(VII) - 'The Chariot'
Harry shut the door behind him and all his senses were overwhelmed. There was commotion in the living room – not a commotion, but just the general sort of hecticness that too many Weasleys in the same place generated – on top of the sounds (and smells) of dinner which were making their way from the kitchen, rounded out by something short rushing at Harry to hug him.
"Uncle Harry!"
"Nephew Teddy!" Harry responded, throwing back his tone, and Teddy grinned in the way only a child can when they are old enough to understand a secret joke but still young enough not to develop any sense of irony about it.
"What's that?" Teddy asked, pointing at the staff Harry set carefully against the coat rack.
"Well, when you get to be an old man, like myself, you need to have a cane just to get around the place." He held an arm at the small of his back and pantomimed a hobbling shuffle, aware by now that his wife was definitely watching him and probably rolling her eyes. Teddy naturally found this uproariously funny, and then dashed off to announce to the rest of the household that Uncle Harry was here; he ran past Arthur and Hermione (standing at opposite ends of the dining table) and into the kitchen.
"So all family members should just have access to-" Mr. Weasley was saying.
"Some family members, for the purposes of good-will and information exchange," Hermione cut him off with. Harry was familiar with the way this was going to turn out, and he made a detour to the couch next to Ginny's chair.
Ginny had put aside her knitting – which wasn't surprising, since both she and Harry knew she had no talent for it – but was still holding on to a ball of yarn, and used that to gesture towards the staff. "So where did that come from, old man?"
"I'll tell you later," he said. "When it's quiet." He saw Percy emerge from the kitchen with an stack of plates, saw him about to ask his father something, and then saw him think the better of it and instead distributed the plates as quietly as possible.
"I don't know if 'exchange' is the right word."
"Gathering, then. Liaising." Hermione had been talking extensively with her hands, but now placed them on the back of one of the chairs. "The Ministry needs to do this, it's been in the dark for a century."
Ginny nudged Harry a little. "Wasn't Ron meant to be coming with you?" she asked.
"He might be late," Harry said after a moment's pause. "Work stuff." If Ginny was dissatisfied with this vague answer, she didn't let it show.
In truth, Harry wasn't sure how vague he should or shouldn't be, as Ron was currently on assignment with the Unspeakables. The department's name was quite literal – details about an Unspeakable's projects, their chain of command, and sometimes even their very name could not be spoken unless in the company of another Unspeakable. On the occasion the Unspeakable Department needed outside assistance – which was frequent but not regular, Harry had noted – the wizard assigned to them would stop in the middle of sentences, seemingly completely at random, and develop a puzzled (or frustrated) look as to why they were forbidden to finish their train of thought. The official solution to this within the Ministry was to discourage talk about colluding with the Unspeakables. The unofficial solution – among the Aurors at least – was a little more inventive: a rough set of code words that were muddy enough in meaning to evade whatever magical censors shrouded the Unspeakable's work.
It had begun with the word Scottish – Scottish work, doing a Scottish job, put on the Scottish project, after Macbeth's alternate title – and snowballed from there. Unspeakable projects were 'toil and trouble.' Individual Unspeakables were 'Hecates' and outside members, in turn, 'MacDuffs'. 'Great Birnam Wood' was a widespread curse in the Auror Department, starting as a vaguely serious phrase meaning 'situation critical' and evolving into a joke shorthand for 'everything is going to hell around here'. There was even a phrase to describe that you were being censored by the Unspeakable Division's self-protection enchantments: 'to see a dagger before one's self'.
The sharpness in Arthur's voice brought Harry out of his woolgathering. "Hermione. You know I agree with you on this, but you can't go proposing sweeping changes to one of the pillars of our legal system..." Here Hermione sighed audibly. "...And expect to be taken seriously."
"They're not so drastic," she started before Arthur had finished his point. "Most of the targeted laws aren't enforced anyway. It's more symbolic, a step to change the culture towards Muggle integration, because right now the culture's about as hostile as it could get."
Exasperation crossed Arthur's face at the word hostile. "Oh come on, it's not-"
"It's not?" Hermione shot back, arms raised. Percy was making his exit, and made a point of touching George on the arm as he emerged from the kitchen with bread, making sure he understood what he was walking into. George, understanding perfectly, dropped the basket of bread in the centre of the table and took a seat. "Legally I'm almost guilty of high treason because of the amount of 'breach-worthy magical knowledge' I've told my parents."
Ginny cocked her head a little, indicating they should both go to the table. Harry raised his eyebrows, but Ginny brushed off any question he might have had with a wave of her hand and started to lift herself out of her chair. It was unlike Hermione or Mr. Weasley to keep arguing while everyone else was eating, he supposed, so maybe they would wrap up soon.
