Chapter Text
He plucked at the sleeves of his new robes, smoothed the fabric, and adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses. He knew he looked good or at least as good as one could look when one had to turn every Knut over three times. The robes had been an investment, paid for by the little money he had actually put aside for the first month's rent of his own flat.
But first impressions were everything. He had known that even as Head Boy.
He stood in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, a small, red-haired dot in the crowd of bustling officials streaming out of the fireplaces. He waited. His father had promised to pick him up to take him to the Department of Wizengamot Administration Services. A junior assistant position. Sorting files, writing minutes for hearings on cauldron thickness. It wasn't glamorous, but it would fund his studies in Magical Law.
A painful tug in his chest reminded him why he was standing here and not in a street café in Rome or on a beach in Nice. Penny. She was gone. "I can't fall directly from graduation into an office," she had said. She wanted to live, travel, see the world whilst they were still young. Everyone else was doing it. His friends from his graduating year sent owls from Italy, Spain, France. He had been forced to decline. He had no Galleons for travel, unless one won a prize draw again.
He barely had Galleons for a flat in London. The last room he had looked at had been little more than a hovel under the roof, where water dripped through the rotten beams and plaster crumbled from the walls. Yet he hadn't even had the twenty Galleons for that, although it cost only half of what he would have had to pay for other flats.
He clenched his hands into fists. He would not end up like his father. He would not let a peculiar passion or a stubborn sense of equality and justice stand in his way. Those were exactly the reasons why his father had been treading water his whole life.
"Are you the new one?"
The voice tore him from his dreary thoughts. It was high and clear, with a cultivated undertone that betrayed authority. He looked down. Before him stood a small woman whose appearance stood out distinctly from the grey, black, and green robes of the surrounding officials. She wore a fluffy cardigan in a shocking pink over her robes, and in her curly, mouse-brown hair sat a black velvet bow that held her hairstyle neatly together.
Her face was broad and smooth, with a mouth stretched into a polite, if practised, smile. Her large eyes surveyed him attentively, as if estimating his value to the Ministry.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked, thrown off balance for a moment.
"The assistant," she said, batting her eyelashes. "Personnel said they were sending someone reliable. Fresh from school, malleable, ambitious."
He straightened up automatically. "Yes, Ma'am. I passed my N.E.W.T.s with distinction and was..."
"Excellent," she interrupted him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Come. We are already running late." She turned on the heel of her small shoes and trotted off without checking if he followed.
He hesitated. He cast a glance towards the lifts, hoping to see the familiar, slightly shabby green of his father's work robes. He would surely come any moment, probably held up by a colleague to whom he was enthusiastically explaining a Park-O-Meter or whatever those metal posts were called that his father firmly believed helped Muggles control the earth's rotation. But there was no one. The young man gripped his briefcase tighter. This was the Administrative Service, he told himself. She must be the head. He hurried after her.
In the lift, she pressed the button for Level 1. His stomach gave a little hop. Level 1? Not Level 2? Perhaps she had pressed the wrong button, but he didn't want to say anything.
"Which House were you in?" she asked abruptly, whilst examining her reflection in the shiny wall and adjusting the bow.
"Gryffindor," he answered dutifully. "I was a Prefect and..."
"Gryffindor." She wrinkled her nose. "Well, yes. No one is without faults. I was in Slytherin." She turned her head and smiled at him. It was a smile that promised loyalty, as long as one was useful. "We know that ambition is not a dirty trait. Until recently, I headed the Improper Use of Magic Office. But you know... sometimes one must recognise where the true power lies. One must be ready to seize opportunities when they present themselves."
The lift stopped. The doors opened onto a corridor lined with thick, purple carpet. The silence up here was heavy and reverent. "Campaign Management," she trilled as she walked ahead. "For the future, young man. Who determines the image, determines reality."
He followed her, confused. Campaign Management? He was supposed to provide administrative support. Stamp forms.
"Do you have experience abroad?" she asked suddenly, without slowing her pace. "That is important for what I have in mind."
He blinked in surprise.
"Egypt," he answered quickly, almost reflexively. "I was there with my family." A shadow flitted across his face. "Though my mother stayed at home. She... couldn't."
"Lovely," she said curtly, without showing any real interest in the background. She opened a heavy oak door at the end of the corridor.
"Apologies for the delay, gentlemen," she trilled with a zealous nod to the room. "I just had to collect our new assistant for the minutes."
He stopped in the doorway as if he had run into an invisible wall. This was no office for assistants. This was a conference room. And at the head of the long table, upon which lay a lime-green bowler hat, sat the Minister for Magic himself. Cornelius Fudge was leafing nervously through a stack of parchment. Two other men, whom he vaguely recognised from the Daily Prophet, sat further down the table.
Fudge did not deign to look at her. He seemed not to have heard her words at all. His forehead was furrowed deep in thought as he stared at a chart lying before him. "The poll numbers are a catastrophe," he muttered stressed, more to himself than to the others. "If we don't stop this trend, we lose the election before it has even begun."
The small woman in pink pointed wordlessly to a lonely chair at the very back of the corner of the room. "Sit there. And take minutes of everything. Every word."
