The Potter Twins and the Deathly Hallows {7}

12. Happy Judgement Day

"Oh what a time to be alive, wake up and smell the dynamite. And keep your eyes locked tight to that screen, and don't believe everything that you see. You will find that modern life's a catastrophe." - Happy Judgement Day, Neck Deep

"Ah, Mafalda!" says Umbridge, looking at Hermione. "Travers sent you, did he?"

"Y-yes," Hermione squeaks.

"Good, you'll do perfectly well." Umbridge speaks to the wizard in black and gold. "That's that problme solved, Minister, if Mafalda can be spared for record-keeping we shall be able to start straightaway." She consults her clipboard. "Ten people today and one of them the wife of a Ministry employee! Tut, tut...even here, in the heart of the Ministry!" She steps into the lift beside Hermione, as do the two other wizrds who were listening to her conversation with the Minister. "We'll go straight down, Mafalda, you'll find everything you need in the courtroom. Good morning, Eurydice, Albert, won't you two be getting out?"

"Yes, of course," I say in Jensen's commanding voice.

Harry and I step out of the lift, The golden grilles clang shut behind us. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Hermione's anxious face sinking back out of sight, a tall wizard on either side of her, Umbridge's velvet hair-bow level with her shoulder.

"What brings you up here?" asks the new Minister of Magic. His long black hair and beard are streaked with silver, and a great overhanging forehead shadows his glinting eyes, remainding me of a crab looking out from beneath a rock.

"Needed a quick word with Arthur Weasley," I say quickly. "Someone said he would be up on level one."

"Ah," says Pius Thicknesse. "Has he been caught having contact with an Undesirable?"

"No," Harry says, as my heart lurches. "No, nothing like that."

"Ah, well. It's only a matter of time," says Thicknesse. "If you ask me, the blood traitors are as bad as the Mudbloods. Good day, Runcorn, Jensen."

"I agree," I say evenly. "Good day, Minister."

We watch Thicknesse march away along the thickly carpeted corridor. The moment the Minister has passed from sight, Harry tugs the Invisibility Cloak out from his under his heavy cloak and throws it over us, and we set off along the corridor in the opposite direction. Runcorn and Eurydice are so tall that we're forced to stoop to make sure we're completely hidden.

Panic pulses in the pit of my stomach. As we pass gleaming wooden door after gleaming wooden door, each bearing a small plaque with the owner's name and occupation upon it, the might of the Ministry, it's complexity, its inpenetrability, seems to focr itself upon me so that the plan we've been so carefully concocting over the past month seems laughably childish. We're concentrated all our efforts on getting inside without being detected, but we hadn't given a moment's thought to what we would do if we were forced to separate. Now Hermione is stuck in court proceedings, which will undoubtedly last hours; Ron is struggling to do magic that I'm sure is beyond him, a woman's liberty possibly depending on the outcome; and Harry and I are wandering around on the top floor when we know perfectly well that our quarry has just gone down in the lift.

We stop walking and lean against a wall, trying to decide what to do. The silence presses upon us; There is no bustling or talk or swift footsteps here; the purple-carpeted corridors are as hushed as though the Muffliato charm has been cast over the place. We can't talk freely here.

Her office must be up here, I think.

It seems unlikely that Umbridge will keep her jewelry in her office, but on the other hand it seems foolish not to search it to make sure. I look to Harry and mouth the word office, and he seems to understand, and so we set off along the corridor again, passing nobody but a frowning wizard who is murmuring instructions to a quill that floats in front of him, scribbling on a trail of parchment