Pressure

"Damn!" said Kingsley Skacklebolt as the slammed door was still vibrating on its hinges. "This Ministry business is going to be the death of me."

In his previous job, his relationship with authority had been simple: he received orders, and carried them out to the best of his ability. When asked for advice, he gave it; but he did not expect it would be necessarily taken. Now... damn. Everyone wanted a piece of him; everyone was supposed to have a personal interest in his decision; and everyone had a threat - more or less hidden, more or less intended.

Did even Harry...? No, on the whole, Kingsley did not think so. The lad was candid, generous, straightforward, not the kind who'd back up his demands with threats. His anger meant simply that: the kind of anger an upright (and rather naïve, his inner cynic added) young man would feel in the face of political expediency. Political expediency getting in the way of doing justice to a man who was dead and who could no longer speak for himself.

Yes, damn it! That stung. And yet, how many times --? As an Auror, Kingsley had seen it more than once, more than twice - plenty of times: good men, even heroes, ignored and abused; worthless or inadequate figures promoted through political expediency, public misunderstanding, or pure chance. Here, heroes were not always rewarded, nor villains always punished.

But it still stung. It still stung....

Kingsley got up and walked out the door. He wanted no more Ministry business for today.

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They say that "The loudest noise is the one you are trying not to hear." All it had taken was one woman in the crowd - a face barely glimpsed as he walked away from the Ministry and its problems - the face of a woman who looked like Andromeda Tonks. Mrs. Tonks, who had sat in his office just before the stormy interview with Harry Potter - in her black widow's weeds, pale, pretty, vehement.

"I tell you that is what they are planning on. I know them. There are a dozen Black cousins and relations who have not been weeded out by the war and who would like nothing better than a ride back to popularity and acceptance on the back of a dead hero."

Her voice had fallen. "The house of Black was one of the load-bearing walls on which Lord Voldemort had built his party. Except for Alphard, Sirius, and myself, they all were hard-core Voldemort supporters, and you know that. And you know that they have never stopped plotting for power for one second. And you know that they are not any more decent or humane than they have ever been. Instead of beheading their house-elves themselves, they now dodge the law by making other elves do it."

"Really," Kingsley had answered, keeping a poker face.

"Really. I know it because one elderly elf managed to escape to me. But she was so terrorized I could not induce her to speak to you, and besides the testimony of one elf would have been no good before the Wizangemot. I did not even dare bring her to the presence of her employer, because the compulsion of her nature would have made her obey him instantly again."

"You still could have brought her to me, you know."

"Whatever. I can procure her for you if you can keep quiet about it, but, for the record, she is not in my house or in the houses of any of my friends.

"Right. Let's get back to the main point."

"Regulus Black."

"Not Regulus, Minister. He is, as he always was, secondary. What I am trying to make you understand is that this is about the ambitions and politics of the House of Black.

"It's bad enough that they have all taken up Sirius like mad. If poor Sirius had a grave, I tell you, he'd be turning in it. They all hated him like poison when he was alive, and he hated them. Now they are treating him as the family star. Do you think that all this talk of Sirius, the articles about him at school and during the War, the pictures, the Weird Sisters song - he is now as popular as Harry Potter, without the inconvenience of being alive - do you think it is all a coincidence? Of all the heroes of the War, why are the media giving so much prominence to Sirius and Sirius alone? I'll tell you why: because someone is pushing for it. I have been told in confidence that the Weird Sisters song was composed under Imperius; all group members had been cursed. Only, because it was not for the ordinary kind of purpose, nobody thought of checking. The singers themselves probably don't realize it.

"The House of Black have always kept their activities secret. The public at large knows nothing, and the papers would be sued into next week if they dared publish what they know. The hold of fear of the House of Black has never died; it was there before Tom Riddle ever made it to Hogwarts, it is there still. Even your Aurors, unless they received a direct order, would not move against it.

"So I tell you, Minister, Regulus Black simply must not be rehabilitated. This is their next step. A second martyred Black hero, articles on 'The Regulus I knew', interviews, songs, photographs... within a few months, you would have an infestation of Blacks in the Wizangemot. The public would have quite forgotten such small matters as Bellatrix and the rest. They would be there en masse, feathering their own nests and waiting for the next Dark Lord to come around."

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Kingsley kept thinking as he walked, barely noticing the warm afternoon sunshine and the cheerful, colourfully-dressed crowd pouring into the streets to enjoy the winter daylight. Andromeda hated her family, true, and with good reason. Not only had she been rejected by them, but she had also seen her husband and her daughter murdered by the party they supported; and murdered, one may imagine, with particular pleasure and with the intent to inflict maximum pain on the Blood Traitor herself. Years of grief and hate might have made her unbalanced... although her testimony seemed controlled and rational enough. And then, she knew them. She knew them and what they were capable of, better than anyone else. And nothing she had said disagreed with anything he knew. Other confidential sources had talked of the Blacks regrouping, of their selection of superficially untainted candidates to the Wizangemot, of the shameless push on behalf of Sirius' memory and Sirius' heroic image.

