Empire of The Senseless

Empire of The Senseless

by

Anna L. Milton

Chapter One &emdash; Fog On the Career Downs

Virginia Elizabeth Weasley, known to her family as Ginny, to the world as Ms. Weasley and to her former boss as You Cow (at least according to the last time they had exchanged words), was irritated, tired and bored, more or less in that order. This did not constitute, however, a considerable difference to her usual frame of mind, as she had been feeling tired and bored ever since leaving Hogwarts and irritated more or less constantly for the past week. The reason for this latter sentiment was that she had been fired from her job as an Assistant Editor at Witch Weekly magazine, following her boss's rather unfortunate discovery of herself, Subject A, Virginia E. Weasley, age 27, single, wildly snogging Subject B, Edward G. "no connection to Augustus" Rookwood, age 35, photographer, until then very much married to Subject C, Susan V. Rookwood, age 28 and Editor at WW, i.e., her boss.

When she could drive away from her mind her indignation at the sheer injustice of it all, she considered that, on hindsight, they should perhaps have avoided turning the archive room at the WW offices into their "scorching love nest", or, for those more adept at pinpointing the vulgar, "the bonking room".

She shifted on her seat, waiting for her number to be called, her freckled face a portrait of annoyance. She hadn't planed to get involved with Edward the Cad (as she now thought of him) and it was her considerate opinion that his flirtation with her during the Halloween Office party had been quite disgusting. That she hadn't been of that opinion at the time was, of course, irrelevant as of now; she was as self-absorbed as most people (therefore meaning that she was about as self-centred as a tornado), but she had been bored, and considered her life pretty pointless, and the attentions of Edward were rather flattering, as, Cad as he might be, he was a rather charming wizard, and sparkled with the promise of a life far more interesting that paperwork and office clique-ness.

Then, the week before, Susan had, quite unexpectedly, barged into the Archive room right at the very moment Edward was removing his wife's assistant's bra with his teeth. She had been looking for Ginny for the last fifteen minutes, badly needed coffee and had a deadline to meet, and therefore she wasn't in the right frame of mind to be confronted with the abstruse foreplay of her husband with one of her employees.

After a flaming row whose magical effluxes caused several dossiers to flap from the shelves for a few moments before gravity took over, and during the course of which Susan accused Ginny of being a slut, Ginny accused Susan of being a frigid bitch and Edward was called a bastard by both women when he tried to throw his two knuts into the exchange of amiabilities, Ginny stormed out of the offices of WW, red hair streaming behind her, pointy hat flopping rakishly and inadvertently over one eye and cloak askew, practically glowing with pent-up fury. She was sans lover and sans job and the fact that, according to Susan's virulent screams, Edward the Cad would soon find himself sans marriage wasn't nearly enough compensation for any of it &emdash; especially her embarrassment at realising that, in her wrath, she had mistakenly turned her dignified exit into a trip to the patio where the magazine's issues were Portkey-ed, and therefore had to retrace her steps through the office rooms once more, under the puzzled eyes of her co-workers, who collectively thought that, in her intense blushing, she looked very much like a well-dressed carrot.

Following the tempestuous cessation of her professional activities, she had found that her flat (described in the prospectus as "a bijou maisonette of cosy simplicity and elegance", which translates as "a Victorian pantry with walls built in that would make a sardine become claustrophobic") was both too small and too empty for the appropriate venting of her spleen. The absence of any of the many tokens of another's presence was glaring; she could have owled one of her friends, but right then she hadn't wanted to hear the snappy retorts of some frazzled careerist. She had wanted to be spoiled and smothered with nourishing food and warm blankets and fluffy advice. Besides, her kneazle was rubbing against her leg like furry sawdust, and that was getting on her nerves. There was only one thing to do, and that was to go to the Burrow.

She liked her sojourns at the Burrow. Being the youngest child and the only girl meant that, as far as Mum and Dad were concerned, she had stopped growing around her seventh birthday. They fussed around her incessantly, and while this would undoubtedly have got on her nerves if she had to put up with it on a daily basis, its occasional nature served her perfectly. It seemed that there was no problem so serious, nor even so catastrophic that it couldn't be cured, or at least reduced to bearable proportions, after a week at the Burrow.

