Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(London, 2006)

By eight o’clock, the Ministry of Magic was already vibrating with a sort of bureaucratic fever: quills hovering mid-sentence, memos darting through corridors like metallic dragonflies, the faint electric hiss of enchantments tuned for efficiency and not mercy. Reconstruction had made the Ministry look cleaner, but not kinder. The glass floors gleamed, the brass was re-polished, and the air carried the sterile confidence of a government convinced that transparency and truth were interchangeable.

Ginny Weasley had long stopped confusing the two.

Her office was a rectangular aquarium of light—transparent walls, charmed to mute sound but not scrutiny. Files rose in delicate spires on her desk: preliminary motions, affidavits, and a three-inch binder labeled MORGANS et al. v. MINISTRY OF MAGIC. Every sheet had been cross-referenced until the parchment itself seemed ready to plead exhaustion. Behind her, a single clock ticked in twelve-second intervals—an experimental timepiece installed during the Time-Turner reform act, meant to symbolize precision. It mostly symbolized anxiety.

She read the same statute again, lips barely moving.

Section III, Subsection A, Clause Four: consent presumed where recollection serves demonstrable public safety.

It was the kind of sentence that sounded as though it had been written underwater. Legal fiction pretending to be principle. She marked the margin with a terse annotation—consent ≠ comprehension—and set the quill down before it could start bleeding sarcasm.

A copy of The Daily Prophet sprawled across the windowsill, today’s headline inked in triumphant italics:
THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY: CAN MEMORY BE OWNED?
Sub-header: Weasley v. Ministry opens today; implications seismic.

She laughed under her breath, the sound small in the sterile air. The press had taken to calling her the conscience of the post-war generation—a title that made her want to drink. She was no one’s conscience. She was a solicitor with a caffeine dependency and a moral allergy to euphemism.

The Department of Magical Equality—Hermione’s proud experiment in “ethical governance”—occupied the Ministry’s newest wing, all transparent walls and self-congratulatory architecture. From here she could see nearly the entire floor: rows of clerks collating evidence scrolls, interns murmuring over precedents, the faint blue shimmer of confidentiality wards. The building looked like a cathedral designed by someone who had lost faith but kept the aesthetic.

Her reflection ghosted in the glass—hair still red but subdued into a utilitarian knot, face sharpened by sleep deprivation and conviction. The last decade had trimmed away the girl who once swung hexes in basements and left behind a woman fluent in statute and silence. Emotion had become unprofessional; hope, naive; outrage, useful only if properly cited.

A soft knock. “Still arguing with the clauses?”

Hermione stood at the door, immaculate in judicial black, the faintest streak of silver in her curls. She carried a folder thick enough to be dangerous.

“Trying to decide if intent or negligence makes the better opening,” Ginny said, not looking up. “Or if I should just quote Cicero and be done with it.”

Hermione smiled—the weary kind reserved for former revolutionaries turned administrators. “You’ll do fine. Just remember who’s on the other side.”

“I remember.”

“Zabini’s not the enemy,” Hermione said carefully. “He’s what happens when intelligence is severed from accountability.”

Ginny closed the binder with the decisive snap of someone holstering a weapon. “Then let’s see how well intellect bleeds.”

Hermione’s expression flickered—amusement, worry, pride. “The Wizengamot will be watching. International observers too. This case isn’t just precedent, it’s architecture. The law we write here will outlive us.”

“Then I’ll make sure it has good bones,” Ginny said, gathering her notes.

When the door shut behind Hermione, the quiet expanded, weighty and humming. For a moment, Ginny allowed herself stillness. The plaintiffs’ faces crowded her thoughts: a middle-aged witch who could no longer recall her daughter’s birth, a half-blood clerk who’d discovered entire years missing from his mind. The Ministry had called it memory preservation—a euphemism so polished it almost gleamed. The extractions had been ordered during the war under the Emergency Ethics Directive, justified by security, authorized by people she’d once trusted.

She slid a single photograph from the case file: a Pensieve vial labeled Subject 17-B. The contents shimmered a dull, exhausted silver. Memory as evidence. Evidence as grief. She returned it to the folder and sealed the clasp with a muttered charm.

Outside, the atrium clock struck half past eight. Time to perform belief.

The lift groaned as it descended to Level Three, each floor humming with a different frequency of fear. The lower they went, the more the air thickened with bureaucracy—paper dust, wand-oil, nerves. Through the lattice of the elevator gate, she glimpsed a cross-section of government: interns running with sealed evidence boxes; old-guard clerks still wearing Order badges like relics; new-blood solicitors rehearsing rhetoric under their breath.

When the doors opened onto the Hall of Justice, the world smelled of rain and ambition.

The courtroom was enormous—marble rebuilt over the bones of the old Wizengamot chamber, domed ceiling charmed to mimic the sky above London. The benches gleamed, the runes on the floor re-inscribed after the war to read Veritas in Memoria—truth in memory. Irony, Ginny thought, as she stepped onto the emblem and felt it thrum faintly beneath her boots.

Reporters clustered near the entrance, the new Prophet cameras flashing like miniature storms. She ignored them. Her robes, black and sharply tailored, felt like armor; the wand holster at her wrist, a comfort. Years ago she had fought for survival. Now she fought for definition. Both required aim.

“Counsel for the plaintiffs,” called the bailiff.

She lifted her chin. “Present.”

Across the aisle, a figure rose—tall, precise, motionless until the moment demanded movement. Blaise Zabini. The defense. The name alone was a whisper in every corridor: the pure-blood prodigy turned barrister, famous for winning impossible cases with terrifying grace.

He inclined his head once, almost courteously, before returning his attention to the stack of briefs in front of him. His posture was impeccable; his indifference, calculated.

Ginny took her seat. The parchment in front of her vibrated faintly as if bracing itself. Outside, thunder rolled over the city, echoed a second later through the enchanted dome above them.

The bailiff’s wand flared. “Court is now in session.”

Ginny inhaled once, slow and measured. Somewhere deep within her chest, every lesson she’d ever learned about restraint, about logic, about anger sharpened into purpose. She rose, voice clear, diction immaculate.

“My Lords and Ladies of the Court—”

And the trial began.

The bailiff’s wand flared once, sealing the courtroom. The charm muted every external sound until only the soft rasp of parchment and the faint, rhythmic tick of the judicial clock remained.
The air itself seemed to contract. A trial, Ginny had learned, was nothing more than choreography—belief rehearsed until it looked like truth.
The trick was pretending that logic and morality were the same thing.

She stood.

“My Lords and Ladies of the Court—”

Her voice sliced cleanly through the hush. It was lower than it used to be—years of speaking through noise had worn the girlish brightness out of it—and steady in the way that made stenographers breathe easier.
“The case before you is not about theft,” she said. “It is about authorship.”

A pause. The silence turned taut, expectant.

“During the war, the Ministry of Magic enacted the Emergency Ethics Directive—legislation meant to protect state intelligence at all costs. Under that law, Obliviators and Unspeakables were authorized to extract selective memories from witches and wizards deemed ‘informationally valuable.’ These recollections were stored, catalogued, and, years later, sold to private contractors for use in magical security systems. The victims—my clients—were never informed, compensated, or even told what had been taken from them.”

She stopped, letting the words settle like dust.

“We are not here to debate intent. We are here to ask what remains of personhood when consent is presumed. To question whether the Ministry has the right to own the mind of its citizens. Whether survival justified a theft that went deeper than property—into identity itself.”

Her wand flicked toward the evidence dais. A thin shimmer of silver unfurled, resolving into a Pensieve projection. From it, a memory spilled across the courtroom: a woman in her forties sitting in a kitchen that smelled of tea and disinfectant, staring at a child she could no longer name.
Her voice—recorded years earlier—trembled through the chamber.
I know she’s mine. I just don’t remember why.

The gallery inhaled audibly. One of the junior clerks looked away.
Ginny held her ground.

“This is not theoretical,” she said quietly. “It is loss measured in absences. You will hear testimony from eleven plaintiffs who can no longer recall their own weddings, their childhood homes, or the precise moment the war ended for them. You will hear how those memories were taken under a law that still bears the Ministry’s seal. You will be asked to decide whether that law is justice—or a monument to fear.”

She closed her folder. “The plaintiffs rest for now, my Lord.”

Justice Peregrine inclined his head, spectacles glinting under the floating lights. “Counsel for the defense, Mr. Zabini.”

A chair shifted across the aisle. Blaise Zabini rose.

It was astonishing how the temperature seemed to change when he moved—like the room remembered what composure looked like and tried to imitate it.

He was tall; not imposing in the way of soldiers, but in the deliberate economy of movement that comes from knowing one never needs to rush.

The black of his robes had a faint sheen—Italian tailoring, definitely—cut close at the waist and sharp at the shoulders. The collar of his shirt was stiff, perfectly white against his skin. His hair was close-cropped, dark as ink; his expression unreadable but for the suggestion of curiosity at the corner of his mouth.

If most lawyers hid their nerves behind bravado, Zabini hid something else entirely: certainty. Not arrogance, precisely—arrogance required an audience—but the cool conviction of someone who trusted his own mind more than he trusted gravity.

He adjusted one cufflink—silver, monogrammed—and unbuttoned his robes with a gesture that bordered on theatrical restraint.

When he spoke, his voice came low and measured, each syllable resting exactly where he placed it.

“The prosecution would have you believe this is a question of theft,” he began, “but the law recognizes no ownership over memory. We cannot claim as property that which alters with recollection.”

The cadence was effortless—neither hurried nor hesitant. Every clause balanced perfectly on its predicate. Ginny recognized the technique: start with philosophy, then descend into statute so the moral blow lands twice. It was almost beautiful, in the way architecture is beautiful before you notice the cracks in the foundation.

