A Divine Intervention

MamaLaz

Story Summary:
Lucius Malfoy is the evil new Minister of Magic, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger are two angels fighting to get back to earth and Ron Weasley has ‘kidnapped’ Draco Malfoy in a fit of insanity… Based loosely on 'A Life Less Ordinary'.

Chapter 01 - Chapter One - The Morning of the Worst Day

Chapter Summary:
Ron loses his job and his house, Draco is being mauled by a horny Pansy Parkinson and Harry is dead. All in all, it's the worst day.
Posted:
02/11/2006
Hits:
651

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

The Morning of the Worst Day

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

It was, without a doubt, the worst day of Harry Potter's life.

Well, it was the worst day of Harry Potter's life since Harry Potter's death two months ago.

Running his fingers through his hair, which appeared to be messy in every plane of existence, Harry placed his hand flat along the fingerprint panel of the Heavenly Gate's elevator and waited to be scanned.

Blinking drearily as a harp-like melody rang with verification and an overly-friendly female voice happily chirped "Good morning, Mr Potter!" at him, the fluid doors soon cascaded down in a fountain of water and the gaudy gold lift began to gently rise.

Stifling a yawn, Harry reluctantly placed his hat on his head and looked about the mirrored interior of the elevator dully, his reflection looking just as grimly back at him.

A rumpled white suit. A creased white shirt. A lopsided white tie. A white bowler hat. A pair of white shoes.

Harry, in his own honest opinion, looked like a pimp.

Grimacing at the rings under his eyes and running a hand over the stubble he had forgotten to shave that morning, Harry momentarily wondered why The Powers That Be couldn't have chosen a more original colour scheme for his uniform.

White was such a bitch to get stains out of.

"The Third Floor!" the disembodied, chirpy voice sounded again as the lift came to a halt. The watery door, giving in to gravity, fell with a splash at Harry's feet then evaporated. "Have a perfect day, Mr Potter...!"

Harry, who very much doubted he would, winced at the glaring white light that assaulted his vision as soon as the liquid door gave way, instantly blinded.

Damn those angels. They really were all for the dramatics.

Tipping his hat so the majority of the light struck the brim, Harry let out a heavy, melancholic sigh and slumped his way through the weaving, sterile white floor, the noises of buzzing chatter, computer keys and the hum of machinery washing around him.

Harry didn't need to look up to know what it all looked like.

Bare white walls, minimalist white furniture and white clad people.

The Heavenly Gate's headquarters were hardly the most welcoming place on the plane. The people here had an ethereal glow about them, smiled too much and ended all their communications with "God Bless You!".

Cold efficiency was their number one priority.

Well, number two, after security.

And Harry would know all about security; he'd been stationed to that division of the Gate ever since its system malfunctioned and accidentally killed him in his sleep 8 weeks before.

But that was a different story.

Letting out a loud, long yawn and blearily wiping his red eyes with the back of his hand, Harry seriously began to contemplate a change of occupation.

He was so sick of security.

Only last week did he have to deal with a group of Spanish martyrs who blew themselves up only to realise that all persons who ticked the 'Did Myself In' box in their Circumstances of Death form went straight to hell.

The group of Spaniards, who were furious, were still appealing the decision, Lucifer, who was always delighted to rake in fresh meat, was still postponing their appeal date by a century, and Gabriel, who always complained about his workload, was still complaining to anyone who would listen about all the extra paperwork postponed appeals featuring Spanish martyrs created.

Harry, who was actually the one lumbered with all the paperwork, personally didn't know what all the fuss was about. He couldn't see how an eternity in hell could be any worse than his life at present.

Someone, somewhere, Harry was sure, was conspiring against him.

He'd been sure for a whole week that it had been Gilbert from Finance due this shifty looking eyes and his rather odd case of the shakes until someone informed Harry that the iris twitch was a souvenir from the accountant's rather gruesome death two decades aback.

Lowering his head and trying not to make eye contact with any of the workers at their small white workstations, Harry continued to brood, even as he reached his destination at the very end of the room. Passing the rather grand-looking Fountain of Prosperity (which doubled as a water cooler during the hot summer months), Harry slumped his way over to the familiar figure who was busily getting on with her work in the far corner of the room.

Hermione Granger, who was sitting at her white desk, writing with her white stationary and leaning forward on her white chair, looked up from the parchment she was writing on and lowered her quill as he approached.

Pursing her lips, she looked disapproving.

"You look terrible," she said, her keen eyes travelling up the creases on his suit and the stains on his shirt. "Gabriel will kill you if he sees you looking like that. Honestly, Harry. You know we've got to set a good example for as long as we're here. We can't have the other choirs picking up on it. The Watchers have been well... watching our department rather closely... Trying to hone in on our mistakes... It's almost turning into a competition. Really, you'd never think angels could be so petty..."