After entrusting her kneazle Cheshire, familiarly known chez Ginny as Aarghgeroffyoubastard, to the care of her neighbour, a dry spinster witch whose nose always reminded her of a letter-opener, Ginny went to the Burrow via Floo Network and succumbed to her parents' smothering tenderness. Given that all their children had already left home, there was an added icing to the cake of their devotion. Lying down in her old bed that first night, she felt herself beginning to cool off. Arthur's promotion to Head of the Accidental Magic Reversal Department, coupled with the gains of that veritable cash-cow that was Fred and George's Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes (and litigation-beacon, for sure, but everybody said that was the inevitable result of success, and the episode of the biting Dungbombs was unanimously considered to have been an unfortunate accident), had meant that the Burrow had been significantly augmented and improved. Well, at least materially, even if Molly Weasley, as a decorator, had all the taste and elegance of an oil spill. Nevertheless, Ginny's bedroom had been carefully maintained exactly the same as in the day she had left. In fact, it had been maintained exactly the same since she was seven. Her bed still had the same fluffy pink duvet, her dressing table remained covered in enough lace for a score of petticoats, and there was even the frieze in the ceiling with the Three Good Witches, the pumpkins and the Enchanted Palace that Dad had made for her on her fifth birthday.

All in all, Ginny felt she was about to sleep inside a fluffy slipper with a bunny on it, but she wasn't going to complain. She wasn't the craftiest of witches, but during her life she had learned that, if she kept more or less aloof and didn't impinge on other people's nerves, they would be likely to be receptive to a well-worded request, particularly if they had to deal with a great deal of whining. According to her experience, there were very few problems that weren't solved by simply ignoring them: if no one noticed, they hadn't obviously been very important in the first place, if they eventually re-emerged they had either morphed into somebody else's problem or into a crisis so collective no one bothered to ascertain fault any more. It had been a strategy that had served her well, more or less until now.

The following day, she had made a highly selective account of her problems to her parents while she ate one of Molly's chicken soups, famous by virtue of being nourishing enough for a small army, and with enough ingredients to vanquish one, too, if well-aimed. She omitted the less honourable aspects of her behaviour, but only because of an inner sense of pride; her parents would have still patted her head and given her chocolates even if she had been responsible for an outbreak of the Black Plague. After an all-round condemnation of both Susan and Edward's "appalling behaviour", and after three days of Mum feeding her highly fattening yet delicious savouries and Dad slipping Galleons into her unresisting hands and offering to pay for some well-deserved holidays, Percy and Penelope came round to visit, it being Percy's (probably annual, Ginny thought) day off, and raised the unmentionable subject of work.

"So, Ginny, have you thought about what kind of work you'll be taking up now?" Percy had asked while they were having tea.

Ginny had glared at her brother while she nibbled on a blueberry scone. She was never much looking forward to meeting Percy, especially since he had become the Head of the International Magic Co-operation Department. She had thought it would have been impossible for Percy to become even more big-headed than what he had been at Hogwarts, but she had been, evidently, wrong.

"Your sister needs a bit of a rest, don't you, Ginny?" her mother had interrupted, pouring some tea into Penelope's cup. To be perfectly frank, Ginny didn't like Penelope much, either. She had become Percy Weasley's perfect housewitch and mother of what Ginny considered to be a revolting brood, and was, with her curls, her motherly curves and her benevolent dictatorship over her family, on the way to becoming Molly's very own doppelganger and general acolyte.

"Why don't you try for a place with Fred and George? Brisk trade, growing corporation, ample career opportunities," Percy went on, sounding like a advert for their brothers' company. "Always looking for new blood."

"I'm their sister, Percy," she snapped back, sipping some of her tea. That wasn't a very good argument. Percy had never worried unduly about nepotism, but Ginny wasn't about to tell him that, in the vast ocean of jobs she didn't object too strongly to, a place at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes was the equivalent to something with lots of teeth and a fin on top. She frankly had no desire to end up with Happy Frogs inside her underwear.

Molly, of course, interpreted this in the best possible light.

"You don't need your brothers to find you a good place, Ginny," she said, nodding gently while putting in her tea enough sugar to feed a small Ethiopian village for a month. "I'm sure you'll find another job in no time."

Ginny hadn't felt very amused at this, the main reason being that she would much rather avoid working at all if she could, but she was well aware that, failing a large fortune to fall back on, she would probably have to actually go through the indignities of earning a paycheque. Percy, having less rose-tinted glasses than his mother where it came to his sister, doubted Ginny's abilities to instantly become The Magiconomist cover material.