“My clients acted under statute and necessity,” he continued. “The Emergency Ethics Directive was lawful. It was ratified by the Wizengamot. It was reviewed by the International Confederation of Wizards. What Ms. Weasley calls theft was, at the time, survival. War demands triage—ethical, magical, and human.”

He glanced toward the gallery, allowing the phrasing to settle into the air like incense.
“To prosecute the Ministry now for its methods of preservation,” he concluded, “is to punish a body for surviving its own disease.”

The silence that followed wasn’t admiration—it was calculation. Everyone was re-writing his words into opinion pieces already.

Ginny’s throat felt tight. She wanted to despise the eloquence, the deliberate detachment—but a part of her, the part trained to appreciate symmetry, recognized genius when she heard it.

Up close, he was distractingly precise. The lines of his face looked carved rather than grown—fine jaw, narrow nose, eyes that hovered somewhere between gray and green depending on the light. They gave nothing away, but they saw everything. When he looked up from his parchment, the glance found her immediately, like he had mapped the distance between their tables in advance.

The judge cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mr. Zabini. We will hear witnesses tomorrow morning. Court is adjourned for recess.”

Chairs scraped, papers rustled, voices returned in cautious waves. Reporters began whispering dictation into their Quick-Quote Quills. Ginny stayed where she was, her hands flat on the table, pulse still echoing against her ribs.

Across the aisle, Blaise gathered his notes with surgical calm. He spoke briefly to Draco Malfoy—his co-counsel, blond and faintly bored—then snapped his briefcase shut. The movement drew every line of attention back to him.

Before turning to leave, he looked her way once more. The expression wasn’t triumph or mockery—it was civility polished to a shine. A micro-gesture that said, simply, Well argued.

Ginny inclined her head a fraction, professional, unsmiling. Not badly yourself, it meant.

The sky outside the Ministry had bruised to violet by the time Ginny reached her flat. London was all reflection and residue—the kind of wet dusk that blurred lamplight into watercolor. She lived in Bloomsbury now, on the third floor of a narrow Georgian walk-up, a neighborhood where the Muggle and magical bled together in quiet, bureaucratic peace. Her window overlooked a square of iron railings and sycamores that refused to die no matter how poisoned the rain became.

The flat smelled faintly of paper and ozone. Case files were stacked along the wall in precarious columns; the kettle, older than she was, hummed faintly whenever she passed it. She loosened her robes, kicked her shoes beneath the desk, and exhaled the kind of breath one only takes when alone.

Law had changed her posture. She used to walk like she was ready to fight; now she walked like she was waiting for cross-examination. Her mirror, half-obscured by pinned notes, caught her reflection—a young woman rendered prematurely historical. The dark under her eyes looked like annotation.

She made tea, more out of ritual than desire, and set her case file open across the kitchen table. The pages glowed softly with charm-ink, the columns of citations like veins of light. She reread her own transcript from the day, line by line. Each sentence appeared foreign now, as if someone else had said it. The courtroom always turned words into strangers.

Her handwriting, sharp and slanted, covered the margins with observations: Need to cite consent doctrine—ask Hermione about precedent. Zabini too calm—anticipating personal angle. Cross-exam tomorrow: memory degradation clause.

His name on the page caught her attention in a way she hated.
Zabini.

She hadn’t known what to expect when she heard he’d taken the defense—some stiff bureaucrat, perhaps, or another of the Ministry’s polished mouthpieces. She hadn’t expected that.

He’d been infuriatingly composed, every movement rehearsed but not performative. A man who had long ago learned that silence was the most intimidating sound. She thought of his voice—low, deliberate, that strange faint warmth under the precision, like light behind frosted glass. A rhetorical weapon designed to disarm without bleeding.

She rubbed her temples, annoyed with herself for noticing.

He’d looked, she admitted, exactly like the sort of person who could convince the world morality was a luxury item. His robes cut to perfection, his posture like punctuation. But it was the stillness that unsettled her most. Stillness like his always belonged to people who’d learned to survive storms by becoming weather themselves.

Her teacup cooled. She set it down among the notes, steam curling upward like smoke.

At half past nine, an owl tapped against the window—Hermione’s handwriting on the envelope, neat, urgent.

We’ll need to meet before the morning hearing. Zabini’s firm submitted new evidence—revised witness list. Confidential. My office, seven sharp. Don’t bring the press.

Ginny folded the note once, twice, and left it beside the lamp. The city outside murmured—carriages, footsteps, laughter from a nearby pub. The kind of noise that made other people feel alive. She only felt awake.

When she finally turned off the light, the window caught her reflection again: hair unbound, shoulders slightly bowed, eyes still sharp. She looked like a woman who believed in justice the way other people believed in ghosts—fully, foolishly, and without proof.

                                                                        Δ 

Blaise Zabini’s office occupied the top floor of the Greengrass, Malfoy & Zabini building on Fleet Street, a narrow edifice of black stone and blue wards. It was nearly midnight when he finished dictating notes into the floating quill. The quill blinked, requested clarification of a Latin term, then hovered still when he waved it silent.

The floor-to-ceiling windows framed London like evidence. The Thames below looked metallic, ancient, indifferent. He stood there for a while, sleeves rolled to the elbow, the single lamplight gilding the edges of his hands. His desk was immaculate—three files aligned perfectly parallel to the grain, a crystal decanter half-full of Firewhisky, untouched.

Draco had left hours ago, muttering something about dinner and headlines. Blaise preferred quiet.

He reread the day’s transcript, pausing over her name where it appeared in print for the first time: Weasley, G. — Opening Statement.
He remembered the timbre of her voice as she spoke—the precise control, the deliberate tremor she allowed herself once at the end of a sentence, perfectly timed to catch sympathy without appearing manipulative. It was good law. Brutally good.

He had not expected her to be that sharp, nor that articulate. Most prosecutors relied on sentiment; she built her case like an engineer, each premise locking cleanly into the next until one almost admired the machinery of it. Almost.

He poured a glass of whisky, didn’t drink it.

In her cross-examination notes, she had asked whether survival could justify theft. It was a line of questioning he would have used himself, years ago, before experience taught him that justification was irrelevant. The law did not care about conscience; it cared about definition. His job was to shape the latter until the former fit.

He thought of her standing at the dais, back straight, eyes bright, every gesture disciplined. The kind of focus that came from having been underestimated too many times. It reminded him of his mother. It made him uneasy.

Outside, the rain deepened to a steady percussion. He loosened his tie, leaned against the desk, and let the quiet settle back in. The city’s glow reflected faintly in the window, turning his own reflection into something spectral.

“She’s dangerous,” he said aloud, to no one.

The quill twitched as if waiting for a dictation command. He ignored it, shut the file, and extinguished the lamp.

Across the city, Ginny dreamt of silver light spilling from a Pensieve, of voices whispering Latin statutes she half-recognized, of hands she couldn’t see turning pages in the dark.
When she woke before dawn, her tea had gone cold, her case files had rearranged themselves into careful stacks, and her heart was still beating too fast.

Chapter Text

The morning broke in pale grey bands, the kind of light that flattened everything to parchment.

Ginny had not slept so much as drifted. At half past six she was already dressed—black trousers, white shirt, robes folded over her arm. The Ministry coffee cart outside the Hall of Justice smelled faintly burnt, but she drank it anyway. Caffeine was truth serum for the living.

Hermione’s office sat at the end of the Department of Magical Equality’s glass corridor, overlooking the atrium like a pulpit. The floor still glimmered with overnight polishing charms; Ginny’s reflection followed her all the way to the door, a ghost in a suit.

Inside, the air was thick with ink and argument. Files levitated between clerks like migrating birds. Hermione stood over a long table scattered with folders, each one sealed with an enchantment mark in green wax. Her hair was pinned loosely, eyes already rimmed red from the early hours.

“You’re early,” she said without looking up.

“So are you,” Ginny replied.

Hermione handed her a folder. “Zabini’s firm submitted an amended witness list at midnight—eight new names, four of them internal Ministry personnel. One of them worked in my department.”

Ginny flipped the cover open. The ink shimmered faintly—confidential clearance. She skimmed the names: R. Catterick, E. Hawley, J. Patel, F. Quince. The fifth name froze her mid-page.

“Percy?”

Hermione nodded once. “They’ve subpoenaed him. He signed the first budget extension for the Emergency Ethics Directive. If the defense proves he authorized the memory-extraction payments—”

“Then the case shifts from negligence to policy,” Ginny finished. “And the Ministry stops being a defendant and becomes an accomplice.”

Hermione’s expression didn’t change, but her hands clasped too tightly on the table. “The Board of Ethics will try to settle before that happens. Kingsley’s already received pressure from the Confederation to avoid a spectacle.”

Ginny exhaled through her teeth. “A spectacle is the only thing that forces reform.”

“Reform isn’t the goal anymore,” Hermione said quietly. “Survival is.”

That was the difference between them: Hermione understood compromise as diplomacy; Ginny still believed it was cowardice with better vocabulary.

She sat, flipping through the appended files. Each new witness came with a sealed Pensieve log, magically redacted. “Do we know what they’re hiding?”

“No,” Hermione said, “but Zabini’s motion requests a preliminary in-camera review—closed session before the judge. That means whatever evidence he has, he doesn’t want the public to see it yet.”

“He’s playing for time.”

“He’s playing something,” Hermione agreed. “He knows exactly how to control narrative.”

Ginny closed the folder. “So do we.”

The hearing reconvened at ten. Reporters filled the corridor outside the courtroom, flash spells ricocheting off glass. Ginny walked through them with the detachment of habit—head high, expression neutral. Every headline tomorrow would mention her hair, her tone, her father. None would mention the law.

