No Laughing Matter

When Fred arrived at Carly's apartment and knocked on her door, he felt someone watching him, and turned to look down the hall we had just come down. One of the three doors on the opposite side was open a crack, and there was a curious eye was visible there, taking note of his red hair, navy colored robes, and the bouquet of flowers (real this time) in his hand. Fred smiled and waved at the resident and chuckled, as whomever it was quickly closed the door. Carly opened the door just then, looking a bit nervous, but very pretty in her white St. Mungo's robes, with her hair in a knot on top of her head.

"Hi," she greeted him, stepping forward to press her mouth to his. "I'm surprised Mrs. Dunmeyer isn't spying on us. She usually never shuts her door."

"I think I must have spooked her," Fred said, holding out the flowers. "These are for you."

Carly smiled and brought the bouquet of red tulips to her face to smell them, wondering if he knew he had brought her blooms that represented a declaration of love. Whether he did or not, they were lovely, and she stepped aside to invite him into her home. "Two bouquets in one day! You'll spoil me."

"That's the idea." Fred winked as he followed her into her flat. He decided to bide his time before telling her about Percy and the attempted break-in. Knowing he was being a bit cowardly, he concentrated on relaxing and waiting for an appropriate opening to bring the subject up.

The inside of Carly's apartment was a warm and inviting. There was a small hallway with three doors off of it that he supposed led to the bedrooms and bathroom, and then a larger room that served as a living room, office and dining area. The kitchen was at the far back of the great room, separated by a swinging door. The furniture was grouped in such a way as to separate the room into distinct areas, to create the illusion of more space.

In the little time she had been here, she had managed to add little personal touches to everything and transform it into a home. He liked it immediately. He hung his cloak next to Carly's on one of the hooks by the door and looked around. A few small boxes were stacked neatly against one wall, with labels that told Fred that she hadn't quite finished unpacking, but he couldn't see anything that was missing in the room. There were jewel-bright pillows on an old, fancy velvet couch and matching chair, and a low table between them that held a pretty ruby colored oil lamp. A slightly cluttered desk sat against the far wall, with an assortment of quills, ink and parchment in varied colors scattered over its surface. Kyna sat contentedly near the open window on a highly stylized wrought iron perch, watching this newcomer move about the room, taking everything in.

Fred examined the only artwork adorning her walls, a painting of the sea, with waves crashing against the shore. It appeared to be low tide, and a small redheaded child was crouched by a tidal pool, a short stick in hand, seemingly examining something below the surface. A gull swooped lazily in an out of the frame, and every once in a while another child with flame colored hair would run quickly in and out of sight. Carly went to the kitchen to fins a vase for the flowers, and came back to place them on a low side table when she noticed what he was looking at.

"My mother painted that when I was just a child," she said, coming to stand beside him. "We were on holiday in France. That's my sister Rowan there; the rest of us must be off playing somewhere."

"It's really good. Is your mother an artist?" Little Rowan stuck her hand into the tidal pool and pulled out a starfish.

"It's just a hobby, she says, but it doesn't stop people from commissioning portraits from time to time." Carly smiled fondly at the picture and then turned away to finish setting the tabl. "I hope you don't mind, but I stopped at a Muggle restaurant and picked up some dinner. I didn't have time to cook anything myself, and I have a terrible weakness for pizza."

"Do you do that a lot?" Fred asked curiously. "Visit Muggle shops?"

"Not a lot, no," she answered, lighting the candles in the center of the table with a wave of her wand. "But I like to wander into one every once in a while. I like watching them and seeing all of the things that they think up to do the simplest tasks with out magic."

They sat down to eat, and Fred told her all about the razor contraption his father had shown him at his last visit home. They discussed Muggles in general, and different observations that they each had made about them while they enjoyed their meal. Comfortable in each other's company, they moved to the couch when they were finished with the pizza, and Carly lit a fire in the little grate under the painting he had admired earlier. There were now two children, a boy and a girl, building a sand castle in it, paying no attention to the rising tide that would doubtless wash away all of their hard work in the next hour or so. The skinny little boy reminded Fred of Percy and he stared at it for a few moments while gathering his thoughts for what he was about to tell her.

"So are you going to tell me about what's been bothering you?" Carly asked shrewdly. "You've had those little lines in your brow since you got here."

Fred wasn't surprised at her observation. She had gotten to know him very well over the past week, and he was grateful that she had given him the opening to tell her everything he needed to say. With a nod, he answered, "It's about Percy."