"Why don't you go to Gudgeon's, Gin?" he had asked.

Molly had glared at him. "She never needed any of that to get a job before."

"Nothing wrong with Gudgeon's," Percy had replied, somewhat hotly. Head of Department or not, nobody doubted Mrs. Weasley's ability to reduce any of her children to a quivering wreck. "Very respectable firm."

"You have a point there," Ginny had said, reluctant as she was to concede Percy even that small victory.

"My sister found a job thanks to Gudgeon's," Penelope piped up.

"Did she? What kind of a job?" Molly asked. She was not too eager to disabuse herself of her notions concerning a job broker, which, in her mind, was just a very short step above a pawn shop, and a great deal of steps below a bankruptcy court.

"She works for Obscurus Books &emdash; in their shipping department."

Molly nodded gravely. She objected philosophically to all these modern fancies, but Obscurus was a long-established house, and therefore did not belong to any of the things she objected to (viz., everything founded after the early 1800s).

"She couldn't have done a great deal worse, then," she said, and then Ginny had realised there would be no escape from the clutches of work, and that her only possibility of her ever managing to land a job would be to throw herself on the good graces of Gudgeon's &emdash; Job Brokers &emdash; Est. 1835.

Oh, blast.

* * *

Gudgeon's, now under the guidance of Davy Gudgeon, grandson of its original founder, had originally come into existence as a response to a lack in the market. Traditionally, in the wizarding world, people got jobs because somebody died, or because they had earned themselves a reputation for anything between brilliancy at Charms to a deft hand with a length of cheesewire while still at Hogwarts, or because they knew somebody's neighbour's sister's cousin. However, with the growth of the wizarding economy, this system, though not without its merits (particularly for those on the cheeswire camp), had began to flounder under the efflux of both demand and offer. There were pages in several magical newspapers devoted to job-related ads, but they simply weren't enough to satisfy both the demand for workers and the demand for jobs. The growing immigration had complicated matters further, and so Gudgeon's had been formed, willing to do business with all of those who really didn't care about whether their employees had their own ethnic restaurants or what. For a reasonable fee, Mr. Gudgeon and his successors had put in contact hundreds of workers with their prospective bosses and vice versa, throughout the not always smooth but eminently lucrative decades of their existence.

So now Ginny sat down in the elegant marble hall of the Gudgeon's offices at Marsee Alley, a pompous Neo-Gothic building of the Use All Your Gargoyles Or Else! School of Architecture. She had filled a lengthy form under the gaze of the rather sour witch at the reception desk, and now sat down on a somewhat uncomfortable leather sofa, surrounded by a few dozens of other hopefuls, while she awaited for her number to be called. The large oval display hovering over the reception counter marked ‘20' in numbers as elaborate as its wrought-iron curlicues, and the little slip of charmed parchment she had been given after filling her forms still read 26. She was thinking she should have brought a big fat book with her, and finding that idea more and more palatable with every passing minute, especially since it would also be useful to hide herself in case of someone who knew her happened to pass by. Of course, it could happen that whoever it was that handled the pile of forms (so thick you could probably use it as some sort of siege weapon) that passed through Gudgeon's every day was watching the candidates with a keen eye, and would dutifully note down those who looked genuinely interested, and those who were lunging around.

It was not that she cared much, one way or the other. Her ideal job would be to receive nice fat cheques for doing absolutely nothing, but since that was not exactly likely to occur outside of an asylum for extremely wealthy lunatics, she had to remind herself that her father had already paid for this, and it was only polite to at least put up an appearance of commitment. She didn't care much for morals, having found out long ago that such philosophical considerations often stood like caviar to the Fish ‘n Chips of Life, but unlike the great majority of people she had standards, and to piss someone else's money when they had given it to you with mute hope was simply not done.

Besides, it wreaked havoc on the possibilities of those people ever giving you more money.

So she waited on, maintaining a perfectly composed façade, and trying not to make a face at the frankly vomit-inducing music that was rising softly from the enchanted pot-plants. She wondered why it was that in all the waiting rooms everywhere, they had to put on music that was the melodic equivalent to a plastic Santa with intermittent lights. It was as though it was a law of nature, or something. Probably there was a law somewhere, she thought, starting to absent-mindedly pick lint from her dark-green robes. Or a World Horrible Music Conspiracy of some sort. Or a...

"Beep! Twenty-six!"

