Empire of The Senseless

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Empire of The Senseless

by

Anna L. Milton

Chapter Two: The God of Unexpected Guests

At about the same time as Parvati Patil was tucking into her first Concrete Elephant, two other mages were drinking as well, though in environs that would make Crossed Wands – the pub where Miss Patil carried out her investigations into the metabolism of large amounts of alcohol – look like a primitive mud hut to people who live in primitive mud huts. The place was called Merlin’s and was the wizarding equivalent to a gentlemen’s club, with the difference that, in addition to money and social standing, the entry requirements were magic instead of gonads.

Merlin’s was an exclusive club for wizards and witches who enjoyed mixing in a select environment and decide the fate of the magical world while nibbling on thin cucumber sandwiches. The two mages – a witch and a wizard – were in an oak-panelled room, sitting at a table so polished its top looked like a blade of ice, cut out from the rest of the world by a tasteful Art Noveau partition (tasteful, that is, for wizards, who, when it comes to décor, have all the self-control and elegance of a deranged clown). The witch wore long, form-hugging black dress robes, the wizard was also dressed in tasteful black. What they were drinking was green, elegant and made Concrete Elephants look like, well, a drink that would melt metal and whose main ingredients have been banned in three countries.

"We may have a problem with Crockford," the wizard said, taking out a cigarette-case from the recesses of his robes.

"Yes, I know." The witch accepted the proffered cigarette and placed it in a silver holder. "I do wish everybody would stop bringing that subject up. It’s most vexing."

"Everybody brings it up, dear, because everybody is concerned," the wizard replied, and, though using his wand, lighted up her cigarette in a way that would make any 40s film noir star worth his salt decide to give it all up and start again as a strolling puppeteer.

"Of course they are concerned," she replied, making a little dainty ring of smoke. "The fool has a fair chance of winning, after all. Yes, yes, I know I shouldn’t call him a fool," she added, noting a minute change of expression in the wizard’s face. "Underestimating, and all that. I know he’s no fool. He is, nevertheless, very boring. I wonder what people see in him?"

"I think, my dear, that it is more of a question of what people do not see in him."

The witch smiled cattily, in the tightlipped way that only a very good breeding or some cutlery shoved up your nether regions can bring about.

"Still as always, I see. Talking with you is an education in itself."

"One makes an effort. One must always make an effort."

"And you more than anyone, I presume."

"Indeed."

The witch took another sip of her cocktail.

"Nevertheless…" she carried on, delicately pursing her lips, "this banter, amusing as it may be, is not getting us any further."

"I thought you said you wanted people to stop bringing the Crockford issue up."

"Oh, I do. I do wish everything was solved to our satisfaction; I’d much prefer to talk pour épater le bourgeois. The world, however, does not work that way. I see we will have to see what we shall do about him, and the sooner the better. That is what you are here for, is it not?"

The wizard smiled icily.

"Nothing can be hidden from you."

"So… he will win, then. You’d think the middle orders would be somewhat adverse to his intentions, but they seem to have realised that the less intentions, the better. For them, at least," she added, and puffed some more smoke.

"I believe they are weary of great political visions. Understandable, after that business with a certain late and unlamented Dark Wizard, not to mention the nonsense of Mr Cornelius Fudge."

"Still, you’d think they’d forgot that. The political memory of the average citizen is similar to that of a bewildered clam, after all."

"True, but for some reason the slaughter of your friends and relatives tends to stick in the memory."

"I suppose you are right, as usual." She leaned forward a bit, with an expression veering between aloofness and that of someone about to impart with a deep secret. "I have heard, however, that there may be a reason for me to be so indifferent to Crockford."

The wizard smiled again, fleetingly.

"I had suspected that much. Needless indifference does not become you."

"Whatever you say, dear. Now, what do you tell me of this…" she carried on in a polite whisper, and after a while the wizard sat back, satisfied, pulled out his cigarette-case again and started smoking with the contented expression of one at peace with the world.

