Chapter 2: Whispers
Mandy had Mondays and Tuesdays off work. Because the actual weekend days were busy for the shop, she worked Saturdays and Sundays, and instead got the following two days as her time off. She couldn't really complain; she had a job, after all, but for the past three weeks with Melanie now working a standard schedule in her traineeship at the Department of Mysteries, the girls' misaligned timetables didn't allow them as much time together as they'd have liked.
When Mandy had come home from work on Saturday evening, Melanie had already left to go to Sirius' flat for the night, and she wasn't back yet by the time Mandy had gone to work Sunday morning. So as Mandy dragged her feet up the steps to her flat Sunday evening after work, she was tired and looking forward to her weekend, as well as maybe a chance to see her flatmate again. And sure enough, when she walked into the flat, Melanie was there, enjoying the last few hours of her own weekend; the room swelled softly with the sound of slightly-off-key guitar chords and the aroma of Indian takeaway. Melanie was seated on the sofa, her guitar in her lap, and their black cat Lancelot attempting to squeeze between her and the guitar.
Lancelot had used to be Charlotte's. Back then, Mandy had nicknamed him Wilbur, from a Muggle book she'd loved as a child, after seeing how Charlotte doted on him. But that name had only been funny when Charlotte was still alive. Now he was just Lancelot, as Charlotte had originally called him.
"Hi," said Melanie, looking up with a smile, and setting the guitar on the floor. Lancelot entirely ignored Mandy's arrival and took over Melanie's vacated lap. Melanie added, "Welcome back. I saved you some food."
"Thanks!" Mandy kicked off her red platform shoes and headed to the kitchen, scooped the leftovers into a bowl – it looked like chana masala – and then came back and joined Melanie on the sofa. "We should get a table," she said, holding her bowl of dinner in her lap.
"Yeah," Melanie agreed. "And chairs. If we ever have friends over, they'll probably want a place to sit that doesn't involve squeezing between us on the sofa." She laughed. "So I guess they have to sit on our laps."
"Or the floor," suggested Mandy.
Their flat was nothing spectacular, but Mandy loved it. Ever since they moved in two months ago, it had felt like home. They'd covered up the big dent in the living room wall with a Ziggy Stardust poster, and various blemishes or cracks on the other walls were obscured by a watercolour of Paris, posters of the Caerphilly and the Portree Quidditch teams, a big framed photograph of somewhere in the Swiss Alps. Mandy had contributed a bright yellow shaggy rug for the living room floor, and over on the worktop by the window, Melanie had placed a potted spider-plant, two cacti, and a lava lamp. But still, there was no table.
"What was the most exciting thing that happened at work today?" Melanie asked.
It took Mandy a minute to recall, but in the morning a man had come in looking for dress robes and spent so long there deciding that he'd actually had an owl stop by with a letter for him while he was there. She asked Melanie about her day, as well; Melanie had spent the morning doing a crossword puzzle with Sirius, and then returned home to do some reading about space and planets for work.
After Mandy had finished her dinner, she set the bowl on the floor by her feet, and Lancelot crept off Melanie's lap to sit on Mandy instead and knead her leg. They'd only been chatting for a few minutes when there came a cracking noise outside and then a knock on the door.
"I wonder who that is?" Mandy asked, standing up to get the door, and in the process evicting Lancelot from her lap. Lancelot dashed out of the room and into Mandy's bedroom, probably to curl up on her bed and leave black fur all over her pillow.
"We have visitors?" Melanie asked. "But we still don't have chairs!"
Mandy opened the door to see two of her former Slytherin housemates: Hector Branstone and Russell Rabnott, who were also now flatmates together, way up in Hogsmeade.
"Russ! Hector!" Mandy greeted them, beaming. "Come on in!"
"It's good to see you two!" said Melanie, hugging both of them as they crossed the threshold into the flat.
"You as well," said Hector. "How are things?" The group of four meandered away from the door and further into the main room of the flat, starting to catch up on each other's lives, until Mandy realised she couldn't even invite their friends to sit.
The thought seemed to strike Melanie simultaneously. "Sorry, we still don't have anywhere to sit other than that small sofa," she said.
"What?" asked Russell in disbelief, looking around the room in vain.
"There's always the floor!" said Melanie.
"Last person to reach the sofa has to sit on the floor," said Hector, and charged at it. But he had been standing farthest from the sofa when he started, so the two girls got there first.