Gods, even the voice they had charmed into the display was tacky. It made her think the magical display was called Sharon, and was probably from Essex, and hung a pair of fluffy dice for her broom's handle...

"Number twenty-six, please!"

She startled, and then realised that the display was referring to her. She sprung up like a jack-in-the-box and realised her robes were caught in the sofa just as she was about to drag it behind her like some extremely over-sized trim. She paused for a moment to release it while the oval display hovered around blinking furiously. It appeared to be a large and irritated insect. "All right, all right, I'm coming," she muttered under her breath, and walked to the reception counter.

"Number twenty-six, that's me," she said, waving her slip of parchment, only to realise it wasn't on her hand anymore. She gazed back and saw it on the floor near the sofa, lying like a spoil from her battle with the robe-eating furniture. "Accio parchment," she ordered, drawing out her wand, and the slip flew into her hand like a bird of prey (she had never quite got the handle of an element of Summoning Spells, viz., not making them project objects at the speed of a canon ball). She turned back to the receptionist and flashed her a million-Galleon smile, which the pinch-looking witch ignored. Behind her, she was quite sure there were some people sniggering in that unnoticeable way that somehow manages to be louder than a volcano in full eruption. So much for dignity, she thought through clenched teeth.

She placed her slip on the marble covered counter and looked at the middle-aged witch with the best expression of good-natured benevolence she could muster. It didn't seem to have much effect.

"Miss... Virginia Weasley, yes?" the receptionist said, peering at a stack of papers in front of her. She had the kind of voice most readily associated with a governess from a Victorian tale that administers sound thrashings for every dropped aitch.

Ginny nodded. Then, remembering something she had read in WW once, under the title of 20 Tips for a Successful Interview, or something of the sort, she said, "That is correct."

The witch glared at her with her steely grey eyes. She didn't seem the type to have ever heard of Witch Weekly, and if she had, she probably thought its only use was to serve as lavatory paper. "Please sign here," she said dryly, handing over a parchment, a quill and wrapping it all up with a gaze that said wordlessly but inescapably that any delay would be met with consequences of the sort that make a death at the stake look like a friendly barbecue among neighbours.

Ginny scanned the parchment quickly. It consisted of no more than general information about her and her rather depressing CV thus far. She signed it in an even less legible scrawl than usual, and then handed it back to the receptionist with a smile you could crack rocks on. This had the intended effect of irritating her to no end.

"Mr. Gudgeon will see you know. Please go to the door on your right. That's that door over there," she said, pointing in what she obviously considered to be a gesture of infinite magnanimousness. Ginny glared, but she went on undisturbed; she obviously liked her work, provided it consisted in making other people feel like complete idiots. "It's our Portkey room. You will find a table with a large knob— did I say anything funny, Miss Weasley?"

Ginny tried to suppress an eruption of laughter.

"Not at all, ma'am. Do carry on."

"That's the Portkey. Touch it and you'll be taken to Mr. Gudgeon's office." The tone of her voice implied that being received by Mr. Gudgeon was such a unreachable honour that your chances of going along with the Pope for a late-night kebab and getting sloshed were considerably higher. "Thank you for choosing our services," she added professionally.

Ginny nodded, still trying not to laugh, and walked down to the doorway that stood at the right end of the large marble counter. It had no door, just the large carved white archway, obviously designed to impress. It was the kind of architectural element that manages to spell "Cower, Brief Mortals!" without the use of a single letter. Inside, as announced, there was a low, round coffee table, with &emdash; Ginny tried not to laugh &emdash; a knob on the top. In the octagonal room there was nothing else of note; the walls had some discreet pastels paintings that occasionally shifted with glacier speed, but apart from that the room was empty. She adjusted her clothes and leaned forward, and touching the dark half-sphere felt the familiar icy tug in her stomach and the world rushing around her with dizzying speed.

* * *

Davy Gudgeon was an amiable looking man of about 45, with a plump and pink face topped by a mass of dark blond curls. His round frame was not exactly the best suited for wizard robes, which, in addition to his hair and benevolent expression, gave him the look of an overgrown lamb. Ginny took all of this in as she materialised with a faint "pop!" next to an identical coffee table at one end of his office. However, she knew fully well that this was a case of deceiving appearances; you didn't last for long as president of one of the most successful firms in the wizarding world if your intellect was similar to that of a four-footed mammal with a mind entirely focused and grass and other sheep's bottoms.