Ah, thought Carly, The missing brother. She moved closer to him and took his hand in hers for comfort and encouragement.

"Okay," she said evenly. "Let's hear it."

He started by telling her about last night's events and how Mrs. Grist had seen Percy fleeing from the scene. He explained about the visit to his father at the ministry and about seeing Percy there, but being overlooked by him.

"Okay," Carly said, when he took came to the end of that part of his account. "A couple of questions come to mind. First, when the alarm went off, why didn't he just apparate instead of running away? Was it panic? Was he running blindly, or did he have a destination in mind?"

"I've asked myself those very same questions, but haven't come up with a satisfactory answer," Fred answered. He smiled slightly at the unconscious way Carly was stroking his hand to comfort him.

"Secondly, why would he pretend not to see you?"

"I'm not sure that he was pretending," Fred said thoughtfully. "If it had been anybody else, I would have said that he was hung over or something; he just seemed really out of it... I guess for you to understand all of this, I need to go back a couple of years. I've never really gotten along with Percy. He's always been a by-the-book type of guy. He just lives for rules and regulations and sees everything as black or white, very little or no gray. When he graduated from Hogwarts, he got a job with the Ministry of Magic (with our father's help) with the Department of International Magical Cooperation. He loved his job and was constantly talking about his boss. We used to joke that he would never go home if they didn't make him; he was really obsessed with dong a perfect job and advancing in his career. I think that he really believes that he'll be Minister for Magic one day."

"Is that so impossible?" Carly asked. She wondered if Fred's opinion was colored by his personal feelings.

"It is if he doesn't open his eyes and take the blinders off," Fred said bluntly. "I was about to start my sixth year at Hogwarts when he got his first job. That year, the school tried to resurrect the Tri-Wizard Tournament; a series of tasks that one champion from each of three schools would be chosen to participate in...."

Fred went on to explain the events of that year, and how Percy's boss, Barty Crouch, had been under the Imperius curse, and was being controlled by Lord Voldemort, living in a rudimentary body he had created to sustain him until he could be restored to his own body. How Percy had blithely taken orders from an Imperius controlled Crouch, delivered daily by owl. How he had ignored and made excuses for Crouch's odd behavior and extended absences so that he, Percy, would not lose his own position of newfound authority. When it had been discovered that Crouch, Sr. had been under the Imperius curse, and that Percy had failed to notice anything amiss, Percy's situation had looked very bad, indeed.

The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had been an imposter all along, and had in fact been Barty Crouch, Jr., (whom everyone had believed to be dead) working for Voldemort. He had been put in place to try to lure Harry away from Hogwarts so that Lord Voldemort could use him to get a body back, and then dispose of him. Harry had witnessed the re-birth of Lord Voldemort, and the murder of a fellow Tri-Wizard champion, and then narrowly escaped back to Hogwarts to warn them all. When Harry had told his story to the Minister himself, Cornelius Fudge had refused, outright, to believe it. Crouch's odd behavior was written off as a nervous break-down, and his son was given the Dementor's Kiss - his soul was utterly gone - and could not give testimony of the events that led up to Voldemort's re-birth.

The Ministry completely turned it's back on the evidence, and had vowed to put an end to the 'hysteria' that Fudge believed Harry was trying to start in the Wizarding World. The summer following Fred's sixth year, Percy was suddenly offered a position as Junior Assistant to the Minister for Magic.

"That sounds like an important position," Carly said, when Fred paused. "Especially for someone who had just made such a huge error in judgment in his last position."

"That's what my father said," Fred nodded in agreement, "when Percy came home with the news. He was so excited and proud of himself, and actually thought he had earned and deserved a position that would normally have taken him years to achieve. When my dad brought it up, he completely glossed over the fact that he had been the focus into an inquiry about Crouch, Sr., and had been reprimanded for not informing a superior about his boss's unstable state. Next thing we all know, he's been offered a prime position in the Minister's own office."

"Why would they do that, if they doubted his abilities?" Carly asked with a puzzled expression.

"That's where the trouble really starts. You see, the headmaster at Hogwarts is Albus Dumbledore, a very powerful..."

"Oh! I know who he is!" Carly interrupted. "My Uncle Nigel is very fond of him. I met him once, when I was about ten; he came to dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's while I was visiting. My family at home was all outraged when we heard about how he was being slandered and discredited here. Go on."

