A/N: This was written for Round 4 of the Quidditch League. I am Beater 1 for the Montrose Magpies. Prompts used are listed below.
Lime Green
Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic of Great Britain, felt like he was melting. It had been such an unusually warm summer that his secretary, Judith, had organised for cooling charms to be placed around the office on a daily basis.
Today, no one had come in to cast them — Cornelius had already repeatedly expressed his discomfort and was about to send yet another strongly worded memo when there was a timid knock on the door.
"Finally! Yes, do enter."
"Minister, your brother is in a waiting room. He is asking to see you."
Gone were all the thoughts of the heat. In fact, Judith's words chilled him to the bone.
"Reginald, here?"
Judith nodded, shifting from one foot to the other nervously, her eyes downcast.
"Yes, sir. He threatened to barge in unannounced and was being quite loud. I made sure that the room I placed him in is soundproofed."
It was small acts of initiative like that which had led to Judith being his secretary for all his years on the political circuit. Sometimes, when she acted particularly skittish, Cornelius wondered if it was time for someone new; did Judith know too much? Then, she proved herself worthy again.
Reginald did know too much, and it had always been a problem.
"Thank you for telling me immediately. Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day."
"Yes, sir."
"He's probably fallen back to drinking again," Cornelius murmured, hoping to Merlin that it was true. A simple embarrassment was much easier to sweep under the carpet than any other alternative. Gritting his teeth, he pushed that thought to the back of his mind and grabbed his trademark lime green bowler hat. It had not become the fashion statement Cornelius had hoped for, with wizards rushing out to emulate his style. It had become synonymous with him leaving the office, however, and Cornelius was definitely not letting his brother stay within anyone's earshot for longer than absolutely necessary.
Stepping out onto plush mauve carpet, he quickly motioned for Judith to go back to her desk, already bracing himself for what was to come.
"You're a bloody —"
Cornelius ignored the tirade of foul language that had come his way as soon as he pushed open the door to a room with enough inches of dust on the mantle above the fireplace to suggest that even the cleaners who kept the Ministry so spotless had forgotten it.
Instead, he took a step inside, allowing the door to swing closed behind him, and examined his younger brother.
Reginald was not drunk. He was planted, feet shoulder-width apart, finger jabbing and face turning red. Currently, his body language read as furious, stubborn and problematic.
"Reginald," Cornelius said flatly. "You can't be here. You know that."
"Oh, yes, I know!" Reginald cried with an over-dramatic toss of his head. "I'm the person no one can ever know about. I'm the brother that doesn't exist. Well, sod that, Cornelius; I've had enough! Enough is enough!"
Barely containing a sigh of frustration at his brother's habit of inserting clichés into every situation, Cornelius decided it was time for some damage control before the damage could even occur.
"It's a shame about you and Lisa, Reginald, but really, given how you're behaving, it's no wonder she took Rufus and left," he said, his voice a practiced mix of regretful and reprimanding.
It immediately had the desired effect. Reginald crumpled inwards as Cornelius hid a victorious smile, watching his brother shake his head faintly.
"No, no, this isn't about that at all! Not that in the slightest. I'm here about you." Reginald gained some confidence as he raised his voice. "You and your smear campaign. I know what you're doing to Potter, to Albus Dumbledore! I'm here to put a stop to it."
Again, Cornelius went cold, alarm bells ringing in his ears. In an effort to hide his growing panic, because surely his brother could not have pieced together what he had been orchestrating for months, he closed his eyes and spun his bowler hat between his palms.
"Reginald, if you can't be civilised… We had an agreement, one you've just nullified by barging into my office. I've now had to cancel meetings; important meetings, given that I am leading a country. Of course, I couldn't expect you to understand, given how many months you've been unemployed, but perhaps, if you try very hard, you can remember what it's like to have some responsibility. Instead, I am enduring absolute and utter nonsense. I refuse to listen to you if you can't calm down. I will call security or Lisa. Do you really want your ex-wife here, with the custody battle looming?"
Again, Cornelius felt savage pleasure as, after several minutes of back-and-forth arguing, his voice always ringing with disappointment to counteract the shrill panic in Reginald's, his brother bent to his will and agreed to floo back to the Fudge household so they could speak in private.
Of course, he had agreed to the caveat that he 'had' to 'listen' to what his brother had to say. That had not been a difficult decision. Cornelius wanted very much to know how much Reginald had worked out, along with too much time on his hands.
Volunteering to go second to ensure that his brother did exactly what he wanted him to, Corenlius took a long moment working out varying levels of contingency plans. Ultimately, whatever had to be done was absolutely necessary. A certain modicum of normalcy had to be maintained and he was not about to let months of preparation, working with the newly appointed editor of the Daily Prophet and paying people whose names he deliberately didn't learn to get dirt on Dumbledore go to waste.
His wife Bernadette was talking with Reginald when he flooed to the house and she shot him a look as soon as his feet touched the flagstones around the fireplace. Its meaning was clear:
'Take care of this.'
"I'll let you men talk," Bernadette said, walking out of the large drawing room. Cornelius set his hat on the hat stand and then poured himself a glass of port, larger than he normally would partake.
"Drink?"
"You know I'm sober now," Reginald snapped. "How do you sleep at night, after everything you've done!"
"It's certainly rare for me to have anything but a peaceful evening."
Reginald's face flushed. When he spoke again, his voice was shaking with emotion.
"You're a monster. It sickens me to be related to you."
There was a moment of silence as Cornelius simply sipped from his glass.
"You can bring up my family, but I won't be deterred. I'm going public about everything. Maybe when I came in earlier, you could have talked me out of it, but there's something evil in your eyes, bringing up my son and Lisa too. Nothing you can say or do can convince me otherwise now. I am not sitting by while you destroy more people's lives. Harry Potter is a child!"
"And who are you going to tell? What are you going to say?" Cornelius asked, unimpressed with his brother's posturing and threats, his voice cold.
"The papers! Anyone who will listen!" There was a note of hysteria to the younger man's voice as Cornelius drank from his glass again, his hand slipping into his pocket to grip his wand. "I'll start with Barty Crouch Junior; what you did to him."
"What we did to him."
"You forced me! I told you; I found out he was a Death Eater when I was working for the tailor's and saw his arm as he got measured for new robes! I told you and you ordered me not to say anything. You said you would speak with his father, but you lied!"
"Of course I did. I wanted to be Minister for Magic. Crouch Senior was adored and he was in my way. So, I lied and I waited until that information was useful, until that stupid, pathetic boy did something that would destroy Crouch's reputation completely."
"He helped torture the Longbottoms," Reginald whispered, aghast. "The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else. You talk like you can do anything without repercussions, but I'm going to stop you."
There was something obscene about the vigor and intensity that Reginald spoke with, holding on with some tenacity to the idea of revealing it all after so many years of silence. Cornelius could understand; admitting it and watching his brother's face pale had certainly been , he merely drained his glass and set it down on the table with a clink.
"Your only other competition was Dumbledore and now you're out to belittle and vilify him!" Reginald took a breath, apparently on a roll. "What are you going to do? Get him sacked as Headmaster, as well as Supreme Mugwump? I've had to live with the fact that I let you manipulate me into not going to the Aurors about the young Crouch, I won't stand by and —"
The drawing room door swung open noiselessly, the wall illuminating a sickly shade of green reminiscent of his bowler hat a moment later.
"You were letting him talk," Bernadette said coolly, her words echoed by the soft thud of Reginald's lifeless body hitting the carpet.
"He…"
"He needed to be dealt with. I allowed you to coerce his silence last time. Now, we've done it my way, which, as always, leaves you in a much better position than before."
Cornelius avoided looking at the body as he nodded, offering to clean up the mess.
"No. I want this done right. Why don't you have another drink, dear?"
Shortly after they'd gotten married, a colleague had joked about how Bernadette 'wore the trousers' in the relationship. Little had he known how right he was. To hear Bernadette tell it in trusted company, the reason Cornelius had any sort of political career was down to her work in the background and shadows.
It was why he loved her, he thought to himself.
"Could you be happy here, with me?" he asked her as she straightened up, the body now ash she had carefully banished away.
"I can't see any singeing on the carpet, can you? And no, I am not happy and cannot be happy while there's so much to do."
"Good, because he did say one thing I found mildly interesting. Forget the media and public opinion; we should target Dumbledore at the source. We already had him sacked from Hogwarts once before; this time, no legislation or petition will save him."
Bernadette nodded pensively. "What do you have in mind?"
"Dolores Umbridge… Do you think she would be good with the children?"
"She's loyal; nothing else matters."
"Of course, there is the matter of the curse on the only position available at Hogwarts. How many of the Defence Professors have died now?"
Bernadette waved that away, uncaring.
"She's loyal," she repeated. "And so she will do what must be done."
As they discussed a new plan to destroy their final obstacle to an unobstructed path to permanent power, Cornelius Fudge got ready to head back into the office for the afternoon. He kissed his wife with port-stained lips and just before entering the floo, brushed a spot of ash off his bowler hat.
A/N: Prompts used were...
- rare
- Could you be happy here with me?
- The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else. - John Blake