He got up and extended out one hand to her over his desk, smiling blissfully as she approached.

"Ah, Miss Weasley," he said, his chubby handshake unexpectedly firm against her perfectly neutral one. "Do sit down. I understand you are a relative of Messrs. Weasley of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes' fame?"

Ginny sat down on the elegant but subtly uncomfortable chair in front of the mahogany desk and adjusted her robes before answering. She did not ask how Mr. Gudgeon knew this. Firstly, he was the chairman of a company and she knew how these people thought, and secondly the wizarding world had all the anonymity and bustle of Dunny-on-the-Wold (pop. 345). She sighed inwardly, without breaking her smooth demeanour.

"Yes. Fred and George are my brothers."

He looked very faintly surprised at this. She assumed he expected that someone who was sister to Fred and George Weasley wouldn't need his services. His expression was just momentary, though, and she realised he knew full well that he had seen everything pass in front of his desk or those of his associates and if he started to pass judgement he would find out he would never finish. That made him rise a few notches in her consideration.

"Well, yes," he said, just to fill up the empty air, and then took a look at the parchment in front of him. "So, let's see... you graduated from Hogwarts in 1999, then started working in 2000 for Gladrags London as assistant to the Sales Department... two years... then for three years in the Publicity Department for Nimbus... and finally for four years as Assistant Editor at Witch Weekly, is this correct?"

"Yes."

He looked down at the parchment once more, looking as though he was trying to apprehend some vital detail.

"I beg your pardon," he said at last, "but you seem to have had no trouble in getting other positions in the past."

Ginny felt a tingle of embarrassment.

"You see, the cessation of my previous contracts was initiated by me and was, er, entirely voluntary. That was not the case with my last job."

His expression remained unchanged.

"Oh. I see. May I enquire to the reasons of your present redundancy?"

She hesitated for a moment, then spoke in a perfectly unemotional voice.

"There was a certain disagreement with my employer."

"Ah. Now... let us see... what was exactly the nature of your functions in your previous positions?"

Well, the push had come to shove, then. She squirmed imperceptibly. The truth was, being by nature disinclined to needless effort, she had carved for herself a niche in her various occupations, doing what she did best, i.e., nothing. It was not that she was stupid or incompetent; on the contrary, doing nothing was a skill that was difficult to find and even more difficult to cultivate. It was her considerate opinion that if more people had learned it, the world would have been spared a great deal of idiotic doings, but she knew this was a good opinion, and therefore was best kept secret. Concentrating on what she had done wasn't any easier, though &emdash; mostly, her functions involved delivering paperwork, sharpening quills and making coffee. Especially making coffee. There were magical coffee machines, yes, recently invented by someone who apparently thought naming something QwikEine suggested witticism rather than a very bizarre drug, but it just wasn't the same thing, at least according to those people who signed her cheques, and she was more than happy to indulge them. She was an excellent coffee-maker. Yet, somehow, she suspected that this wouldn't be rated by Mr. Gudgeon as one of the highest achievements of humankind.

"My functions were mostly secretarial."

Gudgeon set the parchment down on the desk and steepled his hands, which, due to his ovine looks, was rather amusing.

"Well, then. Is there any particular skill you possess? Any special training?"

She thought that he wasn't referring to being able to be less active than a rock full of iguanas.

"Er, no. Just my Hogwarts diploma and the training I received in my first job."

Gudgeon seemed to consider this for a moment, his eyes half-closed, his hands still joined. On the whole, it made him look rather like someone in prayer.

"So..." he finally said, "you appear to have no skills or qualifications to speak of, am I correct?"

Ginny felt there was no point in contesting this.

"Broadly speaking, yes."

"I see. Miss Weasley, have you by any chance considered a career in teaching?"

She could tell he was dead serious. So she threw him a glance that made quite sure, in a sporting and quasi-smiley way, that if he did not become more helpful, he might soon find out that she had no qualms about inserting the significant comma. His response was a rather wan smile.

"Apparently not," he muttered, and then he reminded himself that he was Davy Gudgeon, Chairman of one of the most important companies of the wizarding world, renowned player in the employment market, and that he was talking to an insignificant witch whose main claim to fame was to be the sister of the proud inventors of confectionery that made those who ate them sprout feathers (and there were the biting Dungbombs, he mentally added, but that didn't really count). Therefore he collected himself and added, "Miss Weasley, I'm afraid the positions available to someone of your, er, qualifications, are not exactly the best out there. In fact, they are rather low on the scale, and they may not be to your liking at all."