The world, if it did not possess the perception of a mince pie, would probably think otherwise.

* * *

"Oh, gods, I am soooo pissed...," Parvati moaned, sipping coffee with the speed of an elderly tortoise. It was the following morning, and the Gods of Hangovers were on call. So was Ginny, who had assumed coffee-making duties by virtue of being the only one capable of verticality. It had been a rather embarrassing night, she thought, though not for her, of course, who had always tended to merge with the background, and was therefore above shame, much in the same manner as wallpaper is above shame.

Parvati had started the festivities by muttering a string of mostly incomprehensible apologies to Mr. Prang after acquainting him with the contents of her stomach, and the elderly wizard, who in his long days had probably seen rather worse things than the eructation of a drunken witch, took the matter rather sportingly and deal with it by means of a discreet Scouring Charm, after which he said, "No matter, better out than in, eh?". Ginny had the distinct feeling that Ernie was overdoing his "old geezer" persona, but she kept quiet, while Stan Shunpike's face was a battlefield between disgust, thinly veiled hilarity and perennial acne.

They reached Cliodna Street without further incident, if you discount the fact that Parvati terrorised an elderly witch lying on the bed next to hers by starting to sing (sing being a relative term) some verses about why, compared to about every other mammal, the hedgehog is very lucky indeed. Fortunately, the trip itself was rather short, and was over before someone decided to gag Parvati and throw both of them through a window. Ginny excused her acquaintance’s behaviour to the few (understandably) sour-faced passengers and dragged Parvati out with a fleeting smile. Yet, even though she had been polite to a fault, the assembled witches and wizards could not help but feel there was something subtly wrong, like the glitter of a false diamond. When the redheaded witch exited, they all breathed an almost imperceptible sigh of relief, and then returned embarrassedly to whatever it was they had been previously doing.

Cliodna Street was a proper magical locale, a winding road flanked by hunched, cottage-like buildings. In the night, they looked like great slumbering animals, so fantastically shaped they could only have been brought about by magic. Ginny prodded Parvati into telling her the exact house number, and then dragged her to the front door of a cottage that was remarkably similar to a collapsed chocolate cake. After two botched attempts to open the door, one of which resulted in her wand falling into the middle of a hedge, Parvati managed to stumble in, and promptly tripped on the doorstep.

Ginny sighed and had no other remedy than to drag the half-unconscious Parvati to the living room sofa before taking a tour of the premises. She felt that her ex-schoolmate was rather silly, and extremely foolish in trusting her so immediately, just because the accident of birth had caused them to frequent an institution of learning together. People could really be remarkably thoughtless, she thought as she examined Parvati’s house, a real witch’s cottage with crooked walls, talking mirrors and half-sized doors that probably lead into other dimensions. They were all so trusting, so gullible. She carefully sniffed the perfumes arranged in tidy rows on Parvati’s dressing table, upon which stood a mirror that snored peacefully at her. She also took her time examining Parvati’s wardrobe, on the basis that knowledge is never wasted.

Trust! She carried on with her investigations into the bathroom, dominated by an old bathtub with lions’ paws and a faucet shaped like a gargoyle. She would have certainly not trusted herself, and she had better things to do than going around trusting other people. It sounded terribly unhygienic, to start with. When she was eleven, Lucius Malfoy had slipped a diary between the pages of her old Transfiguration book; of course, the diary had turned out to be the enchanted possession of a certain Tom Marvolo Riddle, that is to say, none other than the Oh Evil One himself. She had blindly trusted the poison poured in that black ink, and as a consequence she had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets, deep in the entrails of Hogwarts Castle. She had then been saved by Harry Potter, which would undoubtedly have caused her adult self endless embarrassment, had she not relegated it to the attic cupboards of her memory.

