June Week

Chapter 9: On The Record

Being overtaken by instinctive cat behavior was odd, and not a little disconcerting, but Minerva refused to let it stop her from doing what she had to. The year was almost over, and she intended to fit in all the spying she could in the time she had, since Tom would be spending the whole summer far out of her reach. And so, as a cat, she trailed him incessantly, in every spare moment she had, throughout the last few days of April, all through May and into the early part of June. But he always seemed to be on some sort of officially sanctioned business, and she was never able to overhear him talking about anything that could get him in trouble.

The one thing she did discover was that Tom´s friends treated him with an astonishing amount of respect - deference that bordered on reverence, far beyond what even a popular boy like Tom warranted. They carried his books for him, filled his cup and gave him first choice of food at mealtimes, and escorted him from class to class in the manner of a honor guard.

Very odd, she thought, gazing down from her vantage point high on a library shelf to where he sat surrounded by them, looking for all the world like a young emperor holding court. What ever can he have done to make them act that way? He´s got no money; he can´t be buying them off. And he´s certainly not winning them over with kindness. This was true. In contrast to his general air of languid amusement, Tom was often very sharp with the people who were close to him. Amazingly, not one of them seemed to mind.

Though her activities during those spring months failed to help her trap Tom in malfeasance, they did bring a reward: somehow, in the midst of it all, she stopped being frightened of him. More or less, at any rate. Whether it was her growing awareness of her own power, or just the constant proximity to him, she didn´t know. Nor did she care, as long as it meant she could walk past him in the corridor without feeling sick and shaky for a quarter-hour afterward. She still loathed him, despised him, lay in bed at night imagining his downfall, but she wasn´t afraid. If anything, she almost wished he would try to do something to her - all this watchful waiting ran contrary to her nature, which cried out for swift, decisive action. He wouldn´t find her such an easy target again.

In the meantime, her Animagus training continued. Dumbledore had told her that she was nearly finished, and, in fact, they were scheduled to visit the Ministry offices on the first day of summer holidays so she could demonstrate her transformation and officially register herself.

That day, July first, dawned clear for a change, and very hot, so hot that the pair of them were nearly stifled the moment they arrived in Diagon Alley. Minerva had felt a little nervous about going back to the scene of the attack she´d witnessed in December, but all the damage had long since been cleaned up, and the difference in seasons made the memory seem far away.

Anyway, Diagon Alley was only a jumping-off point for their excursion. Dumbledore´s cousin Bella had sent a car and driver to pick them up, as one couldn´t just go Apparating about the city at will. They got in (breathing identical sighs of relief as the magically cooled air washed over them) and were soon at the Ministry offices, which were housed in an old four-story building not far from the Muggle Houses of Parliament.

The building was instantly recognizable as a wizard one by virtue of being the only structure on the street that hadn´t been touched by bombing. Inside, it smelled strongly of musty, crumbling paper, over-boiled coffee and at least a hundred years´ worth of built-up floor polish. The scent was one that Minerva, later in life, would come to think of as the odor of bureaucracy, and to find strangely reassuring. Now, at not quite twenty years old, she just thought it reeked. She was sure it would smell even worse to her cat nose.

Bella was waiting in the entrance hall, clutching a clipboard and quill. The moment she´d greeted them, she thrust the clipboard into Minerva´s hands, saying "You´d better get started now, or we´ll be here all day."

"What´s all this?" Minerva asked, scanning the sheets and sheets of parchment attached to the board.

"Paperwork," Bella said. "The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures keeps very close tabs on Animagi. They´re only letting me walk you through this process as a special favor - I´m not one of them - and they´ll be absolutely livid if the paperwork isn´t filed properly, so make sure you don´t skip any questions. You can sit at that table over there.

Minerva sat, thinking that there was nothing to take the thrill out of an experience like being forced to fill out forms first. The questions started out reasonably enough - name, date of birth and so forth - but they went on and on. What was more, some of them were quite impertinently personal.

By the time she reached the last one, it was past lunchtime, and she was starving. She hoped no mice ran across the floor while she was demonstrating her transformation. It would be unspeakably embarrassing to find herself chasing and eating one of them. She´d never done such a thing before, but she was learning to expect the unexpected when it came to being an Animagus.

"All right, I´m finished," she called, putting down the quill and flexing her cramped fingers. Bella, who had been sitting with Dumbledore on the main staircase and having a long, earnest conversation in whispers, came over and flipped through the forms to make sure they were all right.

"You´ve skipped this one about distinguishing marks," she pointed out, tapping a finger on question 347.

"I haven´t got any," said Minerva. This had served her very well so far. There were at least ten other grey-and-black tabby cats at Hogwarts, and to the unpracticed eye, she could have been any one of them.

"Very well," Bella said, scribbling "none" in the space. "Come along. They´ll be expecting us upstairs."

As she and Dumbledore followed Bella through the echoing corridors, Minerva found herself feeling unaccountably jittery. Not many people knew that she´d been working on this transformation, and even fewer - only Dumbledore, Bella, Headmaster Dippet and, because he had begged her, Hagrid - had seen her do it. The thought of suddenly performing in front of an audience like some sort of circus animal was a bit unnerving. She started to picture a tribunal of grim-faced, black-robed men, looming in the shadows of a huge, pillared chamber and waiting for her to make a mistake.

