The Magic Umbrella

I've never been in love before...

In the minds of those who do not often attend the opera (or never attend performances of any entertainment), it is never taken into consideration the amount of difficulty one meets when attempting to obtain tickets pertaining to such events for other parties who do attend the opera. This was quite true for a certain personal assistant one surprisingly rainy late December midmorning.

Why it is that parents never teach their children that the opera is a place for those with seasonal tickets and gold operaglasses is not entirely clear to the onlooking eye. Perhaps it never crosses their minds that someday their child will be in a rather unseemly situation dealing with such things.

And so, following in the tradition of mankind and all who are born under an inauspicious sign, all the carelessness of the parentages leads to an adage rather well known throughout the world (let us sum up our dear Percy's situation in a few, if not blatant, words): bad things happen to good people.

Therefore, in the chance that certain (and scarcely to be anticipated) meteorological events in the chthonic regions should take place, a poor, unsuspecting commoner, wet behind the ears, so to speak, may encounter the events that young Mr. Percival Weasley crossed paths with one peculiarly strange final week in the twelfth month of the year.

He had been searching through written Muggle records of operas and who had been established as a regular attender of such shows for two days straight, and had by no means encountered what he had been looking for. Frustration had set in and Percy decided to leave his loyal secretary and her confusing documents to stroll about the city and clear his thoughts for a moment or two.

Percy had passed several small dressmaker's shops and a bookstore and was preparing to enter the district that housed only the most refined restaurants in London. It was approximately eleven forty-five in the morning, and the owners of the shoppes were beginning to place their chalkboard signs, properly guarded from the rain by large blue and white striped umbrellas, in front of their property to announce the daily specials.

It was a pleasant part of the city, with tree-lined avenues down the centre of the quiet lane of traffic; apparently it wasn't a well-known circle except to the elite societies, but Percy did not realize this; he was far too busy contemplating his distressing problem.

And indeed, it was quite a predicament for him; he had not been able to contact anyone working at the Ministry who would be able to help him in his quest for opera tickets, it seemed as though any wizard working at the Ministry of Magic certainly did not care about the opera. No one had ever even heard of the show he had mentioned.

Hemmingway, of course, had stayed back in the office, apparently determined that she should find something to aid his cause. Though she was now of frazzled hair and odd mutterings from not getting enough sleep (something that had caused delightfully smoky halfrings to appear beneath her gloriously blooming blue eyes), she was as loyal and faithful as ever.

Percy had passed a small fish monger's front, clattering noises of meat cleavers smacking deftly against cutter's blocks and varied accents of buyers and sellers alike eminating outward from the narrow alleyway, and was about to just turn around and begin his journey back to the Ministry, when he heard a sliver of conversation drift out of the market.

"Of course, I'm sure the opera director will have his hands full this weekend, as it's New Year's coming up. I'm certain he'll be off and about attending all those parties he was talking about." A robust middle aged woman with a basket on her arm chatted merrily away with a white-haired friend of hers.

"Where did Marienne say he was going to be all night? Or did she not tell you?"

"Since he's got the new show opening soon? He'll be all up and down Mulberry Venue, at all those brand new social clubs. I hear every one of them is holding a costume ball in his honour, you know."

"Really?" said her friend interestedly.

"Oh, yes," said the frumpy woman. Their conversation died on Percy's ears as they strolled arm in arm down the narrow thoroughfare, but this was the best source of information he had received for a week.
*****

"A costume ball?" cried Hemmingway, steadying herself on a chair and looking blearily surprised. "What would the opera director be doing going around to costume balls?" Percy shrugged, waved her protests aside, and pushed his finger against her nose gently so that she slumped into the seat of the chair.

"I don't know, and I don't care. But this could be our chance to get those tickets, Hemmingway. I'm certain the opera director would be so gracious as to--" and then it suddenly hit him. "...give us tickets because...Mr. Crouch...is..."

"...a Ministry official for a wizarding community," finished his secretary, yawning and tilting her head at him. Percy frowned and sat down on the arm of her chair.

"How are we going to get in if the opera director doesn't know us and we have a strange reason for getting the tickets?" Hemmingway cleared her throat softly and gave him an obvious look. Percy shook his head slowly. "No."

"Sir--"

"No, Hemmingway. I will most certainly not."

"Sir, it is the only reasonable way to do it."

"No."

"Sir..."

"Absolutely not. Importune me no longer, Hemmingway. We will find another manner in which to go about this business of getting tickets to some stupid opera we haven't ever even heard of."
***

"How did I get myself into this?"

"Oh, sir...it's not bad, really. You look fine." It was finally New Year's Eve, the night before their deadline to Mr. Crouch, and the sounds of effervescent and chortling Muggle party-goers bubbled their way into the flamboyant cloak room where the two stood, straightening their outfits and looking about themselves self-consciously.