Yes, she had been very stupid, she thought, returning to the bedroom and going over Parvati’s underwear drawer, which contained a large amount of knickers apparently made out of cobwebs. Nevertheless, the episode had not been without its compensations, as it had instructed her that wandering blindly through the Street of Trust often means that you are hit by the Lorry of Life. Also, the school menu had substantially improved after she had slaughtered the roosters, but she really did not want to think much about it, as there was also the never-answered (to the best of her knowledge) question of the disposal of the basilisk's corpse in an institution that bragged of its commitment to vital recycling activities.

And with that thought, and having finally finished her discreet investigations, she told herself that she deserved some sort of compensation for her care of Parvati and promptly colonised the master bedroom’s bed.

* * *

Now she sat in Parvati’s living room, drinking a cup of coffee while the other witch squirmed on the sofa, complaining of her head’s uncomfortable similarity to an overworked anvil. Ginny felt fresh as a lettuce, but saw no need to press the point. She had always been surprisingly resistant to magical alcohol, and she generally did not commit Parvati’s mistake while drinking (viz., consuming the amounts of alcohol more generally found in distilleries), but nevertheless, she was adverse to unnecessary cruelty (while being right behind necessary cruelty, of course), so she just sat patiently, suggesting various hangover cures, all of which seemed to work by emetic principles.

At this point, a word about the effects of magical alcohol would not be amiss. While it is true that mages have developed relatively quick and easy cures for a variety of ailments, including hangover caused by consumption of Muggle beverages, they have also developed the kind of drinks that unleash a complete range of fireworks upon the magical metabolism. (Metaphorically speaking, that is. Well, not completely metaphorically, but as close as not to matter. Almost. No, seriously.) Wizarding lore attributes many of these fine concoctions to Uric the Oddball, but as it is generally agreed that, using the favoured jargon, Uric wouldn’t be able to find his own arse with an atlas, the tale is considered apocryphal, at least by all of those who haven’t had firsthand (or, indeed, first-liver) experience with a glass of what is politely termed "Suicider". Nevertheless, there is some evidence that indicates that processes of magical fermentation were in use in some of the more ancient magical communities; there also appears to be some truth to the theory that the magical grape was bred by Alberic the Mage in the twelfth century, as he was found floating head down in a vat of his own creation, and apparently that was one of the most sought-after wines in history, if only because no wizard or witch worth their salt would pass such a wonderful opportunity to make lame jokes about wine with a bit of body.

Of course, when you launch a great deal of magic at something, some of it will end up by sticking... (not that that ever stopped any mage from doing anything; meddling with things you don’t understand is half of the definition of witchcraft and wizardry, after all). In fact, what happened is that the magical grape isn’t just a grape; like a bee, it is only one of the parts of a much larger being, the magical vine. And the magical vine is the sort of plant that is practically sentient. Some scholars therefore think that the hangovers it causes are a sort of crude attempt at self-defence. The reason why it doesn’t work is that several mages reasoned, a long time ago, that a hangover is an integral part of any damn fine piss-up, and moreover, it provides a good excuse for spending the following day in bed. Therefore, those misguided souls who had tried to discover an antidote for magic hangovers soon found their talents employed in other fields of research, for instance, whether you can breathe at the bottom of a river with lead weights tied to your feet, and the wizarding world had to do with experimenting with yoghurt and Worcestershire sauce like all other mortals.

Right now, Ginny was imparting with the wisdom of her mother regarding honey and flobberworm extract. Actually, it was a cure for a variety of gynaecological ailments, but she reasoned that the chances of it working on either front were more or less the same.

"Gin… what time is it?" Parvati asked, rubbing her head.

"Half past eight."

The other witch turned on the sofa, shielding her eyes with the blanket that Ginny had placed upon her the previous night.

"Oh crap, I really, really have to get up now… Stupid dossier to deliver to Crockford… damn."

