Paying Your Dues

Hours passed with Fred frozen above him. George couldn't feel his own pulse. His throat had closed over. Breathing was impossible. It would never happen again if Fred weren't there. For one of them to breathe out, the other had to breathe in. That was the way the world worked. George didn't exist without Fred. Fred was his satellite orbit, half of hisbeing.

Fred was falling.

With the world turning to syrup around him, George saw with astonishment that someone was holding out his wand and pointing it at his brother. For a split second he heard someone yelling,

"Wingardium Leviosa!",

then realized he himself was screaming the words. Pain flared through his knees as he fell gasping to the stone floor, and stared bug eyed at Fred who was now floating upside down a few feet off the ground, blinking, cloak flapping around his head.

"Thanks, George." Fred's voice was hard to hear. "You ok?"

George opened and closed his mouth a few times. Then, just as suddenly as it had left, the rest of the world came back. Air came rushing into his lungs, cracking open his frozen self at the seams. His thoughts came into focus and he realized that Fred was hard to hear because of the siren roaring its intruder warning. The sharp pain in his back wasn't part of the aftershock; it was the pointed end of a wand. The extra feet in his peripheral vision most likely belonged to Ministry security guards, no doubt called by the alarm he'd just cleverly triggered.

He expected that one day he would probably look back on all this and laugh. He expected that any minute now he'd remember which part of his audacious plan this was, and how it involved being yanked off the floor to face down a security guard who'd obviously been crossed with a Norwegian Ridgeback. He thought he might even recall the brilliant and daring escape plan he'd come up with for just this situation.

Or, he might just throw up.

And so he did.

Pity, thought George through the haze. That looked like it had been quite a nice uniform robe.

"Elves revolting."

"They always have been. Next!"

"Newt shortage in North East."

"What are we, a wildlife club? Next."

"Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Chief fired over family row."

"Eh? Now that's a better headline. What's it about?"

Around the large oak table, the assembled journalists of the Daily Prophet paused in their endeavours and waited as lead reporter Neil Pratt threw his notebook on the table. "Arthur Weasley's been fired. Some furore over his twin sons' joke shop business, the one down the alley. Seems they couldn't be bothered filing their tax returns."

"Can't say I blame 'em," said Eriksson. "Have you seen the scrollwork required for a business these days?"

Editor-in-Chief and self-proclaimed hard-ass, not that anyone in the office wanted to investigate that, Michael Penn, gulped his morning coffee, wincing as it burned a path down his gullet. "So? Everyone else in business has to file them."

"But they don't, do they?" asked Eriksson. "When was the last time our office filed an IR32000? The Ministry hasn't repealed a single tax law since 1247. No one fills the damn things in anymore. They're a joke."

"Maybe," said Pratt, "but these kids still got done, and it caused enough of a stink at the Ministry to get their father fired. I really think we could run with this one. They flaunted the law, so that makes them criminals. Their father worked at the Ministry, which makes him potentially newsworthy on his own, and he's already been in trouble with the Ministry several times before."

On hearing this, a tray of lead linotype on a sideboard rearranged itself into a headline, and squeaked out, "Ministry maverick protects juvenile delinquent sons!"

"Has he?"

Pratt checked his notes. "No. As far as I know, the first he heard about it was when he got hauled over the coals in his bosses' office."

"Still, doesn't say much for his parenting skills does it? If he keeps getting into trouble in his own work, how's he going to teach them to be responsible businessmen?"

The metal letters in the tray rearranged themselves, and sang out, "Delinquent dad abuses Ministry position of power!"

Eriksson looked troubled. "I'm not sure about that. Weasley himself didn't do anything out of line did he? It was his sons."

Pratt yawned. "They're still living at his house. That makes them his responsibility."

Hislop, who had been mostly flicking disinterestedly through the Quibbler till that point, said, "The twins hang out with Potter a lot."

The rest of the team stopped pretending to pay attention and did it for real. They looked expectantly at him. Harry Potter sold newspapers. Lots and lots of newspapers. They might be able to spin this out for weeks. Hislop continued trawling through the opposition paper for any stories they could appropriate.

"Well?" Penn eventually growled.

Hislop didn't even look up. "Well, if we point that out in the sub-heading it's bound to get attention, isn't it."

"Boy Who Lived fraternizing with juvenile delinquents!"

"Makes it sound like the story's about him though," said Pratt.

Penn gulped down more of his liquid breakfast. "Can we make it about him?"

"We can beef up the details of their friendship, point out that Arthur's become a de facto father to him, but that's about it. It's really the Weasley twins who're the focus of the story."

"Delinquent twins ruin Ministry Father; bring shame on Boy Who Lived!"

Penn nodded. "That's our lead then, people. Have it on my desk by 4pm, Pratt. I want this out in the early edition. And Hislop?"

"Yeah?"

"See if you can't find me a decent murder or conspiracy by tomorrow. Another week of this and no one will be reading us."

Hislop grinned. "Sure. They'll all be too anxious to read about crumple-horned snack socks."

Penn snorted, and left Hislop to his reading.