"Well when Fudge outright refused to accept that Harry was telling the truth about You-Know-Who's return, he and Dumbledore came to a parting of the ways. Fudge convinced himself that Dumbledore was trying to get him to back a false story in order to make him look bad, and then expose him as a fool, and take over Fudge's position at the Ministry. It's just complete rubbish." Fred spoke vehemently as Carly gave his fingers a squeeze in support. "Dumbledore has always believed Harry, and my parents have always believed Dumbledore. When Percy was forced to choose between the two, and decide whom he was going to trust, he chose to believe in Fudge and the Ministry over Dumbledore and our parents. Fudge then makes it well known that anyone who is in contact with, or supports Dumbledore will get sacked. He's wanted to sack my father for years, and...."

"Why on earth would he want to get rid of your father?" Carly asked, sincerely shocked at the prospect.

"Because Fudge is a Purist. My family is pure blood, but like I told you, my dad loves Muggles and all of their crazy contraptions. He works in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, and hasn't had a promotion or a pay raise in the five years that Fudge has been Minister; prejudiced old prat that he is. You may have noticed that my family isn't exactly living a lavish lifestyle... well Fudge can be thanked for a great deal of that. Anyway, when my dad points out that Fudge may be using him as an unwitting spy to find out who is in contact with Dumbledore - mainly my Dad- Percy went nuts. He started insulting my father and saying that he's a big joke around the Ministry, and that he's embarrassed to be a member of our family...then he went on about how Dumbledore is a fool and that if Mum and Dad were going to follow him, then they were fools, too. He said that he was gong to make sure that everyone knew that he no longer considered himself a member of our family, and moved out of the house and into an apartment in London. He made Mum cry."

Fred's voice had been getting increasingly gruff as he fought back the feelings of anger and betrayal he felt toward his brother, and he had to for the last few words out around the lump that had been steadily growing in this throat. The memory of his mother's heart broken tears was painted indelibly on his mind's eye, and he knew that no matter what else happened, it would be a long, long time before he forgave Percy for that. When he looked up into Carly's sympathetic eyes to see tears pooled there, his heart melted.

"There's been little contact from him since then. Mum went to try and reason with him, but he just shut the door in her face. He sent back the sweater she made him for Christmas... That was when I wrote him off as a total loss. He even sent Ron a letter at school to try and turn him against Harry and Dumbledore and join ranks with Delores Umbridge; she was this foul little witch from the Ministry, sent in to spy openly on Dumbledore. George and I had had enough of Umbridge by the middle of May, and left school to start up our business, so we weren't there when..."

"You left school?" Carly put a hand up to interrupt him once more. She was shocked at the impish grin he shot her at her stunned question. "You never finished school?"

"You sound like my mother," he teased, tugging playfully at her fingers. "Yes. I quit school. But that's a story for another time. Where was I? Oh yeah, we weren't there when things really began to happen. You see, Harry was tricked by You-Know-Who into believing that his Godfather, Sirius, was being held and tortured in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry."

Fred gave some of the background story of how the fires and all mail had been policed by Umbridge, and Dumbledore had been ousted from the school at the time. Professor McGonagall - his second in command - was in St. Mungo's recovering from an unprovoked attack, and so Harry felt like he didn't have anyone he could trust to help. He tried to convey how hopeless the situation had seemed and why Harry had felt it necessary to risk getting caught using Umbridge's fire to try to discern the truth of Sirius's whereabouts. Fred still felt somewhat guilty about not being there to lend a hand when push came to shove, but went on with his story,

"He was determined to get to London to save Sirius, and so my brother Ron, my sister, Ginny, their best friend Hermione and a couple of other kids rode Thestrals to the Ministry."

"You're joking." Carly was hanging, amazed, on Fred's every word. "Aren't they dangerous?"

Fred explained about Hagrid and the herd of Thestrals, and about how it had all been a trap to catch Harry. He was still unclear about much of what had happened, but told her what he did know about what his brother, sister and the others had done in the Department of Mysteries in order to escape. He had to stop to gather himself a moment before telling her about how Sirius had been killed in a duel with his cousin Bellatrix when he and some other 'friends' had shown up to help the students. Carly merely continued to stoke his hand and listen intently to everything he had to say.

"Harry took off after Bellatrix in a blind rage, and all I know about what came next is that Dumbledore showed up and dueled with You-Know-Who, and saved Harry. You-Know-Who got away, but not until a whole slew of people from the Ministry saw him. It wasn't until Fudge saw You-Know-Who with his own eyes that he finally admitted that he had been wrong, and that perhaps Harry wasn't mental after all. The Daily Prophet started printing all of these articles about how the Ministry screwed up and how poor, poor Harry Potter had been terribly maligned, when he had been the stalwart defender of truth, blah, blah, blah," Fred said. He took a deep breath as if to cleanse all of those terrifying images from his mind. "So then we figured that Percy would be bound to admit he'd been wrong and come and apologize to us."