"Do you know why He wants to see us?" Harry cut in, feeling drained already as he collapsed into the nearest seat, eased off his hat and then plopped it on her desk

Eying his hair, Hermione's fingers twitched to comb it.

"I haven't a clue," she replied. "It might be another rehash of our security measures, but I think He's more than confident with our changes... Although, Ichabod from Underworld Relations did stress that the print system malfunctioned on him a few times last week. Apparently, it didn't recognise him, booted him outside the Gates and he had to wait on the steps for about an hour for someone to let him back in. You didn't have a problem getting in today, did you?"

"No," Harry replied glumly, wishing that he had.

Hermione, watching his forlorn expression shrewdly, paused for a minute and, looking slightly apprehensive, hesitantly opened her mouth.

"You don't think this meeting means He's finally sending us home, do you?"

"No, I don't," Harry replied in a clipped tone.

Hermione, who up until that moment had looked stern and controlled, finally let her guard slip as her face fell in sadness.

"Oh, Harry," she said, her eyes softening. "He will send us back eventually. I'm positive of it. He's just a very busy deity, that's all, especially now with all that business in the Middle East and Voldemort's second rising. And He did make us a promise... I mean, really, if we're going to blame anyone for this whole mess, it's the old administration. Their organisation was appalling. Apparently, Cornelius Fudge was supposed to die eight years ago from a brush with a Venomous Tentacular and Bertha Jorkins was accidentally summoned here a century early and..."

Hermione's voice trailed off at the way Harry was looking at her. She bit her lip.

"We will return back home, Harry. I know it."

"Don't hold your breath..." Harry muttered then, thinking about what he just said, added, "... if you had any left, that is."

Hermione, who had opened her mouth to remark how tasteless and insensitive that was, was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a snowy white dove. Swooping down beside them, the bird looked at them briefly, dropped a crisp roll of white parchment onto Hermione's desk, crooned and then flew off.

Looking at one another curiously as the bird vacated, Hermione reached over and snatched the parchment before Harry did. Then untying the ribbon around it, laying the parchment flat on the table and reading a few sentences, she frowned.

"He's had to cancel our meeting..." she said slowly, her eyes still scanning the paper. "Problems in the Underworld that He's had to deal with personally. It must be those pesky demons trying to sneak in again, Gabriel did mention that he saw one of them trying to bug the security system the other day. And Lucifer is such a Nazi about who he negotiates with..."

Harry grunted. He knew that well enough. The tyrant downstairs had flatly refused to see Harry when he had tried to conduct one of his routine security inspections last week. Harry later found out that Voldemort was Lucifer's second cousin a couple of millennia removed and it seemed that even The Morning Star was a firm supporter of family loyalty.

Hermione furrowed her brows and scrutinized the parchment as she turned it over primly.

"He's attached our next mission," she informed, still running her eyes over the parchment. "It looks rather long and wordy but if we complete this successfully we... oh, Harry, we get to go back to earth. This is it, the owl we've been waiting for these past months...! We finally get our lives back! Isn't this such wonderful news? We can see Ron again! And you can continue your Auror training! Oh, I really am so... oh."

" 'Oh?'" Harry repeated almost hysterically, having scooted to the edge of his seat in his excitement and nearly slipped off of it at the change of tone in Hermione's voice. "What do you mean 'oh'? Oh what?"

Lifting up her bushy head, her eyes wide and her face pale, Hermione silently passed the parchment to Harry.

Snatching the paper, Harry impatiently made his way through the perfect gold calligraphy of the message. However, he had only got to the second paragraph of the mission statement when he started to feel woozy.

Looking back up at Hermione, Harry then blinked.

"Bugger," he said.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

It was, without a doubt, the worst day of Ron Weasley's life.

Well, it was the worst day of Ron Weasley's life since waking up to find his two best friends stone dead in their beds.

No, that hadn't been a good day at all.

And this one wasn't shaping up to be much better.

"But you can't bloody fire us!"

"Mr Weasley, please don't make this harder than it has to be..."

"But you've got no reason for doing it!"

"Ron..."

"No, dad! We can't let them get away with this! Our Department's had the best results out of any in the Ministry and we actually make a difference! Why isn't McNally's section being made redundant? They're useless!"

"Mr Weasley, please try to understand..."

Ron Weasley, who was bright red, absolutely fuming and standing in the middle of the now empty Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, was hardly in the most understanding of moods.

"Why?" he hissed through clenched teeth, his blue eyes narrowed and his freckles completely obscured under his scarlet complexion. "Just answer us that, why? My dad's offered twenty years of good service to the Ministry and now, all of a sudden, you're cutting him loose?"

