As soon as the trial of Lord Sirius Black III was lawfully aborted, the session ended. Harry had informed Madam Bones he believed he would need an hour to present his evidence in support of clearing his godfather's name. They did not even use half of that. That meant they were now early for the actual sitting of the General Meeting of the Wizengamot. It was barely past 9.30am and the session was not due to start until 10.00am.
Because the Longbottoms were sitting under glamours in the visitors' gallery, Harry had wanted to join them and Hermione there. However, he was blocked from doing so by quite a few of the Members who wanted to either berate or congratulate him on his case. Sirius was able to fend most of those off for him.
He was also very thankful Bones wasn't that annoyed with him using 'her' case to give the Wizengamot a smack-down he felt it richly deserved. He thought it had to do with him engineering getting the Longbottoms healed, but was happy to accept it.
Then there was the barely aborted meeting with Augusta Longbottom on the main floor. The aurors had to heatedly threaten her with arresting her and taking her from the chamber in magic-restricting manacles if she continued to try to get to Harry, before she finally backed off. By then, he had over half a dozen of them acting as a shield between he and her. Even Sirius stepped between them.
After everything calmed down - with Longbottom storming off to, apparently, give Bones another serve - he finally managed to get about ten to twelve minutes of sitting with Hermione, Frank and Alice before the start of the session.
However, even that was delayed when the reporters sitting in the gallery hurried to the top of the stairs and then tried to use the opportunity to interrogate him before he even set foot on the bottom step. Again, the aurors had to step in and ultimately threaten them with being tossed from the chamber before they stopped. And again, Sirius stepped up first to block them. Which cut his time down to about three minutes.
That would have been just enough time for him to be congratulated and earn a kiss on the cheek from Hermione before they had to settle down for the start of the session. However, at that moment Neville came running into the chamber. He was out of breath.
Harry had to stop and greet him at the foot of stairs leading up into the Visitors' Gallery to give the boy's parents a chance to compose themselves on seeing their son, without letting the cat out of the bag.
"Nev!" said a happy Harry. "What kept you?"
Still trying to get his breath back, Neville frowned and replied, "Gran locked me in my room using a charm I didn't know how to break. It took me ages to figure out a way past it."
"If you couldn't break it, then how did you get past it?" asked Harry.
Neville gave a wide grin and replied, "I did what you told me to do, Harry. I thought, 'If I can't get out through the door, how else can I get out?'
"I tried to get Fluxy, our indoors house elf, to pop me out, but she wouldn't. Gran had already taken my emergency evacuation portkey away from me, so that was out too. Then I saw the window. I tried it and it opened."
"That would have been a bit of a jump," he said.
Neville grinned even more and said, "Nope. I took the bedding off my bed, tied the ends of each together at the corners to make a bit of a rope, tied one end to my bed, and used that to shimmy down the side of the Hall.
'You forgot you could cast a cushioning charm on the ground and just jump,' thought Harry. But, he held his tongue. His friend and god-brother had solved the problem, so that was all that mattered.
"I'm just kicking myself it took me the better part of an hour to figure it out and accomplish it," continued Neville. "I only managed to get out about ten minutes ago.
"I then ran inside, used the Hall fireplace to floo to the atrium here and practically ran from there to here."
"You made it," grinned Harry. "And well done for thinking 'outside the box' and coming at the problem from a different direction!"
Now getting his breathing back under control, Neville asked, "Where is everyone?"
"Well, the Members are in the area behind the Seats and getting ready to walk back in; that includes your grandmother." He then pointed up the stairs and said, "And Hermione and Sirius are sitting up there with a couple of people we've just met."
"How'd the case go?" he asked.
"I'll let Hermione explain that to you," grinned Harry. "You know she'll want to, anyway."
Neville chuckled and said, "Yeah, she will."
Moments later, even as Neville was climbing the stairs into the visitors' gallery, the Members filed back in.
No sooner had they done so, still talking animatedly about the case that 'went wonky' and Harry's part in it, when the Herald announced the call for the members to assemble.
As the clock struck the hour Bones, sitting as Acting Madam Minister and Chief Warlock pro Tempore, banged her gavel and called the meeting to order.
"New business," she declared. "First on the docket is the induction of a New member, Lord Harrison James Potter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Potter."
Harry was already striding up the floor to take his place before the defendant's chair directly in front of her.
Meanwhile, Frank was almost having to sit on his wife to stop her jumping up and hugging their son as he walked past them to go and sit on the other side of Hermione.
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