Ginny paused for a moment, as though scrutinizing the depths of her coffee mug. She remembered a scene in her Arithmancy class once, with Professor Vector parrying with the class, prodding a student. Tell me, how do we make sure our calculations are correct? We check them thoroughly, Professor. No, we strive to know the result beforehand. She had absorbed that lesson; she always did. Her personality, personal history and life with six overbearing brothers had come together to ensure that she made the most of every opportunity. Compared to Ginny Weasley, the little old lady who saves little bits of string in case they come handy would look like someone who throws money at hedges.

"I’ll take that if you want me to," she said quietly.

Parvati squinted at her, rubbing her bloodshot eyes.

"Are you sure?" Ginny listened attentively, but she could feel no more than politeness there.

"No problem, Parvati, seriously. If you get up now you may end up throwing up all over Crockford."

"You’re probably right," Parvati moaned, giving no sign of acknowledging the little barb at the end of Ginny’s retort. Ginny thought that it was highly likely that using sarcasm on a hung-over Parvati was akin to throwing darts at a glacier.

"Of course I’m right," Ginny said. "You’re in no state to get out. You just stay here, and I’ll leave you a pot of coffee and a bottle of water nearby. I’ll pop to wherever you want me to pop to and tell them you’re ill."

"Would you?"

"Of course," Ginny said unemotionally.

"Very kind of you, Ginny," Parvati mumbled, and leaned on her side to sip some more coffee. "The dossier is on my study’s desk, very easy to find, lots of crap all over the cover."

"Right. I’ll go get it." She got up and walked through the crooked corridor into Parvati’s study, stacked with traditional witchcraft knickknacks – dribbled candles, crystals and stuffed animals peered from every nook and cranny. Ginny suspected you got this kind of stuff from a catalogue, as spending your days dribbling candles was not, she considered, the sign of a perfectly balanced and well-adjusted mind. She knew where the dossier was, of course – she had pored over it the night before, an inch-thick pile of parchments inside a purple folder with the WFP’s insignia. She hadn’t read all of it, but they appeared to relate to the WFP’s finances; in any case, pages and pages of enchanted buttons expenses were not exactly what she termed fascinating. She grabbed the folder, examined it for a moment and then returned to the recumbent witch.

"I suppose this is it." She dangled the dossier in front of Parvati, who opened her eyes a fraction.

"Mmm? Yes, that’s it. I just joined the thingy— materials. The address is right there. Talk to Doreen, she’s the one who needs it. Are you sure you don’t mind?"

"Not at all, Parvati. We had a good time last night," she added. It was a truthful remark, at least as far as she was concerned. She placed the dossier on the dining table and rushed to the kitchen to fill a water jug. She levitated it back to the living room, as she looked upon useless effort with slightly more distaste than cooks look upon cockroaches. "Here, water will do you good," she said, lowering it onto the coffee table between the sofas, where it stood side by side with the coffee pot. "I’ll flare you later today, yes? Or would you prefer an owl?"

"Whatever you want. Thank you, Ginny," Parvati whispered, and recoiled back into her private complaints and the terrible state of her head. Ginny said a polite goodbye, put her wand back in her bag and, holding the dossier with her left arm, strode out almost inaudibly.

* * *

Outside, she carefully read the address on the dossier as she made her way through Cliodna Street. The September morning was bright and crisp, a slight overcast of clouds looking like old lace, and in the spicy breeze a few mages were already up and about – though not many, as people of a magical persuasion tend to appreciate the effluxes of pre-noon light like a scarecrow appreciates a blowtorch. The WFP’s main offices’ address was embossed on the folder – 7-13 Dumbledore Road, formerly Unicorn Road and dubbed Politic Alley by virtue of being the place of choice of most of the British wizarding world political movers and shakers.

She had been to Dumbledore Road often, even when it had been named Unicorn Road, mostly due to her father and brother’s positions in the magical establishment. It was a well-known fact that the seats of magical government were situated in exactly the same place as their Muggle counterparts, mostly because wizards and witches enjoy third-rate irony as much as the next supposedly mythical entity. They occupied the same space, although of course they existed in different worlds, like a mirror’s surface and its back.

