The Bureau Of Loopholes

"But Mrs. Dinkenbuger—"

"No buts about it! You've had your last chance! I want you—"

"It was only a day late!"

"I told you when you came here that—"

"But we weren't even here to pay the rent! I was on a business trip, and my wife was on assignment—"

"That's no excuse! I've made too many exceptions for you and your wife. I want both of you out by six o'clock, and I'll take no more backtalk!" The landlady crossed massive, meaty arms over an ample chest and glared. James Potter matched her glare for glare . . . but when she shifted her competition-level body into a more comfortable position, he was the first to back down.

"All right. I'll get Lily and my things, and we'll leave." As he walked past the woman, her pebble-gray eyes following him through the door, he gathered the nerve for a final act of bravado. "But you won't be getting this month's rent!" Dodging a hamfisted swing, he sprinted up the stairs toward his flat.

 

"She just evicted us?" Lily asked, looking around the flat they had been living in for the past three months. "Why?"

"Because we turned in our rent one day late," James replied shortly, packing his clothes, books, and papers into a trunk. He shut the lid with a thud and a click of locks, then set to the task of shrinking their furniture to fit it into a smaller box.

"It couldn't be just that. Mr. Vanderbilt said that she was very lenient with him when he was a whole week late with his rent," pressed Lily, carefully wrapping a camera in a spare set of robes and placing it in a box, along with a vivid blue quill pen and a notebook.

James shrugged, surveying the place thoroughly. Everything packed, and it wasn't yet six. Ah, yes, that was it! He'd forgotten to pack the clock! "She might have been thinking of a few other things, too," he admitted. "Said that she'd made too many exceptions for us."

"Well, there was that horrid incident with your owl . . . and she never did like it when Sirius came to visit on his motorbike . . . and perhaps transfiguring her couch into a cow might not have sat well with her – but she didn't need to throw us out for it!" Lily proclaimed, picking up her packages and setting them on James' trunk. "Where are we supposed to go?"

"Do you think any of your friends from work—"

"No. We will not stay with Rita, no matter how desperate we get. What about some of your Ministry colleagues?"

"I don't think they'd take us – most are living in worse conditions than ours, and the rest . . . didn't you say yourself that they were snobs?"

"'Self-important pigs' was the term I used, I think."

And then they fell back on their old standby. "What about Sirius or Peter?" both asked in unison.

A ponderous, pounding tread on the stairs alerted them to Mrs. Dinkenburger's imminent arrival. "I don't know where Peter's living, so I guess Sirius it is."

As the door was flung open with a resounding bang, the packed-away clock began to chime. In rapt amazement, Mrs. Dinkenburger watched the young couple vanish into thin air.

 

In a small house in northeast London, a pile of trunks and boxes appeared without warning on Sirius Black's coffee table. The two people that followed were a bit luckier; they managed to land on the nearby couch.

"Sirius? Hello?" James called, looking around the dim room. Their luggage had broken the hapless coffee table, but that was something that could be fixed without much difficulty. The faded red couch had two dents where the couple had fallen – long-distance Apparation tended to drop the spellcasters from a height. A few pictures had fallen from the walls, luckily landing unbroken on the shag carpet, and a standing lamp had crashed into a writing desk. Neither was seriously harmed.

Lily picked her way through the chaos, looking for some sign of life or residence. The front door was locked; out of curiosity, she opened it. A note, neatly taped onto the door, read 'Gone protesting – back when the hunger strike ends.'

"James!" Lily called, closing the door again. "Sirius is out!" She made her way back to the living room, where her husband had flicked on a wireless.

" . . . Reports of sit-in protests and hunger strikes point to increased activity among humans with accidentally-inflicted preternatural conditions (H.W.A.I.P.C). We've managed to get exclusive interviews with some of the protestors who are participating in a hunger strike on Ministry property. On to Tricia Snyder with a live report."

"Sirius left a note taped to his door that said he'd be protesting," Lily commented, turning the volume up. "Maybe we'll hear something about him."

 

On the Minister of Magic's well-manicured lawns, the protest was going well. The number of drug-pushers and other riffraff that usually associated themselves with liberation movements was startlingly low, while participation was high. The media, in a rare act of daring, had decided to interview the 'inhuman monsters'. Yes, everything was going quite well.

Except for the significant fact that the Minister didn't seem to care about the activists who had camped amidst the topiary.

Remus Lupin leaned back against a stone pot that contained a rather large, sculpted bush. The long wait had begun.