"You're looking at this like the letter of the law is absolute, and it is not. If any members of the council knew more than half a dozen of those violations were enforceable, I'm a doxy's mother." Mr. Weasley's tone was rising, and he had started to use his finger to punctuate his sentences.
"It isn't about whether the laws are enforceable," Hermione retorted as Teddy dashed past her from the kitchen. Harry absently sidestepped him as he came barreling past, and he recognized this as the first wave of a general exodus from the kitchen. Percy was setting places and Molly hovered in the doorway, looking like she was trying to settle on the right tone to use to tell her husband and daughter-in-law to be quiet, and that there's food on the table. All this was lost on Hermione. "It's case in point showing that anti-Muggle sentiment and isolationism is still on the books, and can still be used to dodge any notion of a proper reform."
"We have the Statute of Secrecy for a reason-"
"We had it for a reason. It's been almost completely irrelevant for the last fifty years."
The silence was suddenly very heavy. Arthur and Hermione stared each other down across the table. Harry and Ginny exchanged a glance. This was the core of all ideological conflicts between the two. Although not every debate they had brought it up – often because doing so turned the debates rapidly sour.
Hermione's position was one of general dislike for the Statute's existing wording and the centuries of legal baggage it brought with it. Just recently she had described it as 'the bloated carcass of archaic laws' before the International Confederation of Wizards while lobbying to instate a revised version she had drafted. That line had circled highly among the political sections of the wizard papers. To her, the Statute of Secrecy was a product of an age when the phrase 'pure-blood' had a meaning, and wizard children being born to two Muggle parents was an occurrence that was only foretold in the stars and in hazy seer's visions rather than commonplace enough to include nearly one in four wizard children educated in the British Isles.
To Arthur this slash-and-burn standpoint bordered on heresy. To speak to Muggle experts of the sciences across all fields and understand their substitutes for magic was one of his dreams. He had the capacity to do so, if he wasn't above the use of a couple of memory charms. But did he ever? Could he? No – because he believed strongly in the benefits of wizard society remaining hidden as it was. The Salem Witch Trials might not have claimed any actual witches, but they were the result of too many wizards being a little too public, and the paranoia fostered centuries ago against the occult in the New World still existed (in some form) today. Europe, at least in Muggle eyes, still had its mystic spots, places where castles still stood, folklore was still believed, and druids might still gathered around cairn circles. The Statute of Secrecy was the document that ensured that the Tri-Wizard Schools were not decimated and turned into something akin to the Salem Witches Institute.
And all the tension that had built dissipated just as quickly with a knock at the door. Teddy, upon whom all the mounting friction around the table had been lost (and who, unconcerned with both arguments and the food, had been watching out the kitchen window to see the visitor arrive), opened up the door.
"Who are you?" Teddy asked, old enough to not be afraid of strangers but not old enough to always remember to offer them some mark of respect.
"I'm Darcy," replied the woman, "and I work for the Ministry." She had long hair that was neatly tied back and shaded somewhere between a salt-and-pepper speckle and solid grey. Upon her long and slender nose (that matched the rest of her figure) sat a pair of thin and sensible glasses.
"Is there a Mister Potter here tonight?" she asked Teddy, although she had to have been aware of everyone else in the house watching her, and could have easily looked among them and picked out Harry herself.
"Harry's Mister Potter," Teddy replied, and he turned away from her, possibly to call for him with a 'There's someone to see you,' when he found Harry already approaching.
"This won't take a moment of your time, Harry," Darcy said, speaking to whole room despite looking only at him. "And you can get back to your family dinner. You don't object to me borrowing him like this, do you?" she asked everyone else. Something about this jagged at Harry's ear, some odd tone of false politeness. It reminded him a little of his Aunt Petunia when she was being civil to guests.
"No, it's alright," he said, feeling a little foolish and a little curious. He turned and let everyone know it was okay to start without him, and wondered if he was being put on the same Scottish assignment with Ron as he shut the door behind him after ruffling Teddy's hair. Darcy waited for him on the path to the Burrow's front door, a leather folder beneath one arm.
"We haven't been formally introduced," she said, and shifted the folder so she could offer her hand. "Darcy McIntyre, Ministry Research and Development."
"Harry Potter," he responded in turn, shaking her hand. "I guess you know who I am."
She smiled without showing much humour or irony. "Are we able to go somewhere else for a moment? Your office, your apartment? I have a bit of a presentation with me, you see." She indicated towards her folder.
"What's this about?" he asked. "Am I being transferred, or-"
"No, it's nothing like that," she said.
The thought came into Harry's mind, clear and strong, I was being foolish before. She's just nervous, that's all.
"It's about some research I've been doing, and it concerns you."
"How?"
She indicated the folder again. "It's all in here. Your apartment? It won't take long, I promise."
Harry's curiosity, which often lay asleep for very long spells, had finally awoken. Harry took Darcy's forearm, told her to hold tight, and Disapparated.