In fact, that was the underlying principle. The magical properties of mirrors, even Muggle ones, had been acknowledged aeons ago; it was in the nature of witches and wizards to be attracted to the boundaries of mirrors, to prod the terra incognita between two reflections, where the light curved. It was as much a part of witchcraft and wizardry as the dribbled candles and the occult birds. And this was how it worked here, too: a mirror on an alley wall bearing two reflections – one to the Muggle world, one to the wizarding world. Ginny always felt that, whoever had come up with that, they certainly had thought themselves very clever. Entertaining the thought again, she walked quietly to the corner of Cliodna and Agrippa and Disapparated.

* * *

She reemerged almost soundlessly at the end of Diagon Alley, clutching the dossier protectively against her chest. She was about three streets away from Dumbledore Road, as Diagon Alley, in its many twists and turns, crossed almost the entirety of wizarding London, and in any case, the Politic Alley arena was closed to Apparition, ostensibly for security reasons, although Ginny thought this was really so that they could avoid anonymous custard-pie hurlers. She walked through the modestly crowded streets, clouds floating graciously above her like a very slow carnival. As she approached Dumbledore Road, baggy bottle-green robes billowing around her, dossier firmly held in her left arm, big leather bag dangling from her right shoulder and red hair austerely restrained, the streets began widening like a sphere of influence, until Orion Avenue finally gave way to Dumbledore Road, a fine example of urban planning at its profligate best. Or worst, as might be the case.

In its present form, it probably had a place in every dictionary next to the word "grandeur"; it could have easily accommodated a three-ring circus, were it not for the fact that it had fountains like more modest roads have dotted white lines. In fact, it was not even a road at all, in the literal denotation of the word: it was exclusively for pedestrian use, paved in light-grey flagstones that managed to suggest that Galleons had been thrown at the ground until they morphed into suitable pavestone material. She eyed the large, impressive buildings and the sculpture-bedecked fountains with a critical stare. She was certain that people would need maps to avoid getting lost while crossing from one side of the road to the other, and a packed lunch would not be amiss either. It seemed frankly inappropriate; money didn’t held any seduction to her. She considered it to be eminently practical. It was probably the only item in the entire world that was completely impervious to magic; she cared for it no more than it was a means to achieve an end, viz., buying all the things she liked. But what she really wanted was… well, she didn’t know what she really wanted, but it certainly didn’t involve outright theft as a public policy.

Still brimming with self-righteousness, she found the façade of the building that proclaimed in large brass curlicues that this was, in fact, numbers 7 to 13, not to be confused with any other numbers, and no, there was no mistake at all. Another brass plaque also did some proclamation, in this case to the effect that this was undoubtedly the London office of the WFP, and so that the truth of this affirmation was demonstrated beyond any doubt, a wide and elegant banner hung from a balcony in one of the upper floors. Ginny thought that the only thing missing was be a choir invisible announcing to the world that this was, indeed, numbers 7 – 13 of Dumbledore Road, the WFP’s main offices and yes, we do have quite a lot of money, thank you very much, Hosanna, Hosanna.

She looked at the wide doorway studiously. The double doors stood open into an inviting green corridor, sealed off at one end by smoked glass. There was no one at the door, not even a lone wizard or witch loitering around in the gods-I’m-dying-for-a-fag hunched way of guards everywhere (this is entirely true, and applies even to sulphur-eating creatures of curious shapes that live in abyssal depths; in their barely sentient way, they obey one of the major laws of the Universe and stand in front of spawn while hankering for a really bubbly volcanic crevasse). Nevertheless, she could feel the tinny, prickly presence of magic, making her skin crawl ever so slightly. They had wards in this place.