Making his way through the sea of bodies, Sirius Black sighted his friend. "Knew you'd make it! The protesters here have been waiting for you – you're a real hero to them," he stated with a broad smile, kneeling next to Remus. "What's the word from the Bureau? Are you going to take your case before the Board of Judges?"

Lupin handed him the crumpled and folded form letter, as well as Peter's advice. Reading over the Bureau of Loopholes' opinion, Sirius released bated breath in an indignant puff of air. "Should've expected this. Corporations never like getting involved; probably they think they'll annoy the Ministry if they give us anything." He laughed, a barking sound that was exacerbated by his drying throat. "And they will annoy the Ministry. That's the point: if the Ministry's peeved enough, they'll have to give us what we want."

"What do you want? You're not an H.W.A.I.P.C. Why risk your neck to protest with us?"

Sirius shrugged affably. "I'm a liberal. I hate prejudice. Besides, having sympathetic people helps your case."

 

Two reporters, crowd-surfing, met at a marble pillar to strategize. "They don't want to be interviewed. How could anyone not want to be interviewed?" demanded one, brushing off her cherry-tinted robes.

"And this could be the next big story – how does this sound? Gang of Hooligans Gathers for a Monstrous . . . um, Sit-in! No, that's not scathing enough. 'The Monsters Without, the Monster Within'. It could attack both sides!" The journalist prattled on happily, clutching an acid-green quill pen in her hand.

Both sighted the folk lounging by the pot at the same time. "Gang up on them, shall we?" Tricia Snyder asked, preparing to cast the transmission charm that would send her interviews to the station.

"The quill is mightier than the sword!" Rita Skeeter laughed, fishing a writing tablet from her handbag (much larger on the inside than it looked on the outside) and sucking at her Quick-Quotes Quill.

Like a pair of overly-manicured lionesses stalking their prey, the two women advanced.

 

"Sir, what is your name?" asked a rather unattractive, blond young woman, setting her notebook and quill on the floor. "What are your opinions on this protest? Are you a vampire? A werewolf?"

"This is Tricia Snyder, on location at the Minister of Magic's house," the other one said, smiling with far more shiny white teeth than should be allowed. "We bring you an interview with . . ." she leaned toward Sirius.

"Um, Sirius Black." He looked up at her face, uncomfortably six inches away from his.

Remus shook his head at the journalist, moving around to the other side of the pot. She picked up her notebook and quill and followed him, pink-polka-dotted yellow robes swishing. The Quick-Quotes Quill wrote on.

The unkempt man evades young reporter Rita Skeeter's attempts at engaging him in conversation. He has a shifty look in his hollow brown eyes.

"If you don't mind bluntness, Mr. Black, what is your condition?" Tricia Snyder inquired, making herself comfortable on the flagstone around the pot.

"I'm fine, thank you." This elicited a false laugh from the seasoned radio-journalist.

"I meant, are you a . . . a werewolf, for instance?" she elaborated.

"No, I'm not an H.W.A.I.P.C."

She frowned, but then decided that it might be an interesting angle from which to approach the story: a concerned outsider! Perfect! "What is it about this cause that makes you willing to become an activist?" Tricia questioned, her smile becoming, if possible, more toothy.

"I just don't like prejudice," he replied laconically.

Tracy gave another forced laugh. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Black. It's been a pleasure talking to you." She hurriedly moved on to find a more fiery speaker.

"Why won't you talk to me?!" demanded Rita Skeeter, swiftly losing her patience with Remus. The Quill was having a field day. He rudely refuses to comment, perhaps having some dark secret whose revelation could mean arrest or worse. Is he simply an example of the insolence of today's youth? Or is the truth much worse?

At last, seeing that the woman could only paint him in an unfavorable light, Remus Lupin made a statement. "If you think today's youth is rude, you might want to write a special issue about today's reporters. And perhaps you should have an editor adjust that pen – a secret isn't a person, and so using 'whose' is incorrect grammar."

The pen stopped dead, then raced back to the offending line and crossed out 'whose'. Rita plucked the pen from the paper. It squirmed in her red-nailed grip, but soon bowed to her superior might. "One of the issues that most concerns your people is that they can't get good employment, right?" she queried, smiling. She had a gold tooth.

"Yes; those of us who have work do it for below minimum wage, in dangerous professions, without worker's comp or permission to join unions. But that's only one of the issues that concerns us," he added. Journalists had always been tricky people to deal with; one had to either say nothing to them, or just the right things.

"How would you like a job as an editor at the Daily Prophet?"