"As I said earlier, we had got a few things from the Weasleys and we sent a couple of decoy detonators…"
"Decoy Detonators?" Bones asked. "What are those?"
"Oh...they are another creation of the Weasleys," Harry said. "You let them loose and they will go run off and explode causing a diversion."
"I definitely must speak to these young men," Bones said. "But go ahead with the story."
"When the detonators went off, it distracted the Death Eaters just enough for us to react. We threw some darkness powder in front of us and…and I hate admit it but we purposely destroyed some of the shelves the orbs were on. We were trying to do anything to create a diversion to get away."
"I also threw one of the…the brains," Hermione added.
"We then ran," Harry said. "We ended up in the room with all of the clocks…we exchanged some spell fire there…mostly blasting hexes to try to slow down the Death Eaters who had followed."
Fudge and Amelia were listening intently now.
"We had marked the doors when we kept getting lost looking for Sirius, so we were able to get back to the portal…uh Veil room," Harry said. "We put down the swamp to slow down the pursuers some as well."
"Why didn't you try to get away?"
Harry was expecting this question and had the reason ready to go. "We were concerned that there might be more Death Eaters at the lifts to cut us off. If there were, then we'd be caught between two sets of Death Eaters in a very narrow corridor."
"True. Excellent thinking I should say," Bones said.
"When we got to the uh…Veil room, we started securing the doors. We thought about going through the Arch but without knowing where it came out, we were unsure. Then we came up with an idea. What if we could trick some of the Death Eaters into going through the Portal? Enough to make it a reasonable fight for us."
"I noticed the room, what did you do?"
"Hermione had brought some small rocks to banish at any assailants and Neville had some dirt with him."
When Amelia and Fudge looked at Neville questioningly he replied. "I like plants and had some dirt in my pockets," He said truthfully. If they followed up on that, Professor Sprout would vouch for Neville's love of plants.
"We enlarged the rocks to line a path and used the dirt and other things to make the bench steps disappear," Harry explained. "We used a desk from the other room to transfigure into a door to hide the arch and then the darkness powder…and…well it worked." Harry shrugged his shoulders with the last statement.
"They just walked through a door?" Bones asked.
"We sort of made it seem that we had gone through it by slamming it shut with banishing charms," Neville explained. "That was my job."
"With the darkness powder between the door and the veil..." Harry's explanation trailed off.
"What happened with Lucius?" Amelia asked.
"He wasn't fooled by the changes," Harry said. "Said he had toured the place and..." Harry could see Fudge pale again at the statement, "he hadn't seen any room like that. He started canceling the enlargement spells on the rocks and recognized what room it was. I tried to sneak up on him and stun him but he was able to block it. I used the prophecy to prevent him from attacking me. It was then that several people from Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix showed up. Malfoy was able to disappear into the darkness after summoning the orb I had in my hand. I chased him and when I caught up to him in the Atrium, Voldemort showed up. He tried to kill me and well you saw what happened."
"What was that golden thing anyway?" Fudge asked.
Harry didn't want to answer that question. He didn't want that knowledge in Voldemort's hands. "I...I don't know sir," Harry lied. "It's the same thing that happened last year though when I dueled him in the graveyard."
"I saw him holding a blue orb when he left," Fudge said. "So he got this prophecy from you?"
"Uh...no sir," Harry replied. "Neville, Luna," He said to his two friends. They each pulled blue orbs from their pockets and laid them on the Minister's desk. "We noticed that they wouldn't outright attack us if they thought they might damage the orb so we made a couple of copies for protection."
A knock happened at that time and a person in Auror robes came in and whispered something to Amelia and then handed her a roll of parchment.
"Are you sure?" Amelia whispered to the Auror who nodded in return. Amelia glanced at Harry for a few seconds before saying "Thank you," to the Auror who turned and left. She took a minute to read the parchment in her hands; while doing so her eyes became more and more focused.
"What is it Amelia?" Fudge asked.
"This is the arrest record of Sirius Black from November first nineteen eighty-one," She said indicating the parchment. "It gives some pretty gruesome details about the circumstances of the arrest but…" She looked at Cornelius Fudge, "according to my Auror there are no records of a trial ever having taken place. No trial, No order of sentence, nothing. It appears that Mr. Potter is correct."
"Barty Crouch Sr. was told by Dumbledore that Sirius was my parents' secret keeper," Harry explained. "At the time, he really thought he was."
"If Black wasn't their secret keeper then why did Dumbledore think he was?"
"Did you go to school with my father and Sirius?" Harry asked the Head of the DMLE.
"No, I had left a couple of years prior to them starting, but my younger brother, Susan's father did," She replied. "He told me all about their antics."
"They thought it would be the ultimate prank on Voldemort to make Pettigrew the secret keeper instead," Harry said. "The Death Eaters would pursue Sirius while they kept Pettigrew stashed away."
"Even if I were to believe that, Black still killed Pettigrew and all of those muggles. This report details the finding of Pettigrew's finger and lists all of the muggle people who died that day."
"That's what we tried to tell you," Harry was speaking to Fudge again, "that night he was captured and later escaped. We saw Pettigrew. He was the one who killed those muggles. He cut off his own finger and disappeared," Harry explained.
"There is no mention of anyone seeing Pettigrew escape."
"He was an animagus, ma'am," Harry said. "He transformed into a rat and disappeared."
"That's a very convenient story Mr. Potter," Amelia scoffed. "How many people knew about this rare ability of Pettigrew?"
"Ma'am, I will gladly show you my memories of when we found him after our third year," Harry said. "Do you have a Pensieve?"
Amelia Bones looked annoyed. "A Pensieve? Of course I don't have one of those. There are only a handful of them in the whole world."
"We can use Dumbledore's then," Hermione suggested.
Amelia looked shocked. "Dumbledore has a Pensieve?" Her shocked look became one of anger. "That bastard," she said. "I have too many cases that I could easily solve if I had access to one of those."
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