He was still standing in the doorframe. His heart hammered against his ribs. This was a mistake. A huge mistake. His father was probably waiting two floors down right now, or worse, in the Atrium. He was supposed to start in the Administrative Service. This here... this was the Ministerial level. This was politics. This was a level his father had always said one should stay away from because it corrupted the character.
"Well, get on with it," the woman hissed at him. Her sweet voice was suddenly sharp as a scalpel. She noticed his hesitation. Her large eyes narrowed minimally. "Or are you perhaps unable to write?"
He looked at her. He looked at the Minister, who was rubbing his forehead. Then he thought of the flat with the leaking roof. He thought of Penny's letters, full of sun and freedom, whilst he stood here in the rain counting beans. He thought of his brothers' worn-out robes.
If he said now that he was wrong, he would turn around, take the lift down and spend his life in a windowless office, just like his father. He would remain poor. He would remain insignificant.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin and stepped into the room. "Naturally," he said with a firm voice.
He went to the small table, opened his case and pulled out a fresh roll of parchment. Then he placed quill and inkwell carefully beside it. Finally, he drew his wand. With a short, precise flick, he tapped against the quill. Immediately the feather awoke to life, dipped itself independently into the ink and hovered expectantly over the paper, ready to greedily scribble along with every spoken word.
"Right," said Fudge and clapped his hands. "How do we sell to the public that we have the situation under control without spreading panic?"
One of the two gentlemen, a man with a face like a neglected bulldog, leaned heavily back in his chair. "The problem, Cornelius, is the fundamental trust. In the last two years, there have been two breakouts. The security situation is unstable. The public feels threatened, and they hold the Administration directly responsible."
"One of them was innocent!" Fudge threw in hastily and dabbed his sweat-wet forehead with a handkerchief. "One must not forget that."
The man with the bulldog face snorted dismissively. "That contributes precious little to popularity, Minister. An innocent in Azkaban? That makes us look incompetent. Death Eater on the loose? That makes us look weak."
"The thing with the innocence... that was before my time!" stammered Fudge defensively. He reached for his bowler hat, which lay before him on the table, and held it like a shield before his chest, as if it could ward off the criticism. "That... that was Crouch. Not me."
"The people on the street don't care about that," the second gentleman now intervened, who was younger and playing boredly with his wand. "They only see the headlines. And they see Amelia Bones. They see that she ensured the acquittal. They connect justice with her, not with you." He made a dismissive hand gesture. "And then there would be the Hogwarts Problem."
At these words, the quill paused briefly before scratching on. He knew only too well what the man was alluding to. The 'Hogwarts Problem' was no abstract political phrase for him. It was the bitter reality of a year in which the safety of the castle had crumbled again. He remembered the uproar of the parents who saw their children in danger. A fear that had not stopped before his own family. After all, they had been directly affected in both cases.
Fudge cut him off immediately, his voice becoming shrill. "Bones is not running! She is now Chief Warlock and thus neutral. And Hogwarts... McGonagall still has the leadership and the school still lies outside my direct jurisdiction." He exhaled heavily. "But we will come back to that later again. I have something big to announce in this regard."
"If I may interrupt the gentlemen briefly?" sounded a sweet, almost childlike clearing of the throat.
Fudge blinked confusedly in the direction of the woman in pink, as if he had forgotten she was in the room at all. "Of course... er... our..." He frowned, obviously searching for a name or title, but then gave up and waved vaguely with his hand. "...our Campaign Manager."
She smiled, yet her eyes remained coldly fixed on the men. She sat up bolt upright, which lent her, despite her small size, a disturbing presence. "In a few weeks begins an event for which the entire nation is feverish," she said with her high voice, which stood in contrast to the hardness of her words. "From all over the world they will come. The eyes of the international community will be directed at us."
The young man in the corner watched fascinated as his quill raced over the parchment to capture her words.
"People only see images," she continued, and her voice took on an almost imploring tone. "They do not want debates about security protocols. They want good news. If we use this event targetedly... if we present ourselves as hosts who offer not only games but order and glamour... then that will not only raise the poll numbers. No, it will polish up our entire image abroad."
She folded her small hands on the table. "Give them a spectacle, Cornelius. And they will forget what happens in the dark corners."
Silence settled over the room. Then the man with the bulldog face nodded slowly. The younger one also stopped playing with his wand and nodded appreciatively. Consensual nodding went through the round.
In this moment there was a knock at the heavy oak door. A dry, demanding sound that broke the silence abruptly.
The heads of those present jerked around. The woman in pink and the two gentlemen exchanged irritated glances before turning questioningly to the Minister. Obviously, no further guest had been planned.
Fudge, on the other hand, did not appear surprised, only briefly thrown off beat. He pulled a gold pocket watch from his waistcoat, cast a brief glance at it and let it disappear again with a snap. A self-satisfied smile smoothed the worry lines on his forehead. By the way, you won't have to wait long: the first real chapter will be posted this Sunday!
"A little too early," he muttered, more to himself. Then he straightened up, put the bowler hat aside and pointed with a theatrical gesture to the locked door.
"But that, gentlemen... and lady," he said with a voice that suddenly burst with new confidence, "should be our solution to the Hogwarts Problem."