He paused for effect, and upon seeing that none was forthcoming, he went on, faintly puzzled.

"You see, Miss Weasley, this is a job market. And, being a market, there are certain laws it obeys. And right now, the laws of supply and demand have tilted their balance rather firmly against the unskilled mage. Every day hundreds of hopefuls pass through our doors. We pride ourselves on our rate of success. We promise our clients that we will do the best we can to put prospective employers in touch with their prospective employees, and we like to live up to that promise. And yet, we do not perform miracles. And right now, what employers are looking for is someone that will stand out from the pack, as it were."

Again, he gave an experimental pause, to see if this had sunk in. Ginny's utterly blank look, however, unnerved him a bit. He was used to making an impact, even if subtle, with his little speeches, that the witch's almost aggressive listening was disquieting.

"This is not to say, however, that we will be unsuccessful," he said, but his heart was no longer in it. "It is only, er, an explanation of our current situation."

Ginny remained silent.

"Well, we will let you know," he finally said, giving up. "Do you know how our system operates?"

"Yes."

"Good, good. Well, then," he mumbled, getting up and extending one hand, "good luck."

She limply allowed her hand to be shaken and walked nonchalantly back to the Portkey. When she vanished from his office, Davy Gudgeon felt so unaccountably relieved he treated himself to a shot of whisky from his private drinks cabinet, but he would be hard-pressed to say exactly why.

* * *

Ginny walked out of the building and stepped into the September light in her usual stride, surprisingly stealthy and light-footed for someone so tall. She had always been used to being pliant, in the knowledge that riding the wave was much better than drowning under it, which meant that her six-foot body was, in certain ways, much less obtrusive than most five-footers she had met. However, her utter impassivity also tended to flow from every pore in her body in a mildly disquieting way; she often put images of expectant vultures in the minds of people around her, even though she was physically quite dissimilar to the various extant varieties of carrion birds (for starters, she didn't have a beak). It probably had something to do with her brick-thick blankness, which could be as noisy as a brass band falling down a cliff.

Marsee Alley was larger and much more recent that Diagon Alley, which it intersected at one end. It had been chosen by a variety of service providers as the place for their offices, the majority of which designed in the Neo-Gothic style that seemed to have been invented by a manic-depressive confectioner. It also went heavy on gargoyles, not all of which were motionless. In the wizarding world, it was a sign of distinction to be able to afford actual live gargoyles. Ginny wasn't certain about the reasons behind this, but she suspected it had something to do with the gargoyles' usual diet; the buildings who had them were disquietingly free of pigeons' droppings, not to mention bereft of pigeons themselves.

She strolled along quietly through the wide street, the vague September chill beginning to be dispelled by the stirrings of the sun. A rather large number of wizards and witches were walking about, ranging from the small-lump-of-cheerful-fat type to the grave-and-venerable-warlock-with-a-face-you-could-crack-rocks-with. She deftly dodged the solitary, the accompanied, the quick and the slow, doing her best (and it was a rather good best) to be inconspicuous. She did not much like to bump into old school acquaintances, mostly because they generally tended to emanate an unvoiced but unmistakable disappointment, as though they had expected great things of her merely by virtue of having been in the same room as the Fabled Harry Potter.

That was another thing. Although she could hardly remember her alleged crush for Harry Potter (her mind generally brushed things of an embarrassing nature under the Great Rug of the Subconscious), most of the world seemed to treat it as a truth Writ in Stone and vouchsafed by at least three gods. The fact that it was well-known that Hermione Granger would curse into oblivion any witch who appeared to lay her sights on her perennially loved Harry James cut Ginny no slack with the constant torrent of nudges and innuendo that some Hogwarts alumni, particularly those who had been of her House and year, chose to unleash upon her. Generally a particularly vicious glare was enough to quieten even the most blissfully unaware of mages, but it was nevertheless rather vexing. She hadn't liked school much, in any case, and preferred to avoid reminders of those years on general philosophical principles.

Of course, you can always rely on good old Lady Luck.

