The Magic Umbrella

Percy stared at the words so hard their glistening letters began to swim before his eyes. Love? Love was not a very Percy thing to write about. In fact, it was downright frightening, the way that particular word stood out before the others on the crinkled yellowing paper. Was he--could there possibly be a way?

With this thought in mind, Percy suddenly found himself searching through mental databanks, trying to pick out something he might have said or done that would have given Hemmingway any reason to be suspicious of him--excepting, of course, that memorable New Year's Eve--anything at all. What kind of an impression had he made on her in the past five or six months?

He felt like beating his head against the grey desk. This was not the time to be thinking about this, he had work to do. And besides, there was no way Percy was in love. Absolutely none. No way. He was just...sort of...infatuated? No, no. Not that either. They were total opposites. He was there to work hard and someday gain respect as a Senior Ministry Official. How many times had he told himself that? Rule abiders always win, it was there in printed proof.

She, on the other hand, had needed something to do. Something to occupy her time, or get her out of the way of her busy parents. Some kind of job for pin money--did she need any, with what he had seen of her apartment?--nothing serious. Hemmingway tended to take things rather loosely, as if life were an elaborate dance of sorts, and she was simply taking whatever life threw at her and sending it flying across the dance floor enthusiastically, but recklessly.

Percy dipped his quill into the ink well, sighed deeply, and wrote the day's date at the top of his roll of parchment.

In the weeks that followed, Percy was so blinded by the countless meetings and work-related events that the issue dealing with Hemmingway was pushed to the back of his mind, until one late evening in mid-February. He had been working until well past ten-thirty every night including weekends for several weeks; while his father did not seem to take much notice, his mother was incessantly worried about him.

Unbeknownst to Percy was that Mrs. Weasley had never seen her middle son act this way: she knew as a fact he was a striving sort of boy, a very hard worker and a generally rule-abiding young man, but the dark circles beneath his eyes, the early mornings and late nights (which sometimes resulted in his not returning home at all), his steadily decreasing appetite and--most frightening of all-- the fact that his trademark red locks were beginning to turn a rather dull and sickening ashy colour, had all given her great cause for alarm and dismay.

She was utterly convinced the Ministry was trying to use Percy is some strange experiment to see how fast they could ship him off to St. Mungo's and declare him critically insane and generally unstable before his first year there was up. Nevertheless, Percy just kept working. He was too tired for words anymore, too tired and busy to enjoy dinner with his mother and father.

Molly sighed with an almost lugubrious sadness each night, long after Arthur had gone up to bed, as she looked at the hand on the family's inherited grandfather clock that read 'Percival Weasley'--stuck perpetually at 'Work'.

Meanwhile, back at the office, Percy did not realise his mother was at all concerned about him. Trying to find some strange answer to solve any and all problems was like trying to look through a pair of lenses someone had smeared petroleum jelly on, much like Fred and George had done one summer morning after returning home from school for the term.

As for Hemmingway at that point in time, she was generally nowhere to be found. True, they had warmed up to each other somewhat since New Year's, but she was still maintaining her distance and he his. He rarely saw her leave her office, but figured she probably wasn't there half the time, anyway. Percy sighed and began to come to terms with the facts; they were beginning to avoid each other in the hopes that perhaps they could regain old ground once more.

He had just finished mulling over this and signing his name, P. Weasley, at the bottom of a very important document, when Hemmingway's door opened with a lulled click. Percy could see her out of the corner of his eye and promptly chose to finish his name with a grand flourish rather than stop right in the middle of it. She approached his desk, striding across the room as though she had something she wanted to say, but couldn't quite brace herself for.

Percy finally looked up at her over his spectacles briefly, flicking his eyes upward to note with some well-hidden surprise that she looked rather shocked and worried about something. Setting the quill back into its holder, he readjusted his glasses, folded his hands upon the desk and looked back at her calmly. It was odd to be staring back into those eyes once more, but the Something that she wanted to say was obviously very important indeed.

Hemmingway took a deep breath and began to run her fingers across the edge of the polished desk, biding her time and biting her lip. Percy watched her pale hands glide back and forth between the silver metal inbox he had received as a graduation present from some distant cousin and the reddish-brown framed photograph of his family from years past, smiling and waving at him happily. He wondered vaguely what she would do if he suddenly brought his hand down over hers, but instead looked up at her expectantly and with a shred of impatience.

Finally she looked at him, a slight crease in her forehead as she blinked, bringing down soft black eyelashes over blue eyes, blue like the strobe lights in the clubs he passed on his way to dinner on early evenings when he actually had time for such things.

"Sir," she said, and gave a sigh. Percy raised his eyebrows; what was she waiting for? He was busy, she needed to go type letters or something and not be standing around wasting his time daydreaming and making him itchy with wonder.

"Well? Are you just going to stand there and polish my desk all day?" he replied quietly, but this evoked no response from her. Now he was really beginning to feel annoyed, but more importantly, he was feeling very nervous. What did she want to tell him? Did it have to do with New Year's? Maybe she wanted to reconcile...

"We've had a Summons, sir," she said at length, sounding like his mother when something was horribly wrong and she just couldn't get out with it except in strange quiet hysterics. Percy stopped breathing, then remembered that he needed to and began once more, only it was more of a choking or a wheezing rather than just normal breathing.

"From... from...?" he managed to gasp, his glasses sliding down his nose as he ran his fingers through his hair. Hemmingway gulped and said nothing. It was in this eerily silent period of time that he began to raise his head from his hands to look at her, horrified. Hemmingway was standing in front of him, eyes wide as dinner platters, white as a ghost, as he realised...