Inside, Blaise was already seated. The defense table looked surgical in its order: documents squared, ink bottles aligned. Draco leaned back in his chair, bored elegance incarnate. Zabini, by contrast, sat like a study in focus—immaculate robes, no wasted motion, his eyes on the bench.

When she entered, he looked up. A glance—brief, unreadable—but it landed like an exhale she hadn’t realized she was holding.

He stood as protocol required. “Ms. Weasley.”

“Mr. Zabini.”

Their voices were polite, professional, tonally identical. Anyone listening might have mistaken it for respect.

The judge took the bench. “Counsel, before we proceed with witness testimony, the court will address a procedural motion filed overnight by the defense.”

Blaise inclined his head. “My Lord, new evidence has emerged suggesting that the memory extractions in question were not the result of rogue action but sanctioned by ministerial budgetary oversight. We request an in-camera review of the relevant documents to protect ongoing security protocols.”

Hermione, sitting behind Ginny, whispered, “He’s setting up an immunity clause.”

Ginny rose. “My Lord, the plaintiffs object. The defense is introducing unverified evidence without disclosure. We have a right to review under Rule Seventeen.”

Peregrine adjusted his spectacles. “And do you intend to contest the classification of these materials?”

“I do, my Lord.”

“Then the court will recess for private review this afternoon.”

A murmur rippled through the gallery.

Ginny sat, pulse tight in her throat. Blaise’s motion had landed perfectly—it forced the court into secrecy while making him look protective of state security. A masterstroke of optics. She hated the elegance of it.

He leaned toward her table just enough to be heard without moving his lips. “You’ll see it eventually, Ms. Weasley. Just not before it matters.”

She didn’t look at him. “You sound confident for someone hiding behind redactions.”

“I’m confident,” he murmured, “because I know how institutions defend themselves. You’ll learn.”

The words weren’t cruel; they were pity disguised as courtesy. It unsettled her more than any threat could have.

The judge banged the gavel. “Adjourned until fourteen hundred.”

Hermione caught up with her in the corridor. “He’s trying to force settlement through procedural exhaustion,” she said. “If he delays discovery long enough, the plaintiffs will run out of funding. The Ethics Board is already threatening to cut your stipend.”

Ginny pressed a hand to the wall, the glass cool under her palm. “Let them. If they want exhaustion, they can have mine.”

“Ginny—”

But she was already walking away, the echo of her footsteps sharp against marble.

Across the atrium, on the mezzanine above, Blaise watched her leave. The light struck the glass at an angle that turned the floor into a mirror—he could see both of them at once, her figure receding, his reflection motionless. He wasn’t sure which image looked more like victory.

Draco appeared beside him, adjusting his tie. “She’s going to be a problem.”

“She’s supposed to be,” Blaise said.

Draco smirked. “You almost sound impressed.”

“I am.”

He didn’t add and that’s inconvenient.

Outside, rain began again—thin, relentless, the kind that left no mark on the pavement but made the whole city glisten as if caught between past and present.
By the time Ginny stepped into it, she no longer felt the difference.

The in-camera chamber was smaller than the courtroom—oval, paneled in old oak, its ceiling carved with runes that shimmered faintly whenever someone lied. The air smelled of candle wax and old magic, the kind that had witnessed every scandal the Ministry had ever tried to bury.

Only five people were allowed inside: the presiding judge, a court scribe, Hermione as department representative, Ginny for the plaintiffs, and Blaise for the defense. The door sealed behind them with a dull, final sound.

The Pensieve sat in the center of the table—a shallow basin of liquid memory, surface silver as mercury. The light it cast moved across the faces in the room like water against stone.

“Mr. Zabini,” the judge said, “you may begin.”

Blaise inclined his head. “My Lord, the defense presents a recovered fragment of ministerial correspondence, dated May of 1999, between then–Undersecretary Percy Weasley and the Office of Magical Intelligence.”

He set a scroll beside the basin. The ink glowed faintly blue—authenticating charm. Hermione’s face paled even before the words appeared.

Ginny leaned forward, eyes scanning the text as it unrolled. The handwriting was unmistakable—precise, upright, her brother’s.

To the Department of Magical Intelligence,
The proposed extraction initiative, though regrettable, remains essential to post-war stability. Civilian consent may be presumed where memory retention poses an ongoing security risk. The Ministry cannot rebuild on uncertainty.
— P. Weasley, Undersecretary.

Ginny’s throat went dry. The words weren’t even cruel—they were worse. They were practical.

Hermione’s voice broke the silence. “This doesn’t prove authorization. It proves discussion.”

Blaise’s expression didn’t change. “It proves state complicity.”

Ginny forced herself to speak. “It proves nothing of the kind. That note is advisory, not directive. There’s no ministerial seal, no distribution list—”

“Yet the extractions continued,” Blaise interrupted. “Someone funded them. Someone justified them. The plaintiffs’ suffering wasn’t the result of rogue actors; it was administrative.”

Hermione leaned forward sharply. “You’re trying to collapse legality into morality, Mr. Zabini. Don’t pretend outrage suits you.”

Blaise’s eyes flicked toward her, calm, almost courteous. “I’m not outraged, Madam Director. I’m precise.”

Ginny hated that his voice stayed soft when hers wanted to shake. “Precision doesn’t make you right.”

“It makes me effective,” he said.

The judge lifted a hand. “Counselors.”

Silence settled again. The Pensieve shimmered; the recorded voice of Percy Weasley began to speak—faint, bureaucratic, tired.

“—cannot rebuild on uncertainty,” the echo murmured.

Ginny closed her eyes. That sentence would haunt her.

When the memory faded, the judge exhaled through his nose. “The court will admit the document for review. This hearing remains sealed.”

The decision hung like fog. Hermione nodded, jaw tight. “Understood, my Lord.”

Blaise gathered the scroll, re-sealing it with a charm. His hands were steady; Ginny’s were not.

When they stepped into the corridor, the light hit her like weather—sharp, sterile, too bright. Hermione was already striding ahead, her silence more furious than words.

“Don’t talk to the press,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”

Ginny stopped her. “How long have you known he was involved?”

Hermione froze. “I didn’t. I suspected. There’s a difference.”

“There always is,” Ginny said, “until it’s your department on trial.”

Hermione turned, eyes blazing. “Do you think I wanted this? I built that directive to stop another war, not start another scandal.”

“Then you should have built it to stop this.”

Hermione’s reply came out low. “We were all trying to survive.”

Ginny’s voice was sharper than she meant. “That excuse is getting old.”

Hermione left without another word. The sound of her heels faded down the corridor, swallowed by the atrium’s echo.

Blaise was waiting near the entrance. The rain outside cast his reflection across the floor like a ghost.

“You have a talent for making allies nervous,” he said.

She stopped. “You have a talent for making truth sound optional.”

He smiled faintly. “It usually is.”

“Not to me.”

“I know.” His gaze lingered just long enough to be dangerous—not flirtatious, but assessing, curious. “That’s what makes you interesting.”

“And you predictable,” she said.

He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the faint line of exhaustion under his eyes, the precise fold of his collar, the subtle scent of cedar and ink. “Predictability wins trials.”

“I’m not here to win.”

He tilted his head, the shadow of a smile. “Then you’re in the wrong profession.”

Before she could answer, he was gone—smooth, unhurried, disappearing into the gray light like a man walking back into an argument only he could hear.

That night, Ginny didn’t go home. She went to the archives instead.

The Records Chamber was buried deep beneath the Ministry, warded by charms that predated the building itself. Shelves rose in endless rows, stacked with the bones of governance: reports, decrees, names.

She lit her wand and walked between them, the air cold and dry as paper. Somewhere in here was the rest of the story—proof that the theft of memory hadn’t been a wartime necessity but a choice.

She found the file under Ethics Directive—Supplemental Funding. The handwriting was Percy’s again, the same precise slant.

The attached memo read: Authorized transfer of twenty thousand Galleons for research into Memory Integrity Stabilization.
Below it, a signature—not Percy’s, not Kingsley’s.

Hermione’s.

Ginny stared at the page until the letters blurred.

Upstairs, the rain had turned to a downpour.

In another part of the city, Blaise Zabini sat in the dark of his office, the same document spread before him. His version had the names redacted.

He didn’t know what it said.

He didn’t know that the woman he was beginning to respect was the one who had written it.

But he would.

Soon.

Chapter Text

The third day of trial began in rain and ended in revelation.

By morning, the Prophet had already leaked rumors of “ministerial complicity,” and every corridor of the Ministry smelled faintly of panic—ink, sweat, and smoke from overworked fireplaces. Even the air around the Hall of Justice carried tension like static.

Ginny had barely spoken to Hermione since the discovery in the archives. They’d exchanged only the language of professionals: clipped, immaculate, bloodless. The memo burned in her briefcase like contraband.

At ten sharp, the courtroom filled again—rows of clerks, correspondents, and onlookers hungry for a spectacle. The judge entered, robes flaring, eyes heavy with sleeplessness.

“Call your next witness,” he said.

Ginny rose. “The plaintiffs call Director Hermione Granger.”

The reaction was instantaneous—a ripple of whispering like wind through tall grass. Hermione stepped to the stand with measured calm, every line of her posture composed.

Blaise watched from across the aisle, expression unreadable, pen tapping once against his notes.

Hermione took the oath. The binding charm glowed briefly at her wrist, sealing the promise.

Ginny approached the bench. Her own pulse was a quiet metronome. “Director Granger, could you describe your role in the development of the Emergency Ethics Directive?”

“I advised on the legal framework,” Hermione said evenly. “I drafted limitations meant to prevent abuse of magical intelligence practices during the war.”