Irvin Fletcher, the wiry assistant to the new Minister of Magic, let out a dry cough and pushed his horn-rimmed frames up the bridge of his long, thin nose. Looking rather uneasy under Ron's fuming gaze, he shuffled the official-looking papers in his bony hands and briefly averted his eyes.

"Unfortunately, Minister Malfoy can see no future for this department," he stated rather primly, occasionally darting a wary look at Ron in case he exploded into a fitful of rage and throttled him. "That being the case, your services are no longer required."

Ron let out a snort so heavy with disdain that it made both the assistant and the form in his hand flinch.

"The 'Minister'," Ron spat in disgust, his fists clenched tight, "is a bigoted bastard who hates our family and doesn't care a newt's eye about what happens to Muggles. This is just a personal vendetta that Malfoy has against us, and we're not about to just sit back and let him get away with this. We'll go to the Wizengamot if we have to, sort this out with Dumbledore. I don't care if Lucius Malfoy's king of the sodding world, he can't dissolve an entire department like this, it's illegal...! Right, dad? Dad...?"

Ron, who had turned to his father fiercely for support, blinked at the weary look Arthur Weasley was wearing.

Mr Weasley, already thin-faced and slightly wrinkled, looked incredibly lined and suddenly very tired, as though he had aged a decade in the last few minutes. Ron, who was gaping at his father like a fish out of water, gaped further still when Mr Weasley placed a weak hand on his shoulder.

"Let's just go home, son," he said in a resigned voice, his eyes tired and bloodshot behind his thin spectacles. He then, before Ron even had a chance to respond, shakily pulled out a quill from his tatty work robe and leaned his thin frame over to sign the form in Fletcher's hand. Then giving the assistant a brief nod and patting his son mildly on the arm, Mr Weasley turned and walked out of the room.

Ron who watched all of this mutely with his mouth hanging open, stood in the middle of the once busy office and stared after his father in incredulity.

At that moment in time, witnessing the utter defeat in his father's eyes, his once messy desk pristinely empty and Lucius sodding Malfoy's portrait smirking at him from where it sat on the wall, Ron truly thought that his day couldn't get any worse.

Unfortunately for him, it did.

"But you can't dispossess my house!" Ron cried out an hour later outside Thatched Roof cottage, the small country lodge he had shared with Harry and Hermione. Looking in horror at the half-dozen or so wizards exiting and entering the place and hurling the majority of his belongings into a skip-like cauldron in the front lawn, Ron gaped at the rotund gentleman beside him.

Terrence Mimblewood, with his huge walrus-moustache and sizeable belly, sniffed pompously.

"Mr Weasley, please don't make this harder than it has to be..."

"But you've got no reason for doing it!" Ron exclaimed emphatically, flapping his arms uselessly at his sides.

"Mr Weasley," Mimblewood said lazily, his cruel, aristocratic brogue slow and uncaring. "You are two months overdue on your rent and have three outstanding Ministry bills."

"What are you on about?" Ron shouted in furious exasperation, trying his hardest not to let out a banshee-scream of frustration. "I already paid all that rubbish!"

"Indeed," the ruddy-faced Mimblewood snorted as he peered at the clipboard in his hand, adjusting his monocle with his short podgy fingers. "And so you did - with the funds of one Harry James Potter."

Ron blanched slightly.

"Harry... he... he left his estate to me!" Ron protested, his face suddenly pink with embarrassment. "I was going to pay him back anyway. I mean, it's not like I even wanted... I was desperate -"

"Be that as it may," Mimblewood said loudly over Ron's words, his booming tone drowning out the redhead's voice. "But the Ministry's new passing (listed under Section No. 6788987 of the recent Financial Manifesto) decrees that all large transactions be initialled and signed by the account holder before the transfer can be complete - no exceptions. The Department of Records have no signed confirmation, following Mr Potter's death, of his intention to leave you his estate, therefore your use of his funds are illegal."

"But Harry's dead!" Ron burst out in frustration, wondering if the whole world had gone mad. "How's he supposed to sign anything to me when he's dead?!"

"Mr Weasley, that is not my problem," Mimblewood drawled. "However, I am happy to say that in the event of such a situation, all outstanding funds are filtered back into government circulation, helping the new administration to help you."

"You mean they're filtered back in to line Lucius Malfoy's pockets!" Ron spat out in disgust. "That corrupt, evil bastard! He can't do this! It's not fair!"

"No, it's politics," Mimblewood said with a dry smile, before thrusting the clipboard towards Ron. "Now, if you'll just sign sections 3, 4, 8 and simply initial section 11, we can proceed."

"Sod off, I'm not signing anything," Ron growled, shoving the clipboard from under his nose and crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant child, "And you can't make me."

