If I’m not expelled from Hogwarts, I’ll put in ten Galleons, Harry found himself thinking desperately.
“Over here, Harry,” said Mr. Weasley, and they stepped out of the stream of Ministry employees heading for the golden gates, toward a desk on the left, over which hung a sign saying SECURITY. A badly shaven wizard in peacock-blue robes looked up as they approached and put down his Daily Prophet.
“I’m escorting a visitor,” said Mr. Weasley, gesturing toward Harry.
“Step over here,” said the wizard in a bored voice.
Harry walked closer to him and the wizard held up a long golden rod, thin and flexible as a car aerial, and passed it up and down Harry’s front and back.
“Wand,” grunted the security wizard at Harry, putting down the golden instrument and holding out his hand.
Harry produced his wand. The wizard dropped it onto a strange brass instrument, which looked something like a set of scales with only one dish. It began to vibrate. A narrow strip of parchment came speeding out of a slit in the base. The wizard tore this off and read the writing upon it.
“Eleven inches, phoenix-feather core, been in use four years. That correct?”
“Yes,” said Harry nervously.
“I keep this,” said the wizard, impaling the slip of parchment on a small brass spike. “You get this back,” he added, thrusting the wand at Harry.
“Thank you.”
“Hang on. …” said the wizard slowly.
His eyes had darted from the silver visitor’s badge on Harry’s chest to his forehead.
“Thank you, Eric,” said Mr. Weasley firmly, and grasping Harry by the shoulder, he steered him away from the desk and back into the stream of wizards and witches walking through the golden gates.
Jostled slightly by the crowd, Harry followed Mr. Weasley through the gates into the smaller hall beyond, where at least twenty lifts stood behind wrought golden grilles. Harry and Mr. Weasley joined the crowd around one of them. A big, bearded wizard holding a large cardboard box stood nearby. The box was emitting rasping noises.
“All right, Arthur?” said the wizard, nodding at Mr. Weasley.
“What’ve you got there, Bob?” asked Mr. Weasley, looking at the box.
“We’re not sure,” said the wizard seriously. “We thought it was a bog-standard chicken until it started breathing fire. Looks like a serious breach of the Ban on Experimental Breeding to me.”
With a great jangling and clattering a lift descended in front of them; the golden grille slid back and Harry and Mr. Weasley moved inside it with the rest of the crowd. Harry found himself jammed against the back wall of the lift. Several witches and wizards were looking at him curiously; he stared at his feet to avoid catching anyone’s eye, flattening his fringe as he did so. The grilles slid shut with a crash and the lift ascended slowly, chains rattling all the while, while the same cool female voice Harry had heard in the telephone box rang out again.
“Level seven, Department of Magical Games and Sports, incorporating the British and Irish Quidditch League Headquarters, Official Gobstones Club, and Ludicrous Patents Office.”
The lift doors opened; Harry glimpsed an untidy-looking corridor, with various posters of Quidditch teams tacked lopsidedly on the walls; one of the wizards in the lift, who was carrying an armful of broomsticks, extricated himself with difficulty and disappeared down the corridor. The doors closed, the lift juddered upward again, and the woman’s voice said, “Level six, Department of Magical Transport, incorporating the Floo Network Authority, Broom Regulatory Control, Portkey Office, and Apparation Test Center.”
Once again the lift doors opened and four or five witches and wizards got out; at the same time, several paper airplanes swooped into the lift. Harry stared up at them as they flapped idly around above his head; they were a pale violet color and he could see MINISTRY OF MAGIC stamped along the edges of their wings.
“Just Interdepartmental memos,” Mr. Weasley muttered to him. “We used to use owls, but the mess was unbelievable … droppings all over the desks …”
As they clattered upward again, the memos flapped around the swaying lamp in the lift’s ceiling.
“Level five, Department of International Magical Cooperation, incorporating the International Magical Trading Standards Body, the International Magical Office of Law, and the International Confederation of Wizards, British Seats.”
When the doors opened, two of the memos zoomed out with a few more witches and wizards, but several more memos zoomed in, so that the light from the lamp in the ceiling flickered and flashed as they darted around it.