“Limitations?”

“Consent, oversight, and destruction of collected material once hostilities ended.”

Ginny nodded. “And were those limitations followed?”

Hermione’s hesitation was microscopic—less than breath—but Ginny caught it. “Not always.”

“Did you know that at the time?”

“I suspected.”

“Why didn’t you intervene?”

Hermione’s gaze was steady. “Because the war hadn’t ended. Because people were still dying. Because in real time, ethics are a luxury item.”

The words landed hard. Blaise didn’t object—he didn’t need to. The line was self-incriminating by nature.

Ginny leaned in slightly. “Would you consider memory extraction a necessary act?”

“In hindsight?” Hermione’s voice softened, frayed at the edges. “No. But hindsight doesn’t make policy. We made decisions under duress. Every choice felt like the lesser evil.”

Ginny let the silence breathe. Then: “So you acknowledge authorization of unethical procedure under your signature?”

“Yes.”

“Even knowing it would cause harm to civilians?”

“Yes.”

The courtroom was motionless.

Blaise rose. “Objection. Counsel is leading.”

“Sustained,” said the judge, though his voice carried no conviction.

Ginny stepped back. “No further questions.”

Blaise approached the stand with the precision of a surgeon. He didn’t carry his notes; he never needed to.

“Director Granger,” he said mildly, “the prosecution has painted your decision as moral failure. Would you say that’s accurate?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because morality doesn’t dictate governance.”

Blaise nodded, almost approvingly. “The law demands results, not ideals, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And during the war, the result required stability?”

“Yes.”

“So your actions were consistent with the legal doctrine of proportional necessity?”

“Yes.”

“Which was later ratified by the post-war Tribunal, correct?”

Hermione hesitated. “Yes.”

Blaise smiled faintly. “Then what the prosecution calls unethical was, in fact, lawful. Unpleasant, perhaps—but law and comfort rarely coincide.”

Ginny wanted to object, but couldn’t. The statement was technically true. And truth, when weaponized, was its own defense.

Hermione’s eyes flickered to her once, almost apologetically.

Blaise continued, calm, relentless. “Would you agree, Director, that leadership in crisis requires compromise?”

“Yes.”

“And that refusing compromise risks greater loss of life?”

“Yes.”

“Then the extractions, as dreadful as they seem in retrospect, prevented collapse?”

A pause. Hermione’s lips tightened. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Blaise repeated softly. “That’s the word of a woman who’s carried responsibility longer than most live without consequence.”

He turned slightly, addressing the judge. “The defense rests, my Lord. I believe we’ve established that the Emergency Directive operated within the bounds of law, if not comfort.”

Hermione looked away. Ginny’s jaw locked.

The judge cleared his throat. “Witness may step down.”

After the recess, Ginny stood at the window overlooking the atrium, arms crossed, watching her own reflection blur in the glass. The rain outside was merciless.

Blaise joined her, silent at first.

“That was elegant,” she said finally. “Making obedience look noble.”

“It wasn’t difficult,” he said. “People crave order. They forgive almost anything that looks like it.”

“Even theft.”

“Especially theft, if it’s organized.”

She turned. “You really believe that?”

“I believe the world runs on justification, not justice.”

“You sound like every villain who ever thought he was rational.”

He smiled faintly. “And you sound like every idealist who didn’t read the fine print.”

They stood there a moment—two people fluent in the same language, arguing different dialects.

“Tell me,” Blaise said quietly, “what would you have done, if you’d been in her position? War still burning, thousands dying, no safe intelligence network?”

“I’d have found another way.”

“There never is another way,” he said. “There’s only the version you can live with.”

She met his gaze. “Then how do you live with yours?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

That night, the Prophet ran two headlines side by side:

WEASLEY’S WAR ON THE MINISTRY
and
DIRECTOR GRANGER ADMITS TO SANCTIONED MEMORY THEFT.

By dawn, the trial had become more than law. It was legacy.

The next morning, Ginny found a single parchment on her desk. No signature, no seal—just a single line, written in tidy handwriting she didn’t recognize:

The files you’re looking for aren’t in the archives. They’re in the Department of Mysteries.

Chapter Text

The Ministry at night was an anatomy lesson.

Nerves of corridor light, lungs of bureaucracy, the faint pulse of the lifts rising and falling like breath.

After midnight the echo changed—it became the kind of quiet you only hear in places that keep secrets for a living.

Ginny moved through it without sound. She had exchanged her robes for civilian clothes and tied her hair up so it wouldn’t catch the candlelight. The pass she carried was Hermione’s—borrowed, not stolen. “A professional courtesy,” she had told herself. The words tasted like perjury.

The Department of Mysteries lay below everything: no signs, no guards, only a door that whispered identification. The badge flared once, reading her aura, and the lock dissolved into dust.

The corridor beyond was colder than any other level. The walls were slate, absorbing light instead of reflecting it. Her breath showed in the air.

She found the Archives room by instinct. Rows of cabinets, each labeled in discreet runes. Most people imagined the Department of Mysteries as chaos—spirals of time, prophecy spheres, the dripping heartbeat of secrets. In truth it looked like any office designed by someone who understood control. Order was its camouflage.

She cast a faint illumination charm and began to search.

ETHICS DIRECTIVE — CLASSIFIED CORRESPONDENCE
MEMORY PRESERVATION ACT — PROTOTYPE FILES
OBLIVIATION STUDIES — FIELD APPLICATIONS

Halfway down the second aisle she found the drawer sealed in crimson wax. The charm signature was unmistakably Granger’s, layered with Kingsley’s. No unauthorized entry without both.

She took out her wand, whispered, Aequitas vincit, and pressed her palm flat against the seal. It resisted once, then yielded—the bureaucratic equivalent of a sigh.

Inside: six files. Each stamped with dates spanning 1998–2000. Each containing contracts between the Ministry and a company she had only seen referenced in redacted memos: Vigilant Solutions Ltd.

She skimmed the first document.
Provision of Cognitive Preservation Units to the Department of Magical Intelligence.
Below, a signature.
B. Zabini.

For a moment she thought the air itself shifted. Not disbelief—recognition.

Her pulse drummed in her ears as she turned the page. His firm had been a subcontractor. Blaise hadn’t merely inherited the defense—he had helped build the machinery that required one.

The realization was too clean to be satisfying. It explained his precision, his fluency with the Directive’s language. He wasn’t interpreting the law. He had written its grammar.

The file included an attached letter, personal, unsigned:

You were right. Memory is safer in archives than in people. People change.

She closed the drawer, replaced the seal, and walked out. Every step upward through the Ministry felt heavier. Somewhere above, the first hint of dawn touched the glass roof of the atrium—a colorless, judicial light.

Blaise arrived at the firm before sunrise. The building smelled of parchment and polish, the way old institutions disguise guilt. Draco was already there, half-asleep over a file.

“Morning,” Blaise said.

Draco blinked. “Morning? It’s barely—”

He stopped at the look on Blaise’s face. “Something’s wrong.”

“Not wrong. Complicated.” Blaise dropped a folder on the desk. “The Board wants me to suppress internal records—everything linking Vigilant Solutions to the Directive. They say disclosure threatens national stability.”

Draco poured coffee, grimacing. “Which means it threatens careers.”

“Precisely.” Blaise rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Do you ever wonder if we’re still lawyers or just curators of selective truth?”

Draco gave a tired smile. “Selective truth pays better.”

Blaise didn’t answer. He opened the window. The city was waking: carriages rattling, Muggle traffic humming like an organism. He could already hear the Prophet’s morning edition hitting the street—headlines snapping like flags.

He thought of Ginny Weasley. Of the way she looked at him when he spoke in court, eyes like questions she refused to let die. If she found the Vigilant files—and she would—it would destroy more than a case. It would rewrite the premise of the post-war government.

He poured the coffee he hadn’t touched into the sink. “Cancel the morning briefing,” he said. “And send a message to the Ministry archives. I want to know if anyone accessed restricted materials tonight.”

Ginny reached her flat as the city turned gold. She hadn’t planned what to do next. The sun made everything look too honest. She placed the copied page on the table—the one with his signature. B. Zabini. Beautiful handwriting, practiced, detached.

Her kettle whined. She ignored it.

The ethical weight of what she held pressed against her chest. If she introduced it in court, the entire case changed complexion: the defense counsel’s conflict of interest, the government’s use of private contractors, the proof that law itself had been engineered to accommodate theft.

But it also meant she’d have to expose Hermione, Percy, and perhaps half the Ministry to public disgrace. The system she’d hoped to reform would collapse before she could rebuild it.

She took out her quill and began drafting a motion—
Notice of Supplemental Evidence—Conflict of Interest (Defense Counsel)—
then stopped. Her hand hovered over the parchment. She couldn’t yet decide whether she was filing it for justice or revenge.

The knock on her door startled her. She froze. Another knock, measured. Familiar.

When she opened it, Blaise Zabini stood there. He looked as if he hadn’t slept either.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

“How did you—”

“Legal instinct,” he said. “And the security report from the Department of Mysteries. You’re thorough, Ms. Weasley, but not invisible.”

She didn’t move. “Came to threaten me?”

“Came to talk.” His voice was calm. “You found something.”

“You’d know. You signed it.”

A pause, then: “So you read it.”

“I read everything.”

He stepped inside uninvited but not unwelcome, standing in the middle of her kitchen like a contradiction. The morning light traced the sharp edges of his face—angular, composed, eyes dark and steady.

“Do you even understand what those documents represent?” he asked.

“I understand complicity.”

“They represent continuity,” he said. “Without them, the Ministry would have fractured before the war ended. Those extractions stabilized intelligence lines, prevented infiltration, saved lives—”

“They erased people.”