"Ginny? Ginny Weasley?" said a voice behind her. It was warm, somewhat high, and female. Very decidedly so. She turned to look at the speaker. She was a young, slender, dark-haired woman, beaming at her in mildly disquieting pink robes that contrasted sharply with her café-au-lait skin. Ginny noticed that she bore a button proudly pinned on her chest; it flashed alternatively, "Wizardly Freedom Party" and "A Better Kind of Government". As far as slogans went, Ginny felt, these would not be renowned among the Best of All Time, but they were apparently effective, as the WFP was quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with come the November general election.

"Parvati," she said, a statement modestly disguised as a question. The other witch beamed even more. Ginny wouldn't have thought it possible, but she was used to this sort of thing happening on a more or less frequent basis, so she forbore to comment.

"Yes &emdash; I haven't seen you for a long time. How are you these days?"

Ginny shrugged, and decided lying was too much of a hassle. Besides, she had rather liked Parvati at school, insofar as she could bring herself to actually like one of her colleagues. The other witch had, at first, generally been too busy giggling away with Lavender Brown to actually get on her nerves, and as the end of her school days approached, she had matured unexpectedly. She hadn't stopped giggling or gossiping with her friends, but it was the kind of innocent gossip that is carried out much in the same manner as other people read books of play chess. Parvati had never bothered her, and all her rumour was carried out without malice, almost absent-mindedly.

"Well..." Ginny began, "my boss found out that I was having an affair with her husband and so she fired me." She gave her a sweet smile. "How about you?"

Parvati's mouth twitched. Her eyes widened in &emdash; Ginny was surprised to notice &emdash; genuine sorrow.

"Oh, dear," she said. "I've just put my foot in it, haven't I?"

Ginny grinned.

"It's not important. I hated that job anyway. It was just... stupid. And at least I got rid of Edward the Cad."

"Edward?"

"My boss's husband. Or should I say ex-husband." Her grin became fractionally eviler. "I don't know why it took me so long to see what a complete bastard he was."

Parvati's expression darkened, yet there were hints of the relief of a sisterly confession. She rolled her eyes in the approved manner.

"Reminds me of Colin. You know Colin, Colin Creevey. He was in your year. Gods, who would have thought he turned out to be such a wanker?"

Well, Ginny herself, for starters, but her opinion on Colin Creevey had always been more or less within the realm of the unprintable ever since she had begun plumbing the full depths of Burrow-verboten words, so she opted to leave the curtain of discretion upon them.

Parvati, meanwhile, had latched on to some brilliant idea, at least in her own opinion.

"Why don't we have dinner together, Ginny? For old times' sake, and also because I'll be buggered if I'm going to stay here discussing Wanker in the middle of the street," she added cheerfully.

Ginny gave her a blank silence.

"What do you say?" Parvati insisted, in a sing-song voice. "I know a place where they make a great chicken vindaloo."

Ginny knew what this meant. It meant drowning down pints like thimbles of water in the desert, saying a great deal of stupid things, dancing a little on empty pavements (or possibly causing their emptiness) and finally ending up by adding a very personal and organic shade to the colour of those very same pavements.

The advantages of this were that Ginny very rarely got drunk herself, but had a disturbingly good memory for all those very clever things you do just before you laugh until you're sick. And she largely believed in making the most of whatever entertainment life decided to launch her way.

"All right," she said with a broad smile.

It says a lot about the state of the wizarding world that a great deal of its history ended up being decided by a chicken vindaloo.

* * *

"No, but what I mean ish, what I mean ish, he washn't even... apogee... apologi... aplog... thingy... shorry."

Ginny nodded in understanding. It was now 1:30 am and they were sitting at a table in a pub, wizarding pubs operating under the principle that magic was soul-consuming, not to mention thirst-inducing, and thus staying open for much longer than their Muggle counterparts. The evening had proceeded much as Ginny had imagined it would. They had dined in a comfy curry house in one of the predominantly Indian neighbourhoods of wizarding London, and not only was the meal as good as Parvati had promised, it was also the kind of place where quantity has a quality all of its own.

Ginny had been more than happy to let Parvati do most of the talking, and settled down to it with the silent expectation of someone about to watch a particularly fine comedy. At first, and while she was still within the realm of sobriety, Parvati had talked about her job in the cutthroat world of dairy products (in the magical world, cheese could have many more uses than simply standing on a board) and of her work for the WFP campaign. Ginny listened quietly, on the basis that "waste not, want not" was a dictum that applied to knowledge as much as to anything else. Besides, she rather liked the WFP, which had grown from relative obscurity to one of the major political forces of the wizarding world by virtue of not being quite as loathed as the others. Its leader, Maurice Crockford, was not particularly charismatic, but then again he was not particularly irritating, either, which made him a rather suitable candidate for the Minister of Magic post. Ginny knew that, in politics as in life, it was often more profitable to cause indifference than to agitate passions; you could go far by being the least disliked.