"But that didn't happen," Carly surmised. "Why?"

"Well, to be honest, I'm not sure," He answered, his brow furrowing at the memory. "Percy did send a letter home saying that he was sorry to have doubted You-Know-Who's return, and would like to meet with Mum and Dad. Dad thought it over, and decided to invite him to dinner and see what he had to say. We all thought for sure that he would come back, apologize for being such a bone-headed prat, and beg for forgiveness. Mum would gather him in like a mother hen, and that would be that."

Carly rose to stoke the fire and make tea. It was getting quite late, and Kyna had swooped out of the window in search of a meal. She pointed her wand at the kettle, causing a cloud of steam to issue forth. She dealt with the tea efficiently, and filled two cups, adding milk and sugar to his before passing it to him and sitting beside him again. "What happened to change that?"

"Well, I wasn't there when Percy went for dinner at the Burrow. I wasn't ready to listen to what he had to say, but I got the whole story from George and the others." Fred explained, remembering the angry expressions on George and Ron's faces, and the tears in Ginny's eyes when they had all appeared at the shop late that night. "He had come, right on time, and was acting strangely right away. He knocked on the door for one thing; the front door. We haven't opened the front door since I was seven. We've always used the kitchen door, and I guess it took them a while to figure out that he was even there. No one ever knocks on our door! We're not the type of family that stands on ceremony most of the time.

When they finally got the door open, he acted stiff and formal, which isn't all that unusual, I guess, considering he had his proverbial hat in his hands, but they said it seemed weird, even for Percy. He sat down in our father's chair at the dinner table, and just stared at everyone when they glared at him. When Mum finally brought up the subject of why he was there, Percy acted like she didn't know what she was talking about, and said something to effect of, 'You're the one who invited me here.' and said that yes, he had been wrong about Voldemort's return, but not about anything else."

Carly nearly bobbled her teacup; it rattled noisily in her saucer, and she set it down hastily before it spilled. True, that she had only met Fred's family once, but what she was hearing about Percy's behavior didn't seem right. Fred set his cup down, as well, and his face was grim as he recalled everything George, Ginny and Ron had told him about the meal.

"That's just so...." Carly could hardly think of a word to describe what she was thinking, "...wrong. It sounds as though he went there to deliberately stir up more trouble."

Fred got up to pace angrily in front of the couch while he told the rest, "It sounds exactly like what he wanted to do. Why else would he come? George said that Percy acted as though he was expecting our parents to be the ones apologizing to him. He told them that even though Voldemort had returned, as Harry had said, he was right to side with the Ministry. He said that we couldn't honestly have expected Fudge to put the Wizarding World into a panic based on the word of a fourteen-year-old boy and an old man who was losing his marbles. He said that there just hadn't been any tangible proof for him to act on. He also claimed that he was still convinced that Dumbledore was losing his grip on reality, and that Fudge was perfectly justified in everything he had done."

Carly snorted derisively, and Fred came to sit down next to her again. Her cheeks were flushed from the indignation she felt on his behalf, and her mouth was set in a way that reminded him strongly of his mother's when she was angry.

"Things would have gotten really ugly after that, but Percy apparated just before Ron and George got to him." Fred sighed. "The worst part of it was Mum. She just sat at the table staring at everyone in disbelief, then excused herself and started doing the dishes like nothing out of the ordinary had even happened. The others had wanted to hunt Percy down, but Dad forbid it, saying it would only upset Mum more. We haven't had any real contact with him since."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, holding hands and staring at the fire without really seeing it. Carly was going over everything she had just been told in her head, trying to make sense of it all. It wasn't until Kyna returned from her hunt that George stirred from his own thoughts and caught site of the clock above the desk. He hadn't realized that it was getting quite so late, and stood, saying, "I'm sorry. It's well past midnight, and you have to get up early for work."

"Don't be silly," she protested, also standing, and following him to the door. "I'll be lucky if I can sleep at all for thinking about all of this."

"Thank you for listening. If I don't talk to you before then, I'll see you at your Aunt and Uncle's on Wednesday." He rested his forehead briefly against hers, and then with a light brush of lips, they said good-bye.