“They preserved the rest.”

She turned on him. “That’s what every empire says about its crimes.”

He met her gaze, voice quiet but unwavering. “Every empire also needs someone to rebuild its courts afterward. You’re not here because you hate what we did. You’re here because you want to prove we could have done it better.”

Her breath caught. “You think that’s what this is?”

“I think you and I are on opposite sides of the same argument.” He took a step closer. “We both know the law isn’t about truth. It’s about who articulates it first.”

The silence between them hummed like voltage.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“Understanding,” he said simply. “Before the rest of the Ministry turns this case into spectacle. Before they sacrifice both of us to preserve themselves.”

“You think they’d sacrifice you?”

“They already have. I just haven’t decided whether to let them.”

He looked around her flat—the stacks of briefs, the exhaustion arranged into order. “You should eat something,” he said suddenly, almost gently. “Revolutionaries forget to.”

He left before she could answer.

When the door shut, she leaned against it, pulse shaking. On the table, his signature gleamed faintly in the light, as if the ink itself were still alive.

That afternoon the court convened for the evidentiary hearing. Both sides filed new motions. Both looked immaculate. Neither betrayed that the foundation of their cases had shifted overnight.

As the judge called the session to order, Ginny thought: We’re not arguing law anymore. We’re arguing civilization.

And across the aisle, Blaise Zabini thought the same thing.

Chapter Text

By the fifth day, the trial no longer felt like war; it felt like architecture.

Every word another beam, every precedent another load-bearing wall.
Whoever controlled the structure of the argument would own the ruin that followed.

The hearing opened at nine sharp. Justice Peregrine presided, his spectacles already fogged.
The benches were full—reporters, staff, bored functionaries pretending not to care.
In the gallery, one could almost smell the tension: parchment, perfume, ambition.

Blaise rose first. “My Lord, the defense moves to strike the prosecution’s motion on conflict of interest as procedurally defective.”

He spoke like a man dictating weather.

“The rule governing disqualification, Section 12-C of the Solicitors’ Code, requires that any alleged conflict must be both direct and current. The prosecution’s claim concerns historic contractual involvement, seven years prior, between Vigilant Solutions and this counsel. The contract predates the present action and therefore fails the test of immediacy. My Lord, the precedent in Flint v. Harrowby & Associates—”

He paused just long enough for the court scribe to look up.

“—establishes that a conflict becomes moot when the counsel’s prior involvement does not confer confidential advantage on the matter now before the court. The documents in question were classified; I never saw them.”

A slight bow of the head. The confidence of precision.

Ginny stood.

Her file was already open to the relevant page.

“My Lord, the defense relies on Flint v. Harrowby but neglects its companion judgment, Regina v. Eddington—which held that even the appearance of impropriety undermines the integrity of process. The issue is not access; it is architecture. Mr. Zabini’s firm designed the framework that enabled the alleged wrong. That relationship cannot be laundered by time.”

Blaise’s eyebrow lifted slightly. “Counsel confuses jurisprudence with theatre.”

She didn’t flinch. “And you confuse memory with data.”

Peregrine raised a hand. “Counselors.”

But the rhythm had begun, a duel in syntax.

Ginny pressed on.

“The law of fiduciary duty exists precisely for this reason—to prevent counsel from defending the machinery they once profited from. The wizarding legal system is young, my Lord, but its moral backbone is older than magic. We cannot pretend impartiality when the ink of complicity is still drying.”

Blaise’s reply was quiet.

“Impartiality is not an emotion, Ms. Weasley; it is a standard. If every solicitor were disqualified for prior association with government policy, the Ministry would have no lawyers left. The question is competence, not purity.”

That drew a murmur from the gallery. He continued before it subsided.

“Law is not confession. It is the management of imperfection. The Directive may have been flawed, but its architects acted within the bounds of legality as they understood it. The court cannot retroactively criminalize understanding.”

Ginny countered without missing a beat.

“The court also cannot sanctify ignorance. To claim that legality excuses harm is to admit that the law has forgotten its own purpose.”

A pause—brief, electric. Even Peregrine seemed to lean forward.

Blaise’s tone softened, almost respectful.
“You argue for ethics to govern law; I argue for law to govern ethics. Between us lies civilization.”

She looked at him across the aisle, and for a heartbeat it felt less like opposition and more like symmetry—two intellects reflecting each other until neither could tell which side light was entering from.

Peregrine cleared his throat.

“I will reserve judgment on the motion. The record will note that both counsel have presented arguments of uncommon merit.”

His quill trembled, then stilled.

“Court will reconvene tomorrow for evidentiary submissions.”

Gavel. Adjourned.

Outside, the corridor filled with noise again.

Ginny gathered her papers slowly, each page an aftershock.

She felt neither victory nor defeat—only the strange vertigo of having been heard too well.

When she stepped into the atrium, Blaise was waiting by the lift.

Neither spoke until the doors closed.

He said, “You realize you’ve just argued the philosophical basis for my defense.”

“And you realize you’ve just proven my point about conflict of interest.”

He smiled faintly. “Then perhaps we both did our jobs.”

The lift chimed. The doors opened to the London light—thin, colorless, the hue of impartial judgment.

She stepped out first. He watched her go, thinking—not for the first time—that every brilliant adversary becomes, eventually, an ally or a ghost.

Chapter Text

The sixth day dawned brittle and gray, the sky a pale membrane stretched over London. The Ministry’s windows reflected it like glass eyes, blank and self-absorbed. By the time Ginny reached the Hall of Justice, the morning edition of The Daily Prophet was already in circulation, headlines bleeding down the page:
“THE TRIAL THAT DIVIDES BRITAIN.”
Beneath it, a subheading in smaller font: Former war heroes and government officials implicated in ongoing Memory Extraction Scandal.

Reporters waited near the courtroom doors, Quick-Quotes Quills twitching in midair, their whispers coiling through the marble like smoke. Ginny ignored them. She had learned that attention, like magic, obeyed whoever refused to fear it.

The courtroom was half-shadowed when she entered. Light filtered in through high glass panes, catching on the dust motes suspended like indecision. Justice Peregrine presided as always—eyes hooded, robes austere, as though he resented being required to pass judgment on a nation pretending to be healed.

The benches filled with journalists, clerks, and a handful of curious citizens. Everyone looked tired, but no one looked ready to stop watching. Trials like this were modern entertainment—the acceptable way to witness suffering.

Today’s agenda was evidence. Facts, testimony, and cross-examination: the stage of every case where language becomes a weapon and conscience a liability.

The first witness was Rufus Catterick, a man of paper and exhaustion. His spine bent as though under the cumulative weight of signatures. He had been, once, Deputy Director of the Department of Magical Intelligence, now retired under quiet disgrace.

Ginny led him to the stand herself. He looked at her the way bureaucrats look at storms.

“State your name for the record,” she said.

“Rufus Catterick.”

“And your former position?”

“Deputy Director, DMI.”

She nodded. “You oversaw the Memory Extraction Initiative during the final years of the war?”

“Yes.”

“Would you describe the purpose of that initiative?”

He cleared his throat. “To safeguard intelligence. To prevent leaks. We were told that certain memories, if captured by enemy forces, could compromise the resistance.”

“And who decided which memories were subject to extraction?”

“Intelligence officers, in consultation with the Board of Ethics.”

“Was consent ever requested?”

He hesitated. The sound of parchment rustling from the press gallery filled the pause. “Not formally.”

Ginny’s voice remained soft. “Why not?”

“The directive presumed it.”

“The directive presumed consent?”

“Yes. For the greater good.”

A murmur rippled through the room. Even the judge’s quill seemed to pause.

Ginny stepped closer. “Mr. Catterick, did you at any time raise objections to these extractions?”

“I—” His eyes darted to Blaise across the aisle. “I inquired once about their scope. I was told the process had full ministerial approval.”

“Whose approval, specifically?”

“The Undersecretary’s, the Director’s, and... the contractor overseeing compliance.”

“Which contractor?”

“Vigilant Solutions.”

“And who represented them?”

He swallowed. “A barrister. Zabini.”

Gasps followed—the kind of collective intake of air that makes history feel immediate.

The judge’s gavel cracked against the bench. “Order!”

Ginny’s pulse stayed steady. “Mr. Catterick, you are certain of that name?”

“Yes.”

“Was Mr. Zabini present at any of the extraction sessions?”

“Once,” he said quietly. “To verify that protocol was followed.”

She inclined her head. “No further questions.”

Blaise stood. No visible irritation, only the practiced calm of a man who understood that losing one moment often won the next.

“Mr. Catterick,” he said, voice level, “these events occurred seven years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And since then you’ve testified in multiple inquiries?”

“Yes.”

“So your recollections have been revisited, revised, and refreshed?”

“I suppose.”

“Would it surprise you to learn,” Blaise continued, “that the Ethics Directive explicitly required external counsel to confirm the legality of extraction procedures, not to authorize them? That my role was administrative oversight?”

Catterick frowned. “I don’t—”

“Would it also surprise you,” Blaise pressed, “that your own signed deposition to the War Inquiry Commission makes no mention of my name or my firm?”

The older man faltered. “I don’t recall.”

Blaise’s smile was faint, almost sympathetic. “Precisely, Mr. Catterick. Memory is an unreliable witness—especially when borrowed from seven years of guilt.”

A ripple of agreement moved through the gallery. Blaise bowed slightly to the judge. “No further questions.”

He returned to his seat, every movement deliberate. Ginny didn’t look at him, but she could feel the precision radiating from him like heat.