It was not exactly surprising, considering the nature of the building. She remembered her visits to Father’s and, more rarely, Percy’s offices. Those had not been visits she’d enjoyed, on the basis that they were really a colossal waste of time (and, in Percy’s case, there was also the fact that he seemed to emanate such a gigantic amount of smugness that she kept expecting to see small bodies becoming attracted to its gravitational pull), given that the amount of things worth remembering was so scarce that she was bored out of her mind after fifteen minutes. She had never complained, but she had tended to sit down in a cloud of silence so thick that her father or brother started to feel a subtle and inexplicable disquiet and sent her away quickly. Ginny’s silences could cause ruptured eardrums, and as she grew older, so had this rare ability, and so the number of her visits had taken a considerable plunge downwards towards zero (except when she needed money).

However, she had carefully stored the little knowledge gleamed during those interludes, and one thing she knew was that when an unknown person passed a ward, questions were asked. She was quite certain there wouldn’t be many of those, and they would quickly let her pass in any case, but she took a rather dim view of that scenario. She objected philosophically to questions, except when she was doing the asking, and she strongly disliked the idea of several people being suddenly forced to take an interest in her. It sounded terribly promiscuous.

She looked down at the purple folder, then back at the door. She was aware she wouldn’t be able to be here all day, and in any case a statue-still person gaping at a doorway would probably attract even more attention, generally either from the purveyors of canvas blazers with fetching long sleeves or from pigeons with astonishingly accurate bowel movements. And so she braced herself and was about to go up the steps…

Sometimes these things happen – a little quirk of Fate, a small readjustment of The Way Things Are. Or just mere coincidence. It really doesn’t matter what you choose to call it, or when will it end. It just has to last for long enough.

… when she noticed a youngish wizard making his speedy way towards the building. He seemed to be one of those people who live permanently in some internal scruffiness field, but that really didn’t concern her, and so she pounced upon him with the hidden grin of a cat coming down on a mouse in several pounds of clawed feline.

"Excuse me, I wonder if you can be of assistance?" she asked, flashing a very brief smile at him. The man startled for a moment, almost letting his briefcase fall to the floor, but rallied bravely, or as bravely as could be wizardly expected in the presence of Ginny Weasley at full speed.

"Er. ER, yes, I mean, how can I help you?" he mumbled.

Ginny put on her best innocent look. When she was young and foolish, it was something that came to her effortlessly. Later on, people had just mistaken her blank look for naivety, because when reality conflicts with firmly-held opinions, people generally tend to choose the latter. "My friend, Parvati Patil, works for the WFP – but she’s ill and asked me to deliver this…" she waved the folder meaningfully. "I wonder if I could go in with you – I have so much stuff to do I really can’t take too long." It was not really lying if it was for a good cause, such as, for instance, hers.

The wizard eyed her for a moment, before his eyes began to water for some inexplicable reason. Ginny’s stare tended to focus on some point beyond the back of the other person’s head, and so it generally had the same effect as a flame-thrower on a lump of butter. He gave up, unaccountably relieved, and sagged into compliance.

"Oh. I see. Of course. Just… follow me," he said, and Ginny beamed a harmless little smile at him again. They climbed over the marble steps and crossed the invisible barrier stretching across the doorway. It was like going through a faded ghost, and Ginny shuddered imperceptibly. On the other side of the glass divide, there was a modestly sized reception room, where a thirty-ish witch read a magazine and looked gnomically at newcomers. The wizard gave her a polite "morning, Nikki," to which the witch answered with something that sounded like "m’r’n". Ginny ignored the exchange, and the wizard took her through another door, which lead into a large room whose furniture seemed to consist mostly of desks, filing cabinets and other work-related apparatus. Various witches and wizards were already lost in their private little spheres of occupation, and the room possessed that aural equivalent of the glow generated by many people being busy.

"Right," the wizard said. "Who was it you wanted to talk to?"

"Someone called Doreen."