"The Minister of Magic, sir," she told him gently, almost in a whisper, rather afraid that the ginger-haired young man before her might pass out, but he at least held on to conscious thought, which was more than she had given him credit for when she had received the owl.

She had fully expected him to go absolutely and maddeningly ballistic. Instead, his head dropped with a nasty clunk onto the large desk calendar resting in front of him and she heard deep gasping; no doubt he was hyperventilating. The dates began to scatter to the edges, all the twenties mixed in with the starting dates and the first of the month nowhere to be found, away from any danger of being smashed to pieces, and Hemmingway sighed with something of relief.

At least he wasn't screaming or pulling his hair out, but at the same time, she was very worried about him. Vivian was used to usually calm people just suddenly turning spontaneously combustible in record time, but this boss was especially unpredictable in her eyes, and she wasn't quite sure what was going to happen next.

A moan, though muffled, rose from where his head now rested on the calendar. The scattered dates shivered, but held their ground as Percy finally raised his head to look at Hemmingway. She almost laughed nervously out loud at his bright red nose and lopsided glasses, but the severity of the moment forced her to purse her lips and look a lot like Professor McGonagall would have had she been in the same situation.

"Why does he want us?" asked Percy in a slow monotone. Hemmingway shook her head slightly and waited patiently. He let out a few dry sobs and kicked at the desk, which promptly threw open one of its drawers as if to say, "Stop whining!", nearly hitting him in the process. Percy scowled at the desk and firmly closed the drawer, taking care not to slam anything else, lest he provoke more of his furniture. There was nothing he could do but answer the summons to Minister Fudge's office, all the way at the top of the Ministry building.

It was very much like Mr. Crouch's office, only without the topiaries and the odd singing noises that Mr. Crouch had been making when Percy had cautiously gone up to his desk. Cornelius Fudge's office was nicely circular, and very nicely furnished, with a coat of pale blue paint that reached from the domed ceiling right down to the white wainscoting.

The light brown hardwood floors covered in a few creme coloured rugs accented the rest of the quarters and put off a rather stylish theme; it was more than a privilege to see how the head of the Ministry decorated his workspace, but Percy still could not rid his stomach of the fluttering butterflies swooping around in his stomach. Now that he thought of it, it felt more like bats than butterflies.

Percy looked over at Hemmingway in the wingbacked chair to the right of him. She had an air of knowledge about her, as if she almost knew what was coming, but was still definitely paler than usual. Her legs were crossed and one of her feet was bouncing back and forth, making thumping noises against the leg of the chair every so often. He sighed, feeling horribly ill, and moved his fingers into a temple, appearing lost in thought and very serious about what lay before him.

The only problem was, he had absolutely no idea why both he and Hemmingway had been sent up here. A few reasons had formed in his head, but none of them were very good for something so severe as being sent to the Minister's office. Surely Mr. Fudge knew nothing about New Year's...

One of the seven doors placed about the circular walls opened, and Fudge himself emerged from an adjacent room with a few quiet voices and the sounds of Magicographers typing busily away following him forth. Percy had seen the Minister before, but never realised how imposing the man was. True, he was short and bumbling sometimes, but the serious look upon the man's face sent chills up and down his spine, and definitely did not see where so many others got off rolling their eyes in Fudge's direction after his back was turned.

The Minister strode over to his desk and sat. Shuffling a few papers on his desk, Fudge cleared his throat and looked up at Percy and Hemmingway, his eyes not revealing a bit of what he thought of either one of them. Percy gripped the sides of the wingback chair and took deep breaths to calm himself down. Hemmingway, he noticed again, simply sat and stared off into space.

"I suppose you are both wondering why I have called for a summons," began Minister Fudge quietly, conjuring a pair of thin wire reading nosepincers and placing them on the bridge of his turned-up nose. There was silence, and Percy suddenly realised he was supposed to say something.

"Er..." he said, floundering for words. Fudge stopped shuffling papers to stop and look at him, and Percy looked to Hemmingway desperately for help. She stared back at him incredulously, as if any plea for assistance was absurd at this point. "Well," he said in a strangled voice, "Obviously we've... done something wrong?" Percy glanced up at the Minister, hoping he was wrong, all wrong, that there was nothing serious about any of this and that Fudge would simply smile and perhaps send them both on their way. Perhaps it was a mistake?

Minister Fudge folded his hands before him on the desk. "It has come to the attention of the higher forms of authority here at the Ministry that your senior, Bartemius Crouch, has been missing for several months." He paused to give Percy, then Hemmingway, a very thorough look. "Many of us feel this could be somehow related to the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins..." Here Fudge seemed to falter, and waved his hand in the air dismissively. "But that is not important to your devices.

"What is important is the upcoming Triwizard Tournament Task. Mr. Crouch was expected to be present as one of the judges, and..." Another pause. Percy looked up from his hands to see Fudge frowning into space, almost considering something. He had an air of someone terribly important who had made a grave mistake and was just know thinking of changing his mind about it. Fudge cleared his throat and looked at Percy again.

"This may be a mistake, considering your previous record with leaving the Ministry," continued the Minister, giving them both harsh looks, "But I am requesting that you both leave at once to attend this event. Normally I would send a senior from a different department, but as this is the Triwizard Tournament, courtesy dictates that I must send a replacement from the department." Fudge paused, and Percy wondered if he was about to smile. "Lord knows you use a bit of a break, Weasley. You'll leave in the morning."

And with that, he bid them both good day, ushered them out into the hallway, and shut the door behind them. Percy raised his eyebrows and looked at Hemmingway, who sighed and began trudging down the hallway past the Security Wizards. It was going to be a long day.