The Last Drop |Tom Riddle|

Chapter Twenty Four: Change of Plans

||

The preliminary hearings weren't what anyone expected. All they knew was that it was cut short and the Ministry and all those who came to witness were left standing in the Atrium with confused faces and silent murmurs.

Eleanor's throat was knotted up as she was escorted out of the Wizengamot with Dumbledore , Wilhelmina, and the other council members. Ruby's face was singed in her mind, her wicked grin as she plead not guilty unable to be rid of her thoughts, knowing that this would now develop into a full blown trial in which she was now going to be part of.

Through the hallway they entered in, they swiftly returned to the Auror office, keeping their heads down as they found the one secluded space they could find and Eleanor's family was calling out from behind her.

"Ruby is fucking insane." Eleanor finally said, her chest shaking with every breath. "How is she allowed to do that? This was a preliminary hearing, she can't just say whatever she wants and derail this thing before it even starts!"

The others piled in the room, the council still murmuring to themselves while her, Wilhelmina, and Dumbledore stood there in the board room absolutely dumbfounded.

"Don't say a word, Eleanor. The council is to remain neutral and nothing you say here will change that." Dumbledore advised, also looking quite flustered as he took a deep breath.

"What happens now? The trial against Ruby will continue as tradition follows, but what does her accusation against Eleanor mean?" Wilhelmina asked.

The large table in the center of the room separated them from the council of three men she could barely put a name to. They were the most senior advisers of these proceedings and part of Wilhelmina's closest circle. Their mere suggestions have shifted the way the the Ministry operated as a whole at times. But they stood there looking at Eleanor looking as distressed as she felt.

"The accused will often become the accuser in times of immense pressure, looking to scapegoat and divert attention away from them when it is their name on the trial." said the man with hair as white as snow, standing tall and lean above the others.

Harold Swarthmore, an advisor to when even her father was a Minister. He had every reason to be biased to the girl who's been in the public eye since birth.

But the others beside him, looking more grim and wrinkly than the other remained silent. Something about their demeanor was withholding as Eleanor looked at them desperately.

"I think the question is," the man beside Harold said, emerging forward to press his old, gnarled hands with rings seemingly stuck their for ages, against the edge of the table. "how do you plead against the accusations Ruby has set against you?"

Wilhelmina and Dumbledore did a double take as Eleanor scoffed in the man's face.

Taking a glance around at the room, she saw all of their work up on the cork board against the wall. It was all the compiled evidence against Ruby and the Wizards Against Purists. They were putting a new meaning to the fact that this was her trial.

"You can't be serious. Does Ruby even have the right to make such a profound accusation in her position? Is the weight of her words that capable of dragging Eleanor into this?" Wilhelmina scowled at the men.

The man who stepped forward initially to ask her how she pleads sighed.

"There is a small contingency in this scenario that has never been fully defined before. However, in the past when the defendant in the presence of the Wizengamot decides to accuse another for their role in the same trial, it typically goes unsaid and dismissed. It never unfolds the same way every time."