, too, watched the crowd, not as one furtively looking for an escape, but as a victor examining the defeated. She looked into Augusta's eyes and smiled a proud smile of triumph as she recognized her victim's mother.

The two witches stared at each other as an expert from St. Mungos described the effects of the Cruciatus curse on the mind, especially when it was performed by four people simultaneously in a co-ordinated attack. Augusta refused to break her gaze first. The woman had no similar qualms. She flashed a final grin at Augusta and turned her attention to the Healer who was speaking, staring and smiling till the man became disconcerted, lost the thread of a sentence and had to repeat himself.

Crouch's son looked small and shrunken in his seat. The boy's wand had never been found. The one he had when he was captured had been recently bought. He claimed to have lost his original wand, an assertion that gained a laugh from the crowd. His hair, along with hair from the other accused, had been found in the wreck that had been Frank's and Alice's house. A Hitwizard recounted for the court the shock he felt when he added the hair to Polyjuice Potion, tested the drink on a colleague and recognized the son of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. As the wizard gave his testimony, Crouch junior stared at his father, weeping. The boy shook his head silently, denying all that was said.

She almost pitied that boy, before she saw the falsity in him. She had caught him. An arrested look had come into his eyes as an Auror described the current state of Frank and Alice, and the reasons they could not give testimony. The boy had let slip how pleased he was by the effects of his handiwork.

Finally the testimony ended and the court-room cleared as the jury consulted together. She walked past the gauntlet of reporters, concerned sympathetic citizens and outraged relatives as she made her way to the small room they'd provided her in the Auror office. Augusta sat by herself and waited to be called back to the court-room. She thought of Neville alone in her house with the Ministry-provided nanny and body guard. (“For the duration of the trial,” they'd said. “It will help you feel safe.”) She'd left the baby behind without even a good-bye pat, because if she had even looked at him, she would have bawled and she needed all the composure she had to get through this day.

The jury deliberated for less than an hour. Augusta returned to the dungeon courtroom and sat in stony silence as Crouch sentenced the four to Azkaban for life and the wizards in the room shouted and applauded. Amid the cheers and the catcalls, she kept her attention on the Death Eaters. The boy screamed for his father's mercy, calling on him as a son, but Crouch disowned him on the spot. “I have no son,” he shouted. Only a man could do that. No woman could cast her child aside, whatever he had become.

But it was the Lestrange woman, whom Augusta would think about for years after the trial. The witch had looked up at Crouch and declared that the Dark Lord would return and free her from her prison. Augusta was sitting so close to Crouch, that she had felt Bellatrix's eyes on herself. The woman could have been speaking to Augusta alone. She had complete faith that You-Know-Who would arise again and reward her for her crimes against Frank and Alice. Augusta realized that she knew something – something that Crouch and the Ministry in their arrogance had missed. Augusta turned her attention to the crowd. Disgust and disbelief were on the face of every witch and wizard except one. Dumbledore's expression was concerned, intense and serious. Augusta watched him as he watched Bellatrix. He believed her. You-Know-Who was not gone forever. Dumbledore knew the war wasn't over; he knew they were just living in the hiatus.

When Voldemort returned, her son’s attackers would be freed from the horror that was Azkaban, but her son and his wife would never be freed from their prison. The trial was over. Augusta could do nothing but visit her demented son and daughter-in-law and then go home to raise their toddler for them and prepare herself for Voldemort’s return.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[star54kar.livejournal.com]

Fantastic story:)

Thank you for sharing it here with us:)

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I like this community and I'm glad to have the place to post.