Hemmingway gave him an endearing look, wrung her hands together, and adjusted her burnt orange felt beret, seeming totally out of place next to the louder (and considerably older) people who seemed the perfect example of osmosis as they flowed in and out of the cloak room. Percy shook his head at her and fussed with his overcoat as a corpulent woman wearing a large corset and a hat full of plumes bumped her way past them.

"I still can't believe what you've done to your hair." She turned from finding a place to hang their cloaks to smile at him prettily and shake her now straight as a stick straw blonde hair at him. Percy watched it sort of shine dully and swirl, a healing zephyr, across her pale oval cheeks, the inexorably straight bangs and part remaining perfectly intact.

"It was all for the better! If we were going to dress up like that Bonnie and Clyde from those American Muggle stories, we are certainly to look like them. The only thing I can't believe is that you didn't dye your hair." Percy pulled the light grey driver's hat she had procured for him down lower over his red locks protectively.

"How did you do that, anyway?" he said, bending to whisper in her ear. She grinned, and gestured for him to tilt his head even closer towards her, standing on her toes to complete the nearly 15 centimetres that hung in the air between them. Percy leaned in, vividly aware of the oddly intoxicating smell of cherries that seemed to hang about her thickly, like humidity in the air after a long summer rain.

She turned in a semicircle, her grey pleated skirt twisting around and bouncing back to its normal place.

"Easy. I used a spell, silly. Do you think I'd actually dye my hair this blonde without worrying about reprocussions?" He looked at her for a moment, studying her perfectly cunning smile that matched the way her new hair draped about her neck and shoulders in straight alignment. She blinked twice, looking rather daydreamy and appearing to stare beyond his face, then, lowering her eyes and murmuring something about finding the director, left him to follow her into the interior ballroom where a small orchestra was gathering.

Hemmingway immediately began to shimmer from group to group, melting perfectly in with each undulating ripple of middle aged sybaritic Muggles who entered from the lavish lobby, talking and laughing affectedly, not knowing he was sitting toward the back, covered by shadows in a small booth lit with a single dim candle; watching her. She seemed to be moving in slow motion, contrasted with her surroundings; she could turn her head and her hair really did seem to float through the air.

Percy looked down at the candle before him, staring at the blueness at the bottom of its plasmatic trepidation of a flame. It was solitary, like him. Solitary while the rest of the world seemed to dance on into the night, forever and ever and ever. Hemmingway came and went, bearing news of something about the opera director. Back in the bustling coat room, pulling his cloak over his costume, explaining to someone who he was supposed to be...

Then they were outside in the cold and snow and whitish blue gleaming dampness, Hemmingway's black umbrella covering them in an almost matronising way; shooting stars overhead in the blackness of its womb were all he could see of the Christmas lights. Percy looked up again and saw groups of couples dancing slowly to some piece of music he couldn't hear; the orchestra was playing too softly, or things were becoming more surreal.

Shaking his head and hoping that this club would be different from the dozens of others they had already searched; it was growing later and later more quickly, and they didn't have time to waste. Twenty seven clubs in four hours was more than he would ever be able to bear for the rest of his life. How could anybody be as popular and as asked for as the opera director?

He was getting sick of just sitting around while Hemmingway was working so hard; she had been so dutiful in the past week. Percy stood slowly and frowned, realising he hadn't eaten anything all night. Glancing about for a waiter, he noticed a large fancifully decorated table with hundreds of glasses sitting atop its perfect surface.

Hands in his pockets, Percy slogged over wearily through a break in the dancers. The glasses seemed to twinkle in the colourfully dim lighting, like the stars in Hemmingway's umbrella. Refreshments, said a congenial voice in his head. Go on, take one. He looked around, reached for one with a yellow swirl of a rind of lemon, and began traipsing back to his seat.

Once there, he contemplated the slowly fizzing bubbles that appeared every so often inside the flute-shaped glass. Percy looked across the floor to see Hemmingway holding a similar-looking glass in her hand, half empty, talking to a portly-looking white haired man wearing a nice tuxedo. And looked back at his own hand, that had picked up the crystalware on its on for some reason.

The bubbles were acrid as they bounced and slid their way down his throat, tasting like rotten green grapes, but it was an oddly calming feeling. He sipped it again, and the taste seemed to grow slightly more tolerant. Percy picked up the glass and held it to the faded orchestra pit lights, watching it swirl about, golden and sparkling and clean. So totally unlike the week had been. Everything from Hogsmeade to getting in trouble with Mr. Crouch...and then the opera tickets...

He blinked and sighed, an odd feeling arising in the pit of his stomach. His driver's hat sat unnoticed next to him, yet another solitary figure in the ballroom. Ugh, how depressing, said that same congenial voice. Percy looked down into his hand again and smiled; there was a new glass of a new bubbling liquid that looked rather green instead of yellow. It was magic; the glasses would empty...and fill...and empty...and fill...