The next witness was Professor Octavia Greengrass, senior scholar of Magical Jurisprudence at Cambridge Wizarding College. Her hair was white and braided, her eyes sharp enough to cut glass.

“Professor,” Ginny began, “you’ve reviewed the Emergency Ethics Directive?”

“I drafted portions of it,” Octavia said dryly.

“Then perhaps you can explain to the court what legal doctrine it relied upon to justify involuntary extraction.”

“The same doctrine that governs all emergency governance—necessitas non habet legem. Necessity knows no law.”

Ginny nodded slowly. “A tidy phrase for circumventing consent.”

“A realistic one,” Octavia countered. “During wartime, law follows survival, not sentiment.”

“Is survival justification enough for erasing parts of a person?”

“It is justification enough for preserving a nation.”

Blaise stood. “Professor, in your expert opinion, the Directive operated within the constitutional boundaries of magical law?”

“Entirely.”

“And in your opinion, the extractions—while regrettable—were legally sound?”

“They were consistent with existing emergency statutes, yes.”

Ginny interjected. “At what point does legality become theft, Professor?”

Octavia’s smile thinned. “At the point where you lose the power to define it.”

The gallery stirred again. Even the judge leaned back slightly.

Octavia turned toward him. “Forgive me, my Lord, but all law is history waiting for approval. What we call crime today, we called duty yesterday.”

Someone in the back whispered, “Damn.” The word hung there like punctuation.

The judge cleared his throat. “Court will recess for fifteen minutes.”

Ginny gathered her notes in silence. The parchment felt heavier than it should have. She walked out into the corridor, where the Ministry’s morning rush roared like distant surf. The smell of ink and perfume filled the air.

Blaise was already there, leaning against a column.

“You cross-examined well,” he said.

“Thank you,” she replied, flat.

“You understand, of course, that Catterick’s testimony will disintegrate under scrutiny.”

“I understand you’ll try to make it.”

He smiled. “That’s the job.”

“Is that what you tell yourself? That it’s just work?”

“It’s what keeps the scales balanced,” he said. “Someone has to argue for structure, or everything collapses into principle—and principle is chaos dressed as virtue.”

“You really think you’re holding civilization together?”

“I think we both are,” he said quietly. “You argue for conscience; I argue for order. Without both, there’s nothing.”

He turned to leave, then paused. “You’ve read the documents, haven’t you?”

She met his gaze. “Which ones?”

“The ones you weren’t supposed to.”

Her heartbeat stumbled once, then steadied. “If I had, they’d destroy you.”

“Or exonerate us both.”

She frowned. “You’re very confident in the elasticity of truth.”

He looked almost amused. “Truth bends. Law endures.”

He left her with that—words so clean they almost sounded holy.

The rest of the day unfolded like a duel between logic and belief. Testimony after testimony blurred the boundaries between guilt and governance, mercy and memory. Every answer seemed to argue against itself.

By dusk, the courtroom was dim and restless. Justice Peregrine rubbed his temples before announcing, “The court will resume deliberation on evidentiary authenticity tomorrow. Counsel are reminded that the integrity of this proceeding depends on discretion.”

The warning was unnecessary but ominous. Everyone in the room knew that “discretion” meant containment, and containment meant censorship.

As the gavel struck, Ginny felt a sudden clarity.
This trial had outgrown her control. It was no longer about clients or clauses. It was about whether a government could erase guilt by redefining it.

That night she stayed late in her office. The city beyond the window burned in amber streaks, rain gliding down the glass. Her desk was a chaos of parchment, quills, and faintly glowing memos.

She opened one of them—a confidential note from the Ministry’s Board of Ethics, unsigned:
Certain topics of examination are to be avoided in open court. Consider your professional future before proceeding.

She folded it neatly, placed it atop the stack, and poured herself a glass of firewhisky.

Across town, in his own office, Blaise read a letter of his own. His firm had received the same instruction—from the opposite side. Contain. Conclude. Close.

He stared at it until the ink blurred. The city hummed outside his window, oblivious.

For the first time, he realized how precarious his victory would be.

At dawn, they would return to court.

One to defend the law as written, and the other to remind it what it was for.

Both were right.

Both were doomed.

Chapter Text

The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It clung to the windows of the Ministry like sweat, streaking the glass with distorted light. Inside, everything smelled faintly of parchment, coffee, and tension—a city of ink where even silence carried bureaucracy’s pulse.

By the seventh day of trial, no one trusted anyone. Not the witnesses, not the press, not the air itself. What had begun as a case about forgotten memories had become a referendum on memory itself—on what a government was allowed to erase, and who was allowed to remember.

The morning edition of The Prophet no longer named her directly, but the euphemisms were clear enough. The red-haired barrister pushing the Ministry to its knees.
Ginny folded the paper, slid it into her briefcase, and told herself she didn’t care.
Then she looked at her reflection in the glass wall of the lift—tired eyes, composed mouth—and realized that of course she did.

The trial was suspended that morning. “Administrative review,” Justice Peregrine had called it. Everyone knew what it meant. When a case threatened to destabilize the Ministry, the Ministry found ways to rearrange the definition of stability.

Ginny spent the day reviewing files in her office, but her concentration fractured easily. Every so often, a memo would glide under her door—unsigned, official, anonymous.

To: Counsel Weasley
It is the opinion of the Advisory Board that prolonged litigation is no longer in the public interest. Consider settlement.
— Office of Legal Oversight

A second memo arrived an hour later.

To: Counsel Weasley
The Board has reason to believe certain materials in your possession were acquired without authorization. Compliance officers will visit your chambers at noon tomorrow.
— Department of Internal Affairs

And later still, one written in elegant, cursive script. No Ministry seal.

You’re not fighting the law anymore. You’re fighting the people who write it. Be careful which of them you make your enemy.

She read that one twice.

Across town, Blaise Zabini’s office was just as cold, just as quiet, but nothing about him was still. He sat at his desk, sleeves rolled, cigarette burning in the corner of an ashtray. The window was fogged with rain, the city beyond a smear of gray and gold.

His secretary had left hours ago, but the memos kept coming—thicker, darker, more direct.

To: Mr. Zabini
The Ministry requests that all records pertaining to Vigilant Solutions be sealed under clause 3.7 of the National Secrets Act. Public disclosure constitutes treason.
— Office of Magical Security

Another, less official.

We trusted you to contain her. If this trial collapses, so will your career. You have three days to make it disappear.

He crushed the cigarette out against the memo’s margin. The ink bled under the heat.

Draco Malfoy entered without knocking, as he always did. He looked immaculate, tired, expensive.

“They’re panicking,” Draco said. “We just got notice that the Board of Governors wants the case withdrawn entirely.”

“On what grounds?” Blaise asked.

“Public fatigue. They’re calling it ‘psychological exhaustion of the populace.’”

Blaise laughed once, dryly. “Imagine codifying cowardice.”

Draco sat opposite him. “You’re not taking this personally, are you?”

“Everything personal begins as professional.”

“That’s poetic,” Draco said, “and extremely unhelpful.”

“They want me to fold,” Blaise continued. “You realize that?”

“They want everyone to fold. The girl included.”

“She won’t.”

Draco smirked faintly. “Then you’d better decide which of you is worth protecting.”

That night, Ginny walked home through the drizzle, her briefcase heavy with classified paper. The city hummed under her feet—charms, trains, arguments. London was a living deposition, every wall a witness.

She didn’t go home immediately. Instead, she stopped at the all-night café across from the courthouse. The place smelled like burnt espresso and ink. A few clerks lingered at the counter, whispering about the trial. She took a seat in the corner, ordered black coffee, and let herself listen.

“…they say the Weasley girl’s gone mad, trying to prosecute ghosts—”

“…no, I heard Zabini’s firm’s behind half the old war funding—”

“…my cousin works in Records, says they’ve started burning documents—”

She stirred her coffee and didn’t look up.
Burning documents.
It wasn’t paranoia if the smoke was visible.

When she returned to her flat, the lock was intact but the air was wrong. The subtle displacement that happens when magic passes through without permission.
She froze, wand in hand.

“Easy,” came a voice from the dark.

Blaise was sitting on her sofa, coat still on, expression unreadable.

“You’re getting bold,” she said quietly.

“Or desperate,” he replied. “Depends on your moral geometry.”

She lowered her wand but didn’t relax. “You broke in.”

“I knocked first,” he said. “No answer.”

“Breaking in isn’t a substitute for boundaries.”

“Neither is prosecution,” he said. “We both cross lines for a living.”

He stood, moving closer. “They’re going to kill this case.”

“Of course they are.”

“No,” he said. “Not metaphorically. They’re going to bury it. Seal the files, erase the records, issue a public statement that memory extraction was a myth invented by grieving families.”

Her chest tightened. “And you’re telling me this why?”

“Because I’m tired of being the villain in a story I didn’t write.”

“Then stop defending them.”

His laugh was quiet, bitter. “You think it’s that simple? The law is a language of obedience. I can’t change the grammar mid-sentence.”

“You already did,” she said, voice sharp. “You built the entire system around forgetting.”

He looked at her, truly looked at her—eyes dark, unguarded. “And you built your life around remembering. We’re the same disease, different symptoms.”

The silence between them stretched until it became something else. Not trust. Not quite hostility. Recognition, maybe.

“What do you want from me, Zabini?”

He exhaled. “A truce.”

“For what?”

“For the truth. You find what you can in the Department’s archives. I’ll find what they’re hiding at my firm. We’ll compare notes.”

“And then what?” she asked.

“Then we decide whether this ends in a verdict or a revolution.”

They worked in parallel after that.

Ginny spent nights in the Ministry’s lower vaults, tracing the evolution of the Directive—memos, marginalia, missing names.
Blaise combed through financial ledgers and coded contracts, decrypting where the gold had gone.
Each found fragments of the same design: a system meant not just to erase memory, but to privatize it.

