i am lord voldemort • Tom Riddle

Alternative Timeline: XXXIV

Her escorts had bound her hands and obscured her face before allowing Lae out of her austere room, claiming it was to prevent her from pilfering any wands along the way. Not an ungrounded fear, she'd give them that, because that was exactly something she gleefully pictured herself doing. She half expected them to knock her unconscious with the promise of reanimating her when they reached their destination, even going so far as to sarcastically say as much. Theseus, straight-faced, informed her that they indeed seriously considered that option, but ultimately decided it wouldn't set the right tone for the trial in the eyes of any undecided judges. Not the response she'd been hopping for by a long shot.

Obviously under the impression she wouldn't dare attempt Legilimency surrounded by so many others, they mercifully removed the blindfold before ushering her inside the trial room. Frankly, it came as a shock that they withheld from binding her legs, too, but she chose to keep that thought private, lest it give anyone unsavory ideas.

Rows upon rows of ascending chairs encased the sparsely decorated, round auditorium, seating several dozen handsomely dressed Ministerial Judges already assembled for the trial by the time Theseus and another Auror led Lae to a chair at its epicenter. She craned her neck just to take them all in, searching out familiar faces for any semblance of comfort. The few she spotted inspired no such warm feelings. She saw the Minister of Magic. A spattering of Aurors from her Hogwarts capture. Fenella's father. A handful of people baring vague resemblance to her Hogwarts classmates.

Albus Dumbledore.

Her eyes stalled over him far longer than the rest. He traded out the trim coat he usually donned at the castle for a set of flowing light grey Wizarding robes, the same shade as overcast clouds. It was no doubt an attempt to appear like the rest, illustrating he was indeed one of them, truly on their side after all their contention around his unwillingness to confront Grindelwald, but it was an effort in vain. Anyone with eyes could see how truly, unambiguously other he was. He was too... something, and she wasn't sure she could put her name on what exactly that was. It went beyond just his magical prowess, to something fundamental, she was sure. Perhaps she was simply biased.

Pushing at the edges of Lae's periphery, a severe woman to the Minister's left leaned forward over her podium. "State your name for the court."

Lae opened her mouth to respond, and hesitated at the last moment. So many choices. Was she Ophelia Ashwood, the false name created by her and Dumbledore one summer evening after waking up in the Hospital Wing on her first day at Hogwarts? Or was she Lae Arcades, two words not uttered together for more than a decade, the last vestige of her long dead fathered and a mother that couldn't care less? Could she be both? Neither?

Eventually, she smiled, a knowing curve of her lips. What a coincidence that the answer they desired to hear and the truth, for once, aligned.

"Lae Grindelwald." She strengthened her voice to allow it to carry all across the echoing antechamber. "I am Lae Grindelwald, as you well know, or else we wouldn't be here."

"Watch your tongue," an older wizard in the front row said sharply. "Show some respect."

"I meant no disrespect," she replied, and found she wasn't lying. "But you can't deny it's the truth. I'm not here by any actions I've taken, am I? I am only here because of my chosen last name, because of the lottery of my birth."

She prayed they didn't know about Julius. Killing him, most certainly, was a crime. Murder usually was, she found, in most countries. Which Ministry had he infiltrated from again?

"Albus, control your charge, lest she make her situation worse," Prime Minister Spencer-Moon interjected, sounding almost bored, and watching Lae closely with the most peculiar expression on his face.