Reality Bites Harry Potter

S.W.A.P

By the time the very first Gingerpuff meeting of the year rolled around, I had done a lot of research on wrongly accused prisoners. It was very popular to just immediately put someone in Azkaban back when Voldemort was really active since it was really hard to decipher who was telling the truth and who was lying. From what I've found out, most of the men and women being accused had claimed that Voldemort forced them to do the things they did and denounced Voldemort entirely. Some of them succeeded in avoiding Azkaban like a certain Malfoy we know. Others were not so lucky and were sent to Azkaban anyway. And then there were prisoners like Sirius who were completely innocent and then sent to Azkaban without a trial. From what I can tell, about eighty percent of those who went to Azkaban specifically because of their affiliation with Voldemort were given trials.

Sirius, unfortunately, was one of the twenty percent who was immediately whisked off to Azkaban without question. I wrote a few letters to the Ministry and asked if it was possible to look at the public records about those cases. I was granted access and they sent over copies of several cases. Sirius' case of course was just the bare minimum, but I assumed that was because either there was no trial or it was for the fact that Sirius escaped Azkaban and it's now an open case. Looking through the other cases though squashed the idea of it being because Sirius didn't have a trial. All of these cases went over the lives of imprisoned men and women and delved into their history and how they ended up 'allegedly' being affiliated with Voldemort. But Sirius' case was empty besides what I already know due to reading the books. It was frustrating, but I had to remind myself that I wasn't only doing this for just Sirius. I was doing this for ALL wrongly accused prisoners. Checking over the other cases I was given, I read through their backgrounds, and there weren't any red flags popping up in over half of them. This is ridiculous.

One prisoner graduated from Hogwarts with very good grades, was head boy, quidditch team captain, and went on to work for the Ministry as a solicitor. A really good solicitor according to the records. So, how did he end up being sentenced to Azkaban? I looked further and noticed that there were witnesses stating they saw him speaking to a suspicious person wearing a black cloak with their hood up. It doesn't look like they found the hooded person and it doesn't look like they even gave this man a chance to defend himself. They just chucked him into Azkaban. There wasn't any evidence to suggest that this man was supporting Voldemort. He wasn't making weird payments or taking out weird amounts of money and he wasn't going to shady places on a daily basis.

His record is squeaky clean, he hasn't had any trouble with the law. So, I don't get it. I understand people were scared at the time and they wanted to make arrests, but that didn't mean it was okay to convict innocent people. And there isn't any information on the witnesses. What the hell? Well, no one is perfect I guess. It wasn't until lunch time when I figured out the name. Pansy and I were talking and she said the word 'support' causing it to click. "That's it!" I exclaimed loudly, causing Pansy and Theo to jump.

"What are you on about?" Pansy asked me, lifting an eyebrow.

"I just figured something out and you won't find out about it until the first Gingerpuff meeting." I said grinning. She pouted at me.

"Fine." She said, before sticking her tongue out at me. I'm going to name it S.W.A.P: Support for Wrongly Accused Prisoners. We could take on cases of prisoners who believe they've been wrongly accused! Of course, I'd have to do a lot of research for the cases and figure out a way to talk to the accused. But I think with enough persistence, it'll be doable. And the research part won't be too hard with the Gingerpuff members helping out! Yay, now I just need to work on keeping it to myself until the meeting. The Saturday before Halloween was the day of the first Gingerpuff meeting. Everyone but the new initiates were here.

"Okay, first on the agenda is to announce the new initiates." Shay said once everyone had settled down. It was crazy how large our group has gotten since first year. "I've chosen Luca Russo and Astoria Greengrass as our new initiates this year."