Disclaimer: Fudge is not mine, nor is Margaret Thatcher; I'm just borrowing them.
It was a lovely evening in early May of 1979, and Cornelius Fudge had never been so terrified in all his born days.
Well…there was all this business with He Who Must Not Be Named of late, but even The Dark Lord of all wizarding kind was not as terrifying as this Iron Lady.
Couldn't this woman just let him do his job! All he wanted to pop into her office, give a quick hello and a run down of how the two of them would just have to deal with each other, for as little as that meant if everything worked the way it was supposed to. Instead, he was hiding in a tiny closet, holding onto the door and his lime green bowler for dear life. Outside the door, she was beating with a chair and shouting incoherently at him.
"Scum! Out of my closet! Get out here and face me!"
The last Muggle Prime Minister hadn't been this difficult. He hadn't really believed in the magic aspect of everything until Fudge had transfigured his teacup into a guinea pig, but at least he'd been smiley and accommodating. But…This Woman. She was certifiably insane!
Not to say that women couldn't fulfill the role of Prime Minister, of course. Fudge himself had been preceded by Millicent Bagnold, and she'd been perfectly competent. And she'd been damn smart too, getting out of office before He Who Must Not Be Named had gotten his Death Eaters into full-force terror mode. Couldn't this…Thatcher woman understand that her people were in danger? He Who Must Not Be Named hadn't yet spared a Muggle-born wizard; he certainly wasn't going to let a Muggle survive his attempts to do…whatever it was he was attempting to do.
Fudge pressed his back against the door, taking deep meditative breaths. The beating on the door had stopped. Maybe this mad woman had given up. Now he just needed to Apparate back to the Ministry-
Then, suddenly, the door flung open behind him. The only thing that broke his fall was the mad Thatcher woman grabbing him by the collar of his robes. In a show of strength no one could have expected, she dragged him across her office, threw open the window with her free hand, and, in a manner not unbecoming of a stray cat, she lifted him up and heaved him out the window.
"And STAY out!" she barked.
Luckily, the fall wasn't too long.
But he still landed on his Ministerial behind, on the pavement, in front of a pair of unsuspecting Muggles. The Muggles gasped and looked completely startled, and one of them happened to be carrying a child, which started to cry. Huffing and trying to reclaim his stolen dignity, Fudge forced himself up and shoved past the Muggles. For some reason, they sounded offended.
Moving quickly, he rounded a corner into an alley. Without a word, he Apparated back to the Ministry and tried to put the incident out of his mind.
But…DAMN! That Thatcher woman sure could make it hurt.