Looking initially taken back, his monocled eye looking huge as it blinked in surprise, Mimblewood soon recovered from the shock to let out a heavily amused snort, his breath ruffling his huge moustache.

"I see," he said, a rumbling chuckle emitting from somewhere under his vast chest. He then made a gesture with his hand and two rather familiar man-mountains soon lumbered at his side. "Well, perhaps Misters Crabbe and Goyle here can be more convincing..."

Ron, who hadn't seen either one of the Slytherins since school, felt himself going pale when he noticed the manic grins on their faces, the huge fists they were eagerly punching into their hands and the fact they looked ten times larger than they had at Hogwarts.

He let out a very loud gulp.

"Bugger," he said.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

It was, without a doubt, the worst day of Draco Malfoy's life.

Well, it was the only bad day Draco Malfoy had ever had in his life up until now so, naturally, it was the worst.

Squirming away from the overly zealous hands that were groping at him rather enthusiastically, Draco hissed out a string of profanities so vulgar that they would have made even Lord Voldemort blush.

"You stupid cow, Parkinson, get the hell off me," Draco sneered, trying to slap the hand on his crotch away and berating himself for not being able to throw off a relatively skinny girl.

Pansy, whose lip-gloss seemed to have smudged itself all over Draco's cheeks when she was (as he would deem it) raping his face, lifted up her curly blonde head and pouted.

"Draco, I really do hope you'll get over this prudery when we're married."

"For the last fuckiing time, we are not getting married," Draco spat and, seeing his chance, pushed her off of him so she fell off of his four-poster bed and into a pink and frilly heap on the ground.

Rising to his own feet importantly and haughtily dusting his designer robes as though she had somehow contaminated them, Draco placed his hands on his hips and scowled down at her. Pansy, from her place on the marble floor, scowled just as prissily back.

"Draco, you know perfectly well that your father's already approved our wedding," she said. Draco, who watched her struggle to get back to her feet, her face pink and her pug nose glowing, offered no assistance as she continued. "You can't back out now. Our families are planning the ceremony as we speak. Your father has already dished out a cauldronful of money, I've already confirmed to my tutors that I'm setting aside my Healer training and your mother has already chosen the perfect hat for the occasion - and you know how long it takes for her to actually like something. Everything has been planned. The sooner you accept it, the better it will be for us all."

Growling as he stepped forward towards her, Draco would have felt a lot more imposing a figure had Pansy not had two inches over him. As it was, he tiptoed slightly and put on his most malicious of faces to make up the difference. It made his nose itch though.

"You had better get this through your thick skull, Parkinson," he hissed, making sure to spit on her as much as humanly possible, "because I'm not going to say it again - I don't like you. I've never liked you. And I'm never going to start liking you, despite how many methods of excruciating torture and/or death my father threatens me with. When I choose a wife, I'll choose someone with at least half a brain and unfortunately for you, you don't happen to qualify. Now keep your filthy little hands away from me, get the hell out of my room and for the love of Slytherin, do something about that nose of yours. Now out."

Pansy, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, looked almost dangerous.

"You'll regret that, Malfoy," she sneered, the two bright pink spots on her cheeks indicating just how offended she really was. They made Draco smirk even wider.

"Oh, I'm sure I will," he drawled sarcastically, giving her a lazy grin. Then lifting a perfectly manicured thumb, he made a jabbing motion over his shoulder and towards the door behind him. "Out."

Smiling as she strode furiously out of the room and slammed the door behind her, Draco soon turned to eye himself in the mirror, easily falling into preoccupation with his reflection and feeling not a worry in the world.

Unfortunately for Draco, the feeling didn't last.

"... Master Draco, sir?" came a tentative voice just five minutes later.

"What is it, you plebeian?" Draco snapped at the house-elf who had rudely interrupted him from the very important task of studying his eyebrows. "Can't you see I'm busy looking at myself?"

Raising a hand to fix his fringe before smirking and lowering it when he realised it couldn't be improved, Draco turned on his heel, leaned idly against the wall and then made an airy gesture with his hand as he sighed.

"Ugh, fine. What is it?"

"It... it is Master Lucius, Master Draco, sir," the elf squeaked as it shivered under his glare, the teacups on its tray rattling. "He is wishing to see you, sir. He is wishing to see you at Malfoy Enterprises in fifteen minutes, sir. He is wishing to talk to you about the wedding with Miss Parkinson, sir. He is wishing to tell you something important."

Draco, who had turned back to the mirror above his fireplace, stared back into his own worried-looking grey eyes at the elf's words.

He is wishing to talk to you about the wedding with Miss Parkinson, sir... He is wishing to tell you something important...

Letting out a groan, Draco squeezed shut his eyes.

"Bugger," he said.