Gloves, Toaster and Toilets

Additional Disclaimer: There is some direct quoting from OotP included.

Author's Notes: Erm... Ten months isn't that long? Sorry... I swear I got really sidetracked by school. I do wonder if anyone is actually reading this, by the way. I should be quicker now. This chapter is called Gloves Bring Surprises. Enjoy!

The next day, the children went back to school in an uneventful manner. They had taken the Knight Bus, and by the time they arrived at Hogwarts, Arthur was at work falling back into a pattern which he had not seen since his snake bite. Everyone he saw on his way to work questioned him on his health and gave their condolences to him. All that attention made him nervous and he suddenly had a shrewd idea of how Harry felt anytime he was in a public place.

As he was going to his office something happened that he would have never expected. He passed Percy in the hall and instead of ignoring his father, as he usually did; he gave him a small sympathetic smile and walked away, briskly. Arthur stopped in his tracks, stunned. Since when had Percy shown him any sign of sympathy? Since when had Percy even acknowledged his existence? Arthur walked away, perplexedly and as he walked to his office, he did not meet anyone else.

When he entered his office, he saw that Perkins was already hard at work, but he did not seem to be swamped with work, as Arthur had expected him to be. Perkins had far surpassed the healthy age to be working in a stressful job as this.

The day ended quickly for Arthur. He had work to catch up with and it was something he was not very used to anymore. When he arrived at headquarters, he saw that it was empty and took the opportunity to talk to the gloves. They laughed, not literally of course, at his reaction to all that attention he had received throughout the day. They were as perplexed as Arthur at Percy's actions, but they did not offer any explanation that Arthur had not before thought of and discarded because of its lack of credibility.

As January passed by, Arthur was kept informed of what was going on. The Order still invited him to their meetings and told them their plans and suspicions. They were still worried about Arthur's health, so they excused him from guard duty. He felt as if they were worrying too much about him, but he could not pretend that he was not relieved at that development.

One of the things that was worrying him the most was the state of the Occlumency lessons. Severus was, by duty, keeping them posted on Harry's progress, but there seemed to be none of that. Severus seemed to be tormenting Harry for his father's choices. This was a point of worry for the Order, they needed Harry to be resistant of Voldemort but, their plan, which had seemed so good when they had decided upon it, did not seem to be working out very well.

One January day, Arthur got quite a surprise with his daily delivery of the Daily Prophet. Two of them, in fact. He received the newspaper everyday and had it specially arranged so that it arrived to his office so he could read it every morning while he still had no real work to do.

Arthur settled himself behind his desk and took the Daily Prophet from the in-tray. Smoothing it out, he looked, tiredly, at the front page. Taking up all of the space of the front page, was ten pictures of people, nine of men and one of a woman. Each picture had a caption of the person's name and the crime they had been sent to Azkaban for. Arthur shook himself out of the morning daze he had been in and read the article following it.

MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN

MINISTRY FEARS THE BLACK IS "RALLYING POINT" FOR OLD DEATH EATERS

The Ministry of Magic announced late last night that there has been a mass breakout from Azkaban.

Speaking to reporters in his private office, Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, confirmed that ten high security prisoners escaped in the early hours of yesterday evening, and that he had already informed the Muggle Prime Minister of the dangerous nature of these individuals.

"We find ourselves, most unfortunately, in the same position we were two and a half year ago when the murderer Sirius Black escaped," said Fudge last night. "Nor do we think that the two breakouts are unrelated. An escape of this magnitude suggests outside help, and we must remember that Black, as the first person to ever break out from Azkaban, would be ideally placed to help others follow in his footsteps. We think it likely that these individuals, who include Black's cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, have rallied around Black as their leader. We are, however, dong all we can to round up the criminals and beg the magical community to remain alert and cautious. On no account should any of these individuals be approached."

Arthur finished the article with a gasp. This was horrible. The Order had been afraid of this, but they had not expected it to happen so quickly. Somewhat shakily, Arthur opened the newspaper and read the rest of this horrible news. By the time he was finished, he was very pale.

Perkins had come in while Arthur was reading the article and he noticed Arthur's expression. "What happened?" Arthur soundlessly passed the newspaper to Perkins and sat back at his desk, deep in though.

Perkins read the article himself and was also quite pale. "Well ... that's definitely something." He handed the newspaper back to Arthur and relaxed back into his chair, his hands covering is aged face.

Arthur sighed and got back to skimming the newspaper. He thought he couldn't be surprised now, but, of course, he turned out to be wrong. Another article caught his eye on page ten.

TRAGIC DEMISE OF

MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER

St. Mungo's Hospital promised a full inquiry last night after Ministry of Magic worker Broderick Bode, 49, was discovered dead in his bed, strangled by a potted-plant. Healers called to the scene were unable to revive Mr. Bode, who had been injured in a workplace accident some weeks prior to his death.

Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr. Bode's ward at the time of the accident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement, "St. Mungo's deeply regrets the death of Mr. Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to this tragic accident.

"We have strict guidelines on the decorations permitted on our wards but it appears that Healer Strout, busy over the Christmas period, overlooked the dangers of the plant on Mr. Bode's bedside table. As his speech and mobility improved, Healer Strout encouraged Mr. Bode to look after the plant himself, unaware that it was not an innocent Flitterbloom, but a cutting of Devil's Snare, which, when touched by the convalescent Mr. Bode, throttled him instantly.

"St. Mungo's is yet unable to account for the presence of the plant on the ward and asks any witch or wizard with information to come forward."

Arthur was shocked. This was a murder, and a clever one at that. Nobody knew who had done it and very few, outside the Order, would know the reason, and they sure wouldn't talk. Bode had been an important part of their group and now he was gone.

It was a possibility that Voldemort had found out about Bode's loyalties, but it was also likely that he had been used for the fact that he worked in the Department of Mysteries and could easily pull off the job of getting the prophecy. Voldemort must have been angry when he couldn't get the prophecy, but definitely had no remorse over Bode. He had no other use for him and he knew too much as it was. It was only a complication in their plan when he had started to recover.

That was the why. The who was a little more of a problem. It had to have been ordered by Voldemort, there was no doubt about that, but it was very unlikely that he had bothered to do the dirty work himself. After all, that is what he has his Death Eaters for. It could have been someone involved with plants, so they could acquire the Devil's Snare easily, someone involved with the Hospital, so they could avoid security, or just someone high up who he trusted with the plan. For all Arthur knew, it could have been Severus, but then the Order would have known about it beforehand.

Arthur skimmed the rest of the newspaper, and luckily, nothing else had happened. He let Perkins read the rest of the paper, as usual, and got to work.

It was a very normal day in most respects. He worked with a couple common artifacts and filed the necessary reports. He took off the charms and fiddled around a bit with what he had. Among other things, he had had a couple of keys that turned to rubber when put in locks and a magnifying glass that made things smaller. Both were very amusing to Arthur, even with the charms taken off. There was nothing strange in that, to Arthur at least. He liked doing it. It gave him a chance to learn more about the enigma of Muggles.

He set up arrangements with Obliviator Headquarters and talked with a few friends there. He even bothered to personally deliver the fixed artifacts to a person in charge of distributing things to Muggles, a duty he usually skipped for the lack of time to do it in. The artifacts he had dealt with were nothing new; he had dealt often with variations of them.

Sometimes his job felt a bit boring for a lack of new things. You could only learn so much about a couple of items. This was one of those days where he wished his job was more exciting, though he was moderately glad that he wouldn't have to deal with much else other than the shocking articles. The rest of the day passed uneventfully, but Arthur had things to do when he got back to Grimmauld Place.