However, as the night went on and the pints were promptly consumed, Parvati had strolled more and more into the Dark Matter of Colin the Wanker. Despite all of her professed aversion to that subject, Parvati returned to it like someone staring at a particularly expansive accident.

"You shee, Padma told me, or elshe..."

"You wouldn't know," Ginny completed automatically. It was a great deal of fun to see drunken Parvati struggling for words, but she was not unnecessarily cruel.

"Yesh. My point. My point echat... ec-chat..."

"Exactly."

Ginny took a little sip of her Firewhisky. Parvati had gone for the complete-wizarding-drunkenness treatment, and had downed her fourth Concrete Elephant, a drink whose effects could only be achieved in the Muggle world by the prolonged ingestion of various illegal substances, and whose surprisingly honest name came from the creature most suitable to partake of it. Right now she was navigating her way through the account of Colin the Wanker's failed attempt to get her twin sister Padma into dancing the Horizontal Mambo with him. Ginny's older brother Ron had an on-again, off-again relationship with Padma Patil; currently it appeared to be off, but Ginny stored that knowledge nevertheless.

"It's almost closing time," Ginny said, looking at her watch, just as Parvati was about to launch herself into one of those amazing theories that explain life, the universe and everything, and for some mysterious reason only occur in these circumstances.

Parvati staggered to her feet, almost knocking down a small wizard carrying two pints of beer.

"You know what &emdash; you're absholutely right," she said with the authority of the heavily drunk, and started giggling.

Ginny sighed inwardly and got up herself, propping up the stumbling Parvati. She knew the other witch would soon start singing the Chimney Sweep's song, and when that happened the only salvation would be a flame thrower.

"Come on, got to get you home," she said, dragging Parvati to the exit through the throngs of mages and industrial-level amounts of smoke. She did not like pubs much, mostly due to the fact that they seemed to play music selected mostly by its ear-drum-rupturing qualities.

"Yesh, gotta deliver... shtuff to Crockford tomorrow... feck," Parvati mumbled as they got outside. The sharp night air felt like a blade against Ginny's face. They walked away from the pub, or rather, Ginny walked, while Parvati tried to show the world she was not drunk by hopping up and down over the pavement's cracks, as though she were playing some demented version of hopscotch.

"Where do you live, Parvati?" Ginny asked. She was feeling mildly dizzy herself. On hindsight, she thought she probably shouldn't have drunk all that Firewhisky.

"Clio thingy Street," Parvati replied, laughing at something whose amusing qualities were a mystery to the rest of the world. Her pink robes made her look like an unusually large species of nocturnal moth.

"Cliodna Street?"

Parvati nodded, or came as close as possible to nodding, under the circumstances.

"Right," Ginny said, taking hold of the other witch's arm with one hand and fumbling in her bag with the other. She managed to take out her wand in the second try. "I'll call the Knight Bus." And she signalled with her wand.

Parvati staggered for a moment. They were in a quiet street with brick-fronted houses and wrought-iron fences. It was not the kind of street used to riotous behaviour, Ginny thought.

Fortunately, she heard a rumble in front of her, and the Knight Bus materialised in front of her, causing a lamppost to slide back considerably. The large purple vehicle loomed ahead of her, as tasteful as an insane clown, but terribly welcome. In all honesty, she would have welcomed a squeaking wheelbarrow pushed by a dead penguin if it could get Miss Patil home with the minimum of effort and embarrassment. The conductor, Stan Shunpike, whose face, despite the years, still looked like sunrise over the craters of the moon, opened the door, and Ginny pushed Parvati up the steps. The driver (still Ernie Prang, still myopically impaired, and even older than she remembered) welcomed that strange procession with a grin.

"Where to, missus?" he asked.

"Cliodna Shtreet thingy," Parvati piped up, suddenly coming to giddy life. "I shay, Ernie Thingy, shtill driving this? Better that than... than..." Her alcohol-marinated brain tried to find something deeply meaningful and philosophical to say at this point. It couldn't, so she threw up all over Ernie instead.