Percy stopped counting after about the fifth or sixth fluted glass had been taken off the table; it was becoming too difficult and he wasn't very interested in much of anything anymore. He took his glasses off his head and rubbed at his eyes; Hemmingway was suddenly at his elbow, pulling him upward and ignoring his protests, there was cheering all around them and Hemmingway's excited face--

"Sir!" she shouted at him above all the cacophony. He somehow managed to focus on her face, she was holding up three small green slips of what looked (or what he thought looked like, as they were swirling around before him) like paper.

"What?" he asked, staring at the papers and trying to fix them in the air before him to read what they said. She gave him a concerned look, and stepped a little closer toward him. Somewhere nearby, a large bell began to ring.

"I said I've got the tickets! We're off scotch free, sir! We'll be all right!" Hemmingway placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a slight push backwards. The room suddenly straightened and he shook his head.

"Oh?" he said, his voice sounding somewhat far away. Hemmingway responded with something curt, pulled on his arm, and Percy soon found himself standing on the sidewalk next to Hemmingway, his overcoat slick with rain and sleet, the cool air rushing past his face and making him feel much better than he had before.

The night was so dark, and the snow was beginning to slowly melt...there was a click of a door behind him. Percy blinked, and turned slowly to keep his balance. Hemmingway was pulling a large red door shut behind her and turning brass knobs all over the place, dozens and dozens of knobs and Hemmingways and--

"Sir?"

"Oh, God." Now what? Had the scene changed again too quickly for him to react? What in the bloody hell was going on? He found himself slightly more clearheaded than before, sitting on a divan of sorts next to Hemmingway, who was (if his eyes did not deceive him) looking even paler than usual, if such a thing was humanly possible.

"Yes...?" she answered, giving a short laugh and smiling blearily. He grinned back at her.

"We're schnocked, aren't we?" His voice sounded hoarse; perfectly so for such a late night conversation. Ever so rasping and yet tired in an amused way. Her diffident smile broke into a grin, and she nodded, throwing her head back against the apex of the long chaise lounge.

"Damned if we are, sir." There was a longer laugh accompanying this, and then a lengthy pause.

"Hemmingway?"

"Mmmm?"

"Where are we?" The girl yawned.

"My flat."

"Oh," he murmured, and there was silence except for Hemmingway's spaced breaths. For the first time, Percy noticed his surroundings beyond his secretary and the couch. Tropical seascapes graced the walls and an aquarium rested in the top of a purposely badly lit table across the room, next to an old tube television, like the kind he had seen in a book about the 1950s.

Percy turned and there was Hemmingway again, lying on the couch with her eyes closed in a haphazard way and her still high heeled feet slouched upon the divan. He reached over and picked her feet up gently, sliding across the vinyl couch until he was sitting next to her, her legs flopped lazily across his, brushing his fingers across her forehead and pulling a single damp lock of curled black hair out of her eyes. When had the dye come out of her hair? Or had the spell worn off or had she washed it out?

Her eyelids moved, and soon he was staring into circles of dark blue with a black fringe shading them from the overlighting. Hemmingway gazed blankly and sleepily up at him, and he pushed a finger against her nose. She sat up and looked at him curiously.

The sound of bubbles came like a zephyr through the air; the aquarium table in the corner really did have fish in it, he noticed. He turned his head and there was Hemmingway, then the walls, now with scenes of the world splashed across them, Hemmingway, the old television, a room beyond Hemmingway's head, and there she was again.

"Hemmingway?" he whispered. She blinked twice, almost closing her eyes again. He looked down at her collar and saw her crisp black blouse, wrinkled from too much dancing and the sleeves pulled back to where he could see the almost translucent white flesh of her arms.

"Hmm?" Percy placed an arm behind her shoulders and reached up with his left hand to press lightly with his index finger against the delicately white topmost button on the collar. He ran his thumb over it, and she looked down at his hand.

"What would happen if I unbuttoned this top button?" he whispered again, slowly. The button was between his fingers, slick and smooth and cold. He could feel her chest rising beneath his fingers at rhythmically paced intervals, slow and calm and unfazed.

"What, indeed..." came her answer. The room seemed cool; blues and greens and turquoise stood out. Se voc disser que eu desafino, amor...Saiba que isso em mim provoca imensa dor... Percy twisted the button back and forth between his fingers, still looking the girl directly in the eyes. And slid the button very carefully through the hole.

"But..." he continued whispering (why was he whispering? There were no secrets to tell...), "What would happen if I unbuttoned all these buttons?" The pearl dropped disc was round and flat and so small...Hemmingway's nose almost touched his and the robust mixture of cherries and wine was almost deliciously unbearable.

"I don't know," she whispered back, her lips just barely brushing velvet against his parched mouth. "And I think I'm far too smashed to even care what could--or would--happen."