“Level four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being, and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office, and Pest Advisory Bureau.”
“ ’S’cuse,” said the wizard carrying the fire-breathing chicken and he left the lift pursued by a little flock of memos. The doors clanged shut yet again.
“Level three, Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, including the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, Obliviator Headquarters, and Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee.”
Everybody left the lift on this floor except Mr. Weasley, Harry, and a witch who was reading an extremely long piece of parchment that was trailing on the ground. The remaining memos continued to soar around the lamp as the lift juddered upward again, and then the doors opened and the voice said, “Level two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wizengamot Administration Services.”
“This is us, Harry,” said Mr. Weasley, and they followed the witch out of the lift into a corridor lined with doors. “My office is on the other side of the floor.”
“Mr. Weasley,” said Harry, as they passed a window through which sunlight was streaming, “aren’t we underground?”
“Yes, we are,” said Mr. Weasley, “those are enchanted windows; Magical Maintenance decide what weather we’re getting every day. We had two months of hurricanes last time they were angling for a pay raise. … Just round here, Harry.”
They turned a corner, walked through a pair of heavy oak doors, and emerged in a cluttered, open area divided into cubicles, which were buzzing with talk and laughter. Memos were zooming in and out of cubicles like miniature rockets. A lopsided sign on the nearest cubicle read AUROR HEADQUARTERS.
Harry looked surreptitiously through the doorways as they passed. The Aurors had covered their cubicle walls with everything from pictures of wanted wizards and photographs of their families, to posters of their favorite Quidditch teams and articles from the Daily Prophet. A scarlet-robed man with a ponytail longer than Bill’s was sitting with his boots up on his desk, dictating a report to his quill. A little farther along, a witch with a patch over her eye was talking over the top of her cubicle wall to Kingsley Shacklebolt.
“Morning, Weasley,” said Kingsley carelessly, as they drew nearer. “I’ve been wanting a word with you, have you got a second?”
“Yes, if it really is a second,” said Mr. Weasley, “I’m in rather a hurry.”
They were talking to each other as though they hardly knew each other, and when Harry opened his mouth to say hello to Kingsley, Mr. Weasley stood on his foot. They followed Kingsley along the row and into the very last cubicle.
Harry received a slight shock; Sirius’s face was blinking down at him from every direction. Newspaper cuttings and old photographs — even the one of Sirius being best man at the Potters’ wedding — papered the walls. The only Sirius-free space was a map of the world in which little red pins were glowing like jewels.
“Here,” said Kingsley brusquely to Mr. Weasley, shoving a sheaf of parchment into his hand, “I need as much information as possible on flying Muggle vehicles sighted in the last twelve months. We’ve received information that Black might still be using his old motorcycle.”
Kingsley tipped Harry an enormous wink and added, in a whisper, “Give him the magazine, he might find it interesting.” Then he said in normal tones, “And don’t take too long, Weasley, the delay on that firelegs report held our investigation up for a month.”
“If you had read my report you would know that the term is ‘firearms,’ ” said Mr. Weasley coolly. “And I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for information on motorcycles, we’re extremely busy at the moment.” He dropped his voice and said, “If you can get away before seven, Molly’s making meatballs.”
He beckoned to Harry and led him out of Kingsley’s cubicle, through a second set of oak doors, into another passage, turned left, marched along another corridor, turned right into a dimly lit and distinctly shabby corridor, and finally reached a dead end, where a door on the left stood ajar, revealing a broom cupboard, and a door on the right bore a tarnished brass plaque reading MISUSE OF MUGGLE ARTIFACTS.
Mr. Weasley’s dingy office seemed to be slightly smaller than the broom cupboard. Two desks had been crammed inside it and there was barely room to move around them because of all the overflowing filing cabinets lining the walls, on top of which were tottering piles of files. The little wall space available bore witness to Mr. Weasley’s obsessions; there were several posters of cars, including one of a dismantled engine, two illustrations of postboxes he seemed to have cut out of Muggle children’s books, and a diagram showing how to wire a plug.