"The floor, or our laps," said Mandy as she settled on the sofa.
Hector wasted no time in climbing onto the sofa and stretching himself out along Mandy and Melanie's legs, his knees jabbing into Mandy's side, and Melanie's arm in his face. It looked very uncomfortable. Russell merely took his wand out of his sock and conjured a beanbag chair, and then reclined comfortably in it, a self-satisfied grin on his face.
"How did we never think of that?" cried Mandy, turning to look at Melanie over Hector's brown elbow in the air between them. "We never needed to buy any furniture at all! We could have all the furniture in the world and never have to pay for any of it."
"Conjured stuff doesn't last forever," Russell reminded her. "This one will probably have vanished again by tomorrow."
"Damn," said Melanie.
"Good," Mandy disagreed. "It doesn't match the rug."
"You know, we can still make it work," said Melanie. "The conjuring, I mean. Add it to the list of daily tasks; then we always have chairs. Morning to-do list: fix breakfast, conjure a table and chairs."
"My arm is asleep," said Hector, fidgeting and rolling over until Melanie shoved him off the sofa with a laugh.
"We'll shift over," Melanie added as Hector sat up again. "There can be room for three on the sofa if we get cosy and if you quit elbowing me in the face."
After they'd all resettled on the sofa while Russell stretched out even more luxuriously on his beanbag chair, Mandy asked, "So what brings you two here today?"
"Russ broke up with his boyfriend," Hector explained. "And the best thing after a breakup is to spend time with friends. Besides, Hogsmeade is tiny; it can get dull sometimes."
"Would you like to drown your sorrows in ice cream?" Mandy offered. "I always find it helps."
Russell smiled. "To be honest, I'm not that upset. Wouldn't say no to ice cream, though."
"I didn't even know you were seeing anyone," Mandy added while Russell got up to raid the freezer. "No one tells me anything anymore. I used to know everything about you at Hogwarts. It's not fair that we live so far apart now."
The four friends spent a while discussing what they'd all been up to since leaving Hogwarts in June; Melanie gave a vague overview of her training at the Department of Mysteries, Hector mentioned doing construction work in Hogsmeade, Russell pointed out that he rather liked working at Scrivenshaft's Quills because it was generally quiet and peaceful there, and Mandy talked briefly about fashion at Gladrags and then more about her recent project of distributing pamphlets about protection from Death Eaters.
"Speaking of which, did you see the Daily Prophet this morning?" Melanie asked, her eyebrows knitted.
"No," said Mandy; she'd been at work.
"Oh, I saw that," said Hector, frowning. "The bit about the Registry?"
Melanie nodded, and then explained to Mandy that there had been a notice in the Daily Prophet for all Muggle-borns in Britain to submit their names for the Ministry's newly created Muggle-born Registry. There was to be another Registry for people of magical birth who had married Muggles.
"They say it's for 'census purposes'," Hector added, using air quotes.
"Why? What are they going to do with that information?" Mandy asked.
Russell spoke up. "Well, probably nothing good. The Ministry's going corrupt; people say there are Death Eaters infiltrating the higher offices, and they're all in the palm of the Dark Lord."
"So it'd mean that the information all goes to him," said Hector. "And that You-Know-Who has access to where all the Muggle-borns are, and who has married Muggles."
There was a silence while everyone considered the implications, but no one said it aloud. Mandy couldn't help thinking it though: it meant all of the people on the new registries would be a target. Once identified, it was easier for Death Eaters to go after them. And with the ever-increasing number of Muggle-born deaths she kept hearing about, it wasn't too difficult to associate that trend with the new registries.
"How can they let that happen to the Ministry?" Mandy finally asked, outraged. "Shouldn't someone be stopping You-Know-Who? Why isn't anyone doing anything about it?"
"It's not that simple," said Melanie, picking at her fingernails. "Secrets are well kept there. I've been working at the Ministry for three weeks, albeit with a bunch of researchers in the basement, far removed from where they make the laws, but I never heard a word about this until the article today. And as for the Death Eaters there… not even the Order of the Phoenix knows who all of them are." Upon seeing Russell's blank stare and Hector's perplexed one, she explained further. "Dumbledore's group."
"That's a good point," said Russell. "Would you really do anything about it, Mandy? If you worked there, would you raise your