Vigilant Solutions had patented the process. Memory wasn’t just stolen—it was sold. Used to build predictive enchantments, emotional algorithms, behavioral models.
The Ministry hadn’t suppressed the program because it was immoral. They had suppressed it because it worked.

By the time Ginny realized the scale of it, dawn was breaking again. Her flat was covered in parchment, each sheet linked to another with red spell-thread like veins.
In the center of it all, one document glowed faintly.

A memorandum signed by both Hermione Granger and Blaise Zabini, dated 1999.
The prototype authorization for the Cognitive Preservation Act.

She sat down hard. Her stomach turned cold.

It wasn’t about the theft of memory anymore.
It was about the ownership of thought.

When Blaise arrived the next night—uninvited, again—he found her still awake. She didn’t look surprised.

“You knew,” she said.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Since the first day you spoke in court.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it wasn’t admissible. And because I wanted to see how far you’d go.”

Her voice shook slightly. “You’re defending a law that literally commodified people’s minds.”

“And you’re trying to dismantle a world built on it,” he said. “Neither of us walks away clean.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then gestured toward the papers spread across the floor.
“Help me prove it.”

He studied her expression—the anger, the exhaustion, the hunger for truth—and something in him shifted.
Without another word, he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and began sorting through the files beside her.

They worked through the night. Two silhouettes in the dim light, knee-deep in stolen history.
At some point, their hands brushed while reaching for the same document. Neither spoke of it. Neither needed to.

By dawn, the room looked like evidence. And they looked like conspirators.

Outside, the city was waking.

Inside, the law was breaking.

And for the first time since the trial began, Ginny Weasley and Blaise Zabini were on the same side.

If only because they had finally realized that neither of them was safe on their own.

Chapter Text

The Ministry of Magic, in daylight, looked almost innocent.

Sunlight fell in ribbons through the atrium glass, gilding the marble floors and the gilded lies alike. If you didn’t know what was buried underneath—the vaults, the sealed memos, the erased names—you might almost believe in the purity of government.

Ginny no longer did.

By now, the case file had outgrown its folder; it sprawled across her flat in color-coded chaos. Red thread connected departments to signatures, signatures to contracts, contracts to silences. Each sheet of parchment was a pulse in the body of something too large to kill cleanly.

Blaise had been there every night that week. He came without being invited, left without being asked to, and she had stopped pretending to mind. They worked in the hush between midnight and dawn—an unlikely duet of intellect, fatigue, and caffeine.

He read aloud in his low, precise voice: “ Clause 7-B: all data derived from cognitive extraction shall be retained as State property, unless commercial licensing yields greater utility. ”

Ginny set her quill down. “They made consciousness a public asset.”

“No,” he said. “A private commodity. The State never owned it. It rented it.”

They stared at each other across the mess of paper. It was the first time either of them had sounded afraid.

Two days later, Hermione came to find her.

The Director looked smaller than Ginny remembered—hair frizzed from stress, eyes lined by the kind of fatigue that makes every apology look like strategy. She closed the office door and didn’t bother sitting.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Hermione said.

“So I’ve been told,” Ginny replied.

“You think you’re dismantling corruption. You’re not. You’re dismantling governance. There’s a difference.”

Ginny stood. “Then governance shouldn’t require silence.”

Hermione’s mouth twitched. “Idealism looks noble in print. In practice, it kills policy. Do you know what happens if you make those files public? Economic collapse. Panic. Hundreds of ex-Unspeakables exposed as thieves. The Ministry falls, and something worse replaces it.”

“I’m not responsible for what happens when truth surfaces.”

“Yes,” Hermione said softly. “You are. Because you lit the match.”

For a moment they were just two women who had once believed in the same kind of justice, standing on opposite sides of experience.

Hermione exhaled. “I used to think law was a ladder. Now I know it’s a maze. If you go far enough, you just end up where the Minotaur lives.”

Then she left, and the smell of lavender parchment and rain stayed behind like guilt.

That evening, Blaise received his summons.

The Board of Governors’ chamber was windowless, polished to the point of reflection. Twelve chairs, twelve silhouettes in diplomatic shadows.

“Mr. Zabini,” said the chairman, “you’ve served the Ministry with distinction. We’d prefer to keep it that way.”

He folded his hands. “Then stop asking me to lie.”

“You misunderstand.” The chairman smiled, the kind that never touched the eyes. “We’re asking you to choose realism. You and Ms. Weasley have uncovered material classified under the National Secrets Act. If it reaches the press, every signatory here will be indicted. Including your firm.”

“And if I refuse to suppress it?”

The chairman’s tone didn’t change. “We’ll disbar you before the week’s end. The court will strike the case from record. And the girl—” he paused delicately, “—will lose everything.”

Blaise looked at the polished table, at the faint distortion of his reflection there. “Then I suppose you’ll have to ruin us both.”

He walked out before they could answer.

That night he found Ginny in her office, lights off, one candle burning. She didn’t look surprised.

“They threatened me,” she said simply.

“They threatened me first.”

She gave a hollow laugh. “Efficient.”

He leaned against the window, watching the storm beyond the glass. “They’ll move faster now. The Board’s already ordered destruction of all classified archives by the end of the week. We have days.”

“To do what?”

“To decide if we’re lawyers or witnesses.”

She looked at him. “And which are you?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

For the next forty-eight hours they moved like ghosts through the Ministry. Blaise’s credentials opened doors that should have been impossible; Ginny’s persistence kept them from turning back. Together they copied everything: requisition forms, internal memos, correspondence between departments that shouldn’t have spoken to each other at all.

Each discovery led to another corridor of deceit.
One memo detailed the sale of extracted memories to private investors in Switzerland.
Another outlined a prototype called Project Mnemosyne—a predictive system built from harvested recollections to forecast dissent.

“It’s not intelligence,” Ginny whispered. “It’s prophecy.”

“Prophecy monetized,” Blaise corrected.

When they were done, they had enough to convict a dozen officials—and enough to end their own careers.

At dawn they met in the empty courtroom. It was strange to see it unlit, benches bare, the judge’s dais just furniture instead of authority. The sound of the rain on the high windows filled the room.

Blaise set his briefcase on the defense table. “I have a contact at The Prophet. A sympathetic editor.”

Ginny shook her head. “It’ll be buried before it prints. We need a record that can’t be silenced.”

“Which means?”

“The trial itself. We introduce the documents as evidence tomorrow. Once they’re read into the transcript, they become public domain.”

He hesitated. “They’ll disbar us.”

“They already promised to.”

He gave a quiet laugh. “You’re either mad or magnificent.”

“Both,” she said. “It’s hereditary.”

He looked at her then—really looked. The exhaustion had made her beautiful in a brutal way: sharp angles, determination like light through glass. He thought of the first day they’d argued in this room, how certain he’d been that she was an adversary. He still wasn’t sure she wasn’t.

“You’ll need to be careful tomorrow,” he said.

“So will you.”

“I don’t think we can both win.”

“Then let’s both lose honestly.”

They stood there until the candles guttered out.

That night neither of them slept. Blaise drafted the motion to reopen evidence. Ginny prepared the exhibits.

Somewhere between the footnotes and the cross-references, something unspoken settled between them—a shared recognition that this wasn’t law anymore. It was confession disguised as procedure.

When dawn finally broke, the city looked washed clean, almost merciful. The clock above the atrium struck seven.

Tomorrow, everything would burn or be reborn.

And in the fragile space before that verdict, Ginny Weasley and Blaise Zabini sat across from each other, surrounded by documents that could destroy an empire, drinking cold coffee in silence—the last honest partners left in a courtroom built for liars.

Chapter Text

Morning arrived not gently but with ceremony—rain scrubbed away by a thin, brutal light that made every surface of the Ministry gleam like it had been polished by guilt.

The courtroom was already full when Ginny entered. The hush that met her wasn’t respect; it was anticipation, the kind that trembles right before a verdict or a disaster. Reporters lined the back benches, quills suspended in anxious stillness. The judge hadn’t yet arrived. The air held the pause of theatre before curtain.

Blaise was at his desk, sleeves rolled, tie absent. He didn’t look up when she took her seat across the aisle. The faintest nod was enough—an acknowledgement, not an alliance.

At precisely nine, Justice Peregrine entered. His eyes flicked to the additional files stacked on both counsel’s tables, and the faint furrow of his brow betrayed his dread.

“Before we begin,” Blaise said, standing, voice like the first strike of a gavel, “the defense moves to reopen evidence under Clause 14 of the Transparency Act.”

The court clerk froze. “That clause was repealed five years ago.”

Blaise smiled. “The repeal was never ratified. The provision stands.”

The judge adjusted his spectacles. “On what grounds, Mr. Zabini?”

“On grounds,” Blaise said evenly, “that the integrity of these proceedings depends upon a complete record. The defense has obtained documents previously sealed by ministerial order. They concern the origin, funding, and scope of the Emergency Ethics Directive.”

A stir passed through the room. He continued, unflinching. “The documents are not flattering. But truth rarely is.”

Peregrine’s voice was careful. “And the source of these materials?”

Blaise met Ginny’s gaze. “Joint discovery.”

The room erupted. Reporters scribbled furiously, clerks whispering, officials blanching. The gavel hammered for order.

“Ms. Weasley,” the judge said, “do you concur?”

Ginny rose slowly. “I do, my Lord. The prosecution supports the motion. The public has the right to know the law it lives under.”

“This is highly irregular,” Peregrine warned.

“So is justice,” she said.

They began reading the evidence aloud, alternating paragraphs like litigants reciting scripture.