"She works for the budget department." He gestured with his left hand towards a door on the right side of the room. "Go through that door, up the stairs, first door on the right. I have to… ER… do some things."

"Yes. Thank you very much for your assistance. You have been very helpful," Ginny said, because she held to truck with impoliteness, and then relegated him to the universe of less important things while she made her way through the desks.

People didn’t notice her, generally, not unless she really wanted them to. Objectively speaking, she was tall and striking (although not necessarily in the complimentary sense of the word), but she had come to learn that what you think you are is what really defines the way other people see you, and she had spent a great part of her life being invisible. All around her people were talking over portable fires, demanding things done yesterday and being brash and loud and acknowledging her presence only in the same way people move to let a cleaning woman or a delivery man pass. Anonymous people. The sort of people that seem to come with the buildings, like draughts and things that create complex civilisations in the depths of basements.

She had come to learn to make the most out of this.

She made her stealthy way out of the door, through a corridor full of the autumn light of the golden trees that stood in the garden surrounding the building, peering through the wide window like curious observers, and climbed up the marble stairs, just as a witch Ginny recognised as having been in Slytherin two years ahead of her came down. She walked quickly past her, unnoticed, and once she was on the carpeted landing, knocked on the door carefully. It read "Doreen Fletcher, Accountancy Dept.", and therefore Ginny knew there could be no possible mistake. A disembodied voice answered her from the other side, muffled by the wood, but not nearly muffled enough.

"Come in, come in," possibly-Doreen said, in a voice you could probably saw pines with. Ginny pushed the door open and stepped in. A woman well into her thirties sat on a desk, flipping the pages of some file while she talked into a fireplace. The green tinge of the magical flames cast a sickly shadow upon her form, which seemed to be inexplicably fibrous and efficient. She was the kind of woman who, if you sawed her in half, would have "no-nonsense" written through the middle. Even her clothes seemed to ooze some sort of bustling energy.

"Hang on," the witch said to the face of the man floating in the fireplace, and then turned to Ginny. Her piercing blue eyes narrowed.

"Who’re you?"

Ginny held up the purple dossier like a shield. "Hello. I’m a friend of Parvati Patil’s. She was ill today, so she asked me to bring this in."

She spoke in her usual careful, unemotional tones, which, as adjectives go, probably constituted the understatement of the century. The simple fact was the Ginny’s way of speaking was the verbal equivalent to the Hoover Dam. Her very presence made other people feel they were throwing rotten tomatoes at a black hole. Her parents, possessing that peculiar rose-tinted blindness that assured them they thought they loved all their children, were impervious to it, but to all others it seemed that there was something peculiarly unlovable about her. If the world were a camping bag, she would have been the icebox at the bottom.

Doreen Fletcher had the energy of a load of plutonium. However, Ginny Weasley had the buffer effect of a reinforced lead container.

"What’s that?" Doreen asked, surprising even herself for being at a loss.

"I don’t know," Ginny lied. "I think she said it’s something to do with your budget?"

It was a statement disguised as a question, because Ginny found gloating distasteful, and so found it only proper to throw a line at the other witch.

"Oh, right," Doreen said, rallying womanfully, and then, because she hadn’t got where she was without leaping at opportunities, she added, "Would you mind terribly to take that to Mr Crockford? He needs to have a look at it, and I’m busier than a one-armed paperhanger. Ahah."

"Ahah," Ginny repeated, as though she was trying to determine how some new and curious phrase rolled from her tongue.

"Wouldn’t you mind popping into Crockford’s office, then, love? One floor up, third door on the right. Should be difficult to miss, what with him being the main bigwig around here, all though of course us below stairs are the ones who do all the work, eh?"

She looked almost pleadingly at Ginny.

"Ahah," she repeated promptly.

"Right, you’ll have to excuse me now," she said, almost sagging with relief, and turned back to the man on the fireplace, who had been observing the exchange with a mixture of amusement and bafflement. "Close the door on you way out, will you?"