Fortunately, the real situation couldn´t have been any further from this flight of fancy. Instead of a hall of judgment, Bella led them into a cramped conference room where two wizards and one witch sat along one side of a long table. All three looked tired and vaguely put-upon, as if they were used to doing too much work for too little pay, but kind enough. They asked Minerva some of the same questions that were in her huge bundle of paperwork, made a few notes, and then sat back expectantly and waited.

She flicked obligingly into cat form and leapt up onto the table, walking down its length one way, then the other, so they could get a good look at both sides of her. There was a brief, unpleasant inspection, during which the witch picked her up and examined her carefully from head to feet, pushing on the pads of her paws to see the claws come out and pulling back her lip to get a look at her teeth (a little burst of cat instinct came along at that moment, and she had to quell the urge to bite the invading fingers). Then one of the wizards said "Very good, you can turn back now," and next thing she knew, she, Dumbledore and Bella were standing out in the corridor again.

"That was it?" she asked, feeling dazed and a little let down.

Bella laughed. "Yes, I´m afraid most of what goes on here isn´t terribly exciting. Mostly paperwork and meetings. That´s government for you."

"Not unlike academia, in that respect," said Dumbledore. "It´s a wonder I manage to teach any classes at all with the amount of time I spend sending letters and filling out student forms. Just wait until you work your way up into my position."

"I´d rather not," Minerva said, grimacing at the memory of that clipboard full of questions.

"Never say never, my dear," Dumbledore replied with a twinkle in his eye. He patted Minerva kindly on the shoulder. "Anyway, despite the dreary anticlimactic nature of the registration process, this truly is a wonderful achievement. I´m very proud of you, and I know your parents would be too, if they were here. We have the rest of the afternoon to help you celebrate. What would you like to do?"

"Eat," said Minerva succinctly. This time both Bella and Dumbledore laughed.

~~~

Hungry as she was at that point, Minerva would have been glad to consume her celebratory meal standing on the pavement outside a chip shop. Bella, however, insisted that the occasion deserved something nicer, and dragged them off to Le Moment Magie, an extremely snooty wizard-only restaurant in the posh part of town.

It was a lovely place, dimly lit even in midafternoon, with real cloths and napkins on the tables and swarms of live fireflies glimmering in enchanted glass globes around the room. Dumbledore and Bella, well used to eating at such establishments, walked in blithely and settled down to peruse the menu together. Minerva envied their confidence. She´d never had occasion to go anyplace fancier than the Three Broomsticks or the Leaky Cauldron, and she´d started feeling uncomfortable the minute she passed through the carved and gilded doors. When she saw the shocking array of silverware and crystal laid in front of her, she lost her appetite altogether. Meals at school were held in a much more raucous and informal atmosphere, and she was horrified by the thought that she might accidentally do something inappropriate - especially in front of Bella, who still made her feel slightly jealous and intimidated.

Fortunately, neither of the older wizards seemed to notice her dismay. They discussed whether they should have squabs or game hens and debated knowledgeably about the relative merits of beluga and ossetra caviar, while Minerva was left to sit bolt upright against the upholstered back of her chair and wonder which fork she should use first. She was beginning to realize that a Hogwarts education, however thorough, left a great deal to be desired in the area of fine dining etiquette. Eventually, she decided that she would just watch Dumbledore and do whatever he did. And she would have fish. She´d developed a strange fondness for fish of late.

Shadowing Dumbledore and trying to eat her fish delicately (the sight and smell of it had brought her appetite howling back again, and she longed to stuff it down as fast as she could) kept her so busy, and so quiet, that her dining companions seemed to forget she was there after a while. Their conversation passed from Animagi to Bella´s four cats - Dumbledore´s eyes glazed over slightly during this part - to current affairs at the Ministry, and finally to a German wizard called Grindelwald, of whom Minerva had never heard. Dumbledore and Bella, on the other hand, knew all about him, and were very passionate on the topic.

"You know he´s gone Dark, and I know he´s gone Dark," Bella was saying, "but unless we can convince the Minister, what good is that knowledge to us?"

"He´ll see reason sooner or later. He won´t be able to avoid it once the body count climbs high enough," said Dumbledore.

"Oh, capital logic, Albus. Wouldn´t you like to do something about him before there´s any more loss of life?"

"A question you need hardly ask," Dumbledore said dryly. "But I am not an Auror, and you cannot take the law into your own hands. All we can do is wait. And I hope you don´t think I enjoy waiting while my students leave right under my nose and go to join him."

"Yes, but -" At that moment, Bella´s gaze fell on Minerva, watching them both wide-eyed over the rim of a water glass, and she stopped short.

"I´m sorry, Minerva dear," she said with a rather forced smile. "This can´t be very interesting for you. Look, Albus, we´re boring her to death."

"Not at all," said Minerva. "Who is this Grindelwald person?"

Bella looked at her cousin across the table, and Dumbledore said "I´ll tell you about him later. Everything I can tell you, anyway. Now, are you finished with that fish? I hear the chocolate gateau here is excellent ..."

Though she was rather offended that he thought she could be so easily distracted by cake, Minerva let the waiter banish her plate with a wand-wave and prepare for the next course. So that was what Albus and Bella had been meeting about so often over the last month or two - a Dark wizard. And one who was recruiting Hogwarts students, too.

I wonder if - she thought suddenly, remembering her own private mission. But no, Tom´s not involved in Dark magic. Or is he? He is a Slytherin, after all.

It was definitely worth considering. Nothing cast a shadow on a wizard as quickly as being suspected of dabbling in the Dark Arts. Lost in thoughts of how she might look for evidence, and feeling renewed hope of success, Minerva said nothing for the rest of the meal.