Sitting on top of Mr. Weasley’s overflowing in-tray was an old toaster that was hiccuping in a disconsolate way and a pair of empty leather gloves that were twiddling their thumbs. A photograph of the Weasley family stood beside the in-tray. Harry noticed that Percy appeared to have walked out of it.
“We haven’t got a window,” said Mr. Weasley apologetically, taking off his bomber jacket and placing it on the back of his chair. “We’ve asked, but they don’t seem to think we need one. Have a seat, Harry, doesn’t look as if Perkins is in yet.”
Harry squeezed himself into the chair behind Perkins’s desk while Mr. Weasley rifled through the sheaf of parchment Kingsley Shacklebolt had given him.
“Ah,” he said, grinning, as he extracted a copy of a magazine entitled The Quibbler from its midst, “yes …” He flicked through it. “Yes, he’s right, I’m sure Sirius will find that very amusing — oh dear, what’s this now?”
A memo had just zoomed in through the open door and fluttered to rest on top of the hiccuping toaster. Mr. Weasley unfolded it and read aloud, “ ‘Third regurgitating public toilet reported in Bethnal Green, kindly investigate immediately.’ This is getting ridiculous. …”
“A regurgitating toilet?”
“Anti-Muggle pranksters,” said Mr. Weasley, frowning. “We had two last week, one in Wimbledon, one in Elephant and Castle. Muggles are pulling the flush and instead of everything disappearing — well, you can imagine. The poor things keep calling in those — those pumbles, I think they’re called — you know, the ones who mend pipes and things —”
“Plumbers?”
“— exactly, yes, but of course they’re flummoxed. I only hope we can catch whoever’s doing it.”
“Will it be Aurors who catch them?”
“Oh no, this is too trivial for Aurors, it’ll be the ordinary Magical Law Enforcement Patrol — ah, Harry, this is Perkins.”
A stooped, timid-looking old wizard with fluffy white hair had just entered the room, panting.
“Oh Arthur!” he said desperately, without looking at Harry. “Thank goodness, I didn’t know what to do for the best, whether to wait here for you or not, I’ve just sent an owl to your home but you’ve obviously missed it — an urgent message came ten minutes ago —”
“I know about the regurgitating toilet,” said Mr. Weasley.
“No, no, it’s not the toilet, it’s the Potter boy’s hearing — they’ve changed the time and venue — it starts at eight o’clock now and it’s down in old Courtroom Ten —”
“Down in old — but they told me — Merlin’s beard —”
Mr. Weasley looked at his watch, let out a yelp, and leapt from his chair.
“Quick, Harry, we should have been there five minutes ago!”
Perkins flattened himself against the filing cabinets as Mr. Weasley left the office at a run, Harry on his heels.
“Why have they changed the time?” Harry said breathlessly as they hurtled past the Auror cubicles; people poked out their heads and stared as they streaked past. Harry felt as though he had left all his insides back at Perkins’s desk.
“I’ve no idea, but thank goodness we got here so early, if you’d missed it it would have been catastrophic!”
Mr. Weasley skidded to a halt beside the lifts and jabbed impatiently at the down button.
“Come ON!”
The lift clattered into view and they hurried inside. Every time it stopped Mr. Weasley cursed furiously and pummelled the number nine button.
“Those courtrooms haven’t been used in years,” said Mr. Weasley angrily. “I can’t think why they’re doing it down there — unless — but no …”
A plump witch carrying a smoking goblet entered the lift at that moment, and Mr. Weasley did not elaborate.
“The Atrium,” said the cool female voice and the golden grilles slid open, showing Harry a distant glimpse of the golden statues in the fountain. The plump witch got out and a sallow-skinned wizard with a very mournful face got in.
“Morning, Arthur,” he said in a sepulchral voice as the lift began to descend. “Don’t often see you down here. …”
“Urgent business, Bode,” said Mr. Weasley, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet and throwing anxious looks over at Harry.
“Ah, yes,” said Bode, surveying Harry unblinkingly. “Of course.”
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