Each document was a revelation.
The first—financial ledgers tracing war-time funding to Vigilant Solutions, funneled through shell subsidiaries registered in Geneva.
The second—correspondence between senior Ministry officials authorizing “preemptive memory isolation for national security purposes.”
The third—a memorandum signed by Hermione Granger herself, ratifying “temporary privatization of cognitive assets.”

By the time they reached Project Mnemosyne, the courtroom was silent except for the sound of parchment turning.

Blaise read the final line.
“ Extracted recollections may be repurposed for predictive behavioral models, to anticipate dissidence before it manifests.”

A beat of quiet followed. Someone in the gallery muttered, “Gods.”

Ginny closed the folder. “My Lord, these documents demonstrate that the Ministry not only sanctioned but monetized theft of thought. It is not law; it is larceny disguised as legislation.”

Peregrine’s hand trembled on his gavel. “The court will recess—”

Before he could finish, a messenger burst through the doors, breathless. “My Lord—by order of the Minister—these proceedings are suspended pending review by the Office of Magical Security.”

The judge looked almost relieved. “Order accepted. The court is adjourned.”

But Ginny was already standing. “No, my Lord. You cannot adjourn what the people have already heard.”

“Ms. Weasley—”

“The record exists. The transcript exists. Every word spoken here today becomes public domain. You can seal the doors, but you can’t unwrite the law.”

Her voice carried like fire through the chamber.

Blaise watched her, unreadable. When she finished, he stood as well. “The defense joins the prosecution’s objection to adjournment.”

The judge stared between them, ancient weariness etched into every line of his face. “You both understand this may end your careers.”

Blaise inclined his head. “So be it.”

That night the transcript leaked. Not through the press—they had been silenced—but through the court’s own enchanted archives, whose copying charms were too old to erase. By dawn, every wizarding radio, every public Floo channel, every pub and platform whispered the same phrase: Memory is property of the State.

The scandal broke before breakfast. Ministry departments scrambled to deny authorship. The Board of Governors disbanded. Hermione Granger resigned before noon. By evening, half of London had marched on the Atrium, chanting a single word that hadn’t been used in generations: accountability.

Ginny stood at the window of her flat that night, watching the city flicker like a courtroom full of candles. Her career was over. Her name would live on every headline for a week and vanish the next. But for the first time in months, she could breathe.

A knock came at the door. She didn’t turn. “You’re late,” she said.

Blaise stepped inside, still wearing the same black coat from court. “You knew it would happen like this.”

“I hoped it would.”

“They’ll call us traitors.”

“They’ll call us everything but honest.”

He came to stand beside her. Below them, the streets were crowded with light. Protesters. Lanterns. Hope shaped like disobedience.

“So what now?” he asked.

She smiled faintly. “Now the law learns to remember.”

He studied her profile, the reflection of the city flickering across her eyes. “And us?”

She turned to face him. “We survive. That’s all lawyers ever do.”

A silence followed—dense, tender, inevitable.

Outside, the crowd roared.
Inside, neither of them moved.

For a moment, it felt like the entire country was holding its breath, waiting for whatever came after justice.

Chapter Text

The Ministry fell quietly, the way an old house surrenders to rot—without a crash, just a series of muffled surrenders.

By October, the inquiry commissions had multiplied like fungi. Every corridor of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement smelled of ink and paranoia. The war memorials out front, once gleaming, now stood fenced for “renovation.” No one said the word shame, but it hung in the air like residue.

The official story was still being written—literally. The new Minister, a charming bureaucrat with an unthreatening smile, announced a “Transparency Initiative” that mostly involved new stationery and the word reform.
In public, the government thanked the “courage of concerned citizens.”
In private, they drafted disbarment motions.

Ginny’s letter came on a Tuesday.

To: G. Weasley, Esq.
Pursuant to the Statutes of Professional Conduct, the Board has found evidence of unauthorized disclosure of sealed materials. A disciplinary hearing will convene on the 23rd of November. Attendance mandatory.
— Office of Legal Oversight

She read it three times, then placed it in the drawer under a stack of old case notes. The drawer was already full of ghosts.

She had moved offices by then—a small rented space above a café in Diagon Alley. The room had one window, one desk, and the smell of old books. It suited her. Clients still wrote to her—mostly letters of gratitude from the families whose stolen memories had been restored—but she didn’t answer them. Gratitude felt misplaced. Nothing about the past could be restored; it could only be remembered accurately.

Blaise visited once a week, always after dark, always unannounced. He still wore black suits but without ties, as if he’d retired from formality but not from irony.

“How’s exile treating you?” he asked once, standing by her window.

“I prefer the term sabbatical.”

“You’re still fighting.”

“I’m still breathing.”

He smiled faintly. “For lawyers, that’s the same thing.”

Sometimes they talked about the case. More often they didn’t. Their conversations had become their own kind of legal record: transcripts of things they would never admit in daylight.

One night, as she poured tea, she asked, “Did you ever want to win?”

He hesitated. “Once. Then I realized the prize was survival. And survival is rarely elegant.”

“You always sound like you’re quoting someone.”

“I am. Myself, usually.”

The inquiry hearings began two weeks later. The press called them The Memory Trials. Attendance was limited, but the transcripts leaked daily. Blaise and Ginny were summoned as “key participants.”

The chamber was smaller than the trial courtroom had been, but colder. No public benches, no press. Just a semicircle of officials pretending to be impartial. The new Chief Auditor, a man whose name no one ever remembered, presided.

“Ms. Weasley,” he began, “you admit to having released sealed evidence to the public?”

“I admit to having read it into the record,” she corrected.

“Knowing the consequences?”

“Knowing the cost of silence.”

“You violated statutory confidentiality.”

“I upheld moral obligation.”

He frowned, scribbling something. “And Mr. Zabini, you concur?”

Blaise’s tone was mild. “I concur that confidentiality is meaningless when the secret itself is criminal.”

“You both realize,” the Auditor said, “that the law cannot function if its officers decide which secrets are moral?”

“The law never functioned because of morality,” Ginny said quietly. “It functioned because people were afraid of what happens without it.”

The room stilled. Even the quills seemed to hesitate.

“Are you proud of what you’ve done, Ms. Weasley?”

She looked up. “No. But I’m finished being ashamed of it.”

When they were dismissed, the corridors were empty. Most Ministry workers avoided them now—the famous pair, the scandal incarnate.

They walked together in silence until they reached the atrium. The fountain had been drained, its golden statues shrouded in tarpaulin for “renovation.” The sound of their footsteps echoed in the hollow space.

Blaise stopped near the entrance. “They’ll clear me,” he said. “Too much politics. They need a scapegoat, not a martyr.”

“And me?”

“They’ll disbar you. Quietly. So they can call it closure.”

Ginny exhaled, slow. “Then maybe closure is overrated.”

He studied her face—the exhaustion etched like calligraphy, the faint tremor of resolve that had become her entire posture. “You know, you’re terrible at losing gracefully.”

“I had a good teacher.”

“Who?”

He smiled faintly. “You.”

The verdict came a week later. She was disbarred “with honor,” a phrase as meaningless as the law that issued it. Blaise was cleared “pending further review,” which meant indefinitely. The public lost interest within a month. Memory, after all, was a finite resource.

But the city remembered in quieter ways. The families whose recollections had been returned held vigils in the square. Someone painted REMEMBER US across the atrium’s west wall. The Ministry had it scrubbed off, but it reappeared every week, as if the building itself had learned defiance.

Winter came early that year. Ginny spent most evenings walking along the Thames, watching the water carry away reflections of Parliament and forgetting. One night she found Blaise there, coat collar turned up, cigarette burning like punctuation.

“You always find me,” she said.

“I know where guilt walks.”

They stood in silence for a while, the fog thick enough to make the world feel private.

“Do you regret it?” he asked.

“The trial?”

“Everything.”

She thought about it. “Regret is just memory with manners. I don’t have any left.”

He smiled. “That’s the most honest thing I’ve heard all year.”

They walked together, quietly. The city hummed around them—alive, bruised, self-correcting. Somewhere behind them, the Ministry lights flickered out one by one.

“Where will you go now?” he asked.

“Teach, maybe. Or write.”

“About what?”

“The law. And what it forgets.”

He nodded, exhaling smoke. “And me?”

“You’ll keep practicing. Someone has to argue with me in print.”

He laughed softly. “You think this ends?”

She looked at him. “It never ends. It just changes jurisdiction.”

Months later, when spring came, the Transparency Act was reinstated. Hermione testified before Parliament, her voice brittle but unwavering. The Memory Directive was formally repealed. No one mentioned Ginny by name, but the motion carried unanimously.

Blaise attended the hearing in silence. He saw Hermione hesitate once—just once—before saying for the greater good was never good enough.

Afterward, he left without speaking to her. Some debts weren’t meant to be collected.

Ginny never went back to the Ministry. She moved to a quieter part of London, took a teaching post at a small legal institute. Her students knew her only as Professor Weasley—the woman who could recite the entire Code of Magical Procedure from memory but never once called it sacred.

Blaise went into private arbitration, defending no one and everyone at once. Occasionally, they crossed paths at conferences or court reform panels. They still argued about everything, but with the ease of two people who had already survived their own verdicts.

Every few months, an anonymous article appeared in The Daily Prophet: elegantly written op-eds on legal ethics, reform, the dangers of secrecy. The byline was always the same: B.Z. & G.W.
No one knew who they were. Everyone suspected.

Years later, when the first generation of new lawyers stood before their own tribunals, they would quote a line from those essays like scripture:

The law remembers what we make it remember.

And somewhere in a quiet London café, Ginny Weasley would smile over her coffee, knowing that was enough.