On the other hand... there was Harry, and Harry's friends. And to them, the issue was simple. Regulus had died a lonely, hideous death; he had died a hero; and he had struck a bigger blow against Voldemort than anyone except Dumbledore and Harry themselves. That his secret and solitary revolt had indirectly caused Dumbledore's death - through a series of misfortunes that nobody could have foreseen - made no difference to the issue. It was a screaming injustice that his name should still remain in the list of dead or missing Death Eaters.

But then, there were the political considerations again. If Regulus were rehabilitated, not only would that hand the dreadful House of Black another powerful propaganda weapon, but Andromeda and the other half-dozen people who had warned him of the designs and ambitions of the Blacks would themselves be disappointed, and they were among the most powerful and influential supporters of his ministry. Endangering their support while giving the Blacks a handle was a real double whammy, he thought bitterly. The inextricable mix of personal bitterness and political games-playing meant that this could not be treated as an ordinary negotiation, either -

-- Kingsley had been walking faster and faster, without thinking where he was going - he was in a park - suddenly he felt his legs hit something hard - something large -

-- there were two shouts, one his own -

-- helpless, he felt his balance shift, flailed, stuggled uselessly - and went over -

"Oh. Hello. You are the minister, aren't you?"

A small white hand grasped his own and pulled; and behind it, a well-made arm and shoulder, and a weird, dreamy face, dominated by two prominent, very pale blue eyes, and a mop of dirty blonde hair. A familiar face

"Yes,,, Yes, I am. Sorry. And you are Xeno Lovegood's daughter, aren't you? Luna? I apologize - I was woolgathering."

"I see... not that there is much wool to gather around here." This was said with a perfectly straight face, and for a moment Kingsley thought to explain the expression... then he noticed that the end of her mouth was twitching. Unexpected girl, he thought, now and always.

"Are you hurt?"

"Yes, I think - that did hurt a bit." The voice now was vaguely surprised and earnest, as if her attention had been drawn to something unexpected. "But really, if I had paid attention, I might have seen you coming."

"You were busy with something?"

"Working on the language of grasses." And Kingsley was reminded of all the tales about "Looney Luna". "But don't worry, it's a long term project." And yet, that was the native tone of the Ravenclaw, the scholar. There was a silence, as both sat on the grass, caught up in their own thoughts.

"You just graduated from Hogwarts, did you not?" said Kingsley, just to make conversation.

"Yes. I'm kind of... glad."

"You didn't like it there?"

"Well... that is a question with so many answers. Did I like meeting friends like Ginny and Hermione? Yes I did. And did I like the teaching and learning new things? Oh yes, that was wonderful. And did I think that the castle was beautiful and strange? Yes, yes, yes! But... I guess I am not good at being with a lot of people. I can never seem to say what they want to hear, and they think I'm odd.."

"Oh. That sounds... sad."

"Sad?" said Luna in a tone that suggested that this was a new thought to her. "Well, it could get uncomfortable, a bit. People would play pranks, or tell stories about me... silly stories, mostly. They hid my things, which was very foolish, really, because they always come back to me.

"But you see, what I found is that if you just follow what seems right to you, people will adapt. I mean, I think that when they realize that there is really something, a direction, a sense, to what you do, most of them will leave you alone, and some might even get to like you. By the end of my sixth year, the only people who really had it in for me were the black Slytherins and the Carrows and all that stuff, and they didn't count."

"I'm afraid that they counted all too much," answered Kinglsey bitterly.

"Oh, I am sure that they could have killed me and that they could torture me and do horrible things. But the thing is, I always thought that they did that because they were so outside of it all. Like Umbridge before them. That they really had nothing to do with most people in Hogwarts, and that was what made them angry. Everyone else, including Professor Snape, just treated them like a necessary misfortune. I mean, you would not like it, would you, if people looked on you as they look on... a fever?"

That was a curious point of view, and an interesting one. And as Kingsley awoke to the fact that before him was a mind, and an interesting one, something else happened. It was as if the light of dawn were stretching further back on her words, making them all stand out more brightly and significantly; one sentence in particular.

I found that if you just follow what seems right to you, people will adapt.

People will adapt.

He had been spending his time concerning himself with everyone else's thoughts; the views of Harry Potter and Andromeda Tonks, of the Blacks and the public, of the media. The one thing he had not asked himself is: what do you think?

He thought that Regulus deserved rehabilitation; and he also thought that the Black family deserved infamy. He would follow both his views first, and then seek support for them; he would not begin with trying to please or appease or buy out others. It would be problematic, of course... but he felt if he did it right, and coherently, he could bring people like Andromeda around. And those who would not, he thought, were better lost than found; he could not work with people who only gave their support on blackmailing conditions.

Here, with this strange little pop-eyed blonde, he had found his balance.

"No, I guess I would not like it either. But I don't think I would torture people for it.

"But if you can take a little time from the language of grasses, Luna, might I buy you a drink?"