Ginny nodded gravely and walked out. Inside, perhaps due to some compensation mechanism she wouldn’t know about even if hit her on the head with a club, Doreen Fletcher snapped at the man on the fireplace like a dog in full postman-terminating mode.

On the corridor, Ginny looked around her. She was by nature both careful and curious, and in her, those were traits with an edge. Contrarily to a widely-held opinion, most people are, in fact, very curious. The problem is, they don’t quite manage to relate the various facets of the things they feel curious about. In a not-quite-completely-metaphorical sense, Ginny tended to figure out the full range of consequences of shoving your wet fingers into the electric socket of the universe while most people were still feeling curious about the little holes and curious about the odd burning smell while sketching the beginnings of a tentative correlation between the two. People of a magical persuasion tend to jump into conclusions, but Ginny did that at Olympic-champion levels; she could clear 21 feet worth of conclusions with a running start.

She walked back to the stairways and climbed them, eyes alert to the horrible possibility of finding Someone She Knew. However, and despite the fact that there was that backdrop hum that seems to fill all buildings where a great deal of activity takes place (whether or not it is occurring at that precise moment), both stairs and landing appeared to be deserted. She stepped up onto a floor identical to the one below, and walked away from the landing and through the corridor on the right, carefully absorbing the knowledge so kindly imparted upon the widely-spaced doors. The third door on the right was outwardly entirely similar to the others, but bore upon it a plaque saying, simply, "Maurice Crockford". It seemed to imply that knowing that was knowing everything, and Ginny was good at perceiving hints. She took a breath, raised one closed fist, and knocked.

It was then that she noticed the door wasn’t closed, as it appeared to, but was in fact open and starting to swing on its hinges due to her knock. It moved back, slow and soundless, because ominous creaks may very well be occult, but they are also bloody nuisances. It finally stopped, leaving a space enough for a thin person to weasel through.

She started to feel distinctively disquieted, as though someone had just thrown wet wool over her. She was quite certain things weren’t supposed to go like this; there was something subtly and inescapably wrong.

"ER, hello?" she called out. She could see no more through the open door than a slice of window and wall.

"Mr. Crockford?" she asked again.

Despite the embarrassment with the Boy Who Went On Living the Lucky Sod in her childhood, she had grown to become a very levelheaded woman. Maurice Crockford was officially a Famous Person, but he was also a politician, and she knew that politicians, compared to the more ephemeral type of VIPs, had all the star-power of a piece of driftwood. She swung the door back completely.

She looked carefully and took a step forward. She blinked. The image ahead of her remained the same: at the desk that stood in front of a wide window draped with elegant brocade curtains, a man was slumped. He didn’t look as though he trying to ascertain the resistance of mahogany to slobber.

"Mr. Crockford?" she said. The atmosphere inside the tasteful office seemed almost heavy. It put her in mind of an incense burner in a closed space. The man at the desk remained slumped over it.

Acting quickly, she closed the door behind her and walked softly to his side. His hands were both upon the desk, his face hid between his arms. She reached out, her heart thudding, and placed her fingers upon his wrist. She waited for a moment, and then withdrew her hand; she had no formal medical training, but even she could see enough on the way of symptoms (or rather, lack thereof), to make a very clear diagnosis of terminal death.

The sudden sound of footsteps, soft as it was, made her spin on her feet like a rabid turntable, in that age-old instinct of fight-or-flight that had ensured her ancestors remained alive for long enough for their instincts to become age-old. On the left side of the office, there was a door, which now stood open, and in front of which stood a wizard. Her mouth parted in a sort of shocked surprise, which was quite a rare event for Ginny Weasley indeed.

"You?" she managed to say.

"He’s dead, isn’t he?" the wizard said calmly.

"Well… yes! But everybody thought you were dead!" she burst out.

The wizard seemed completely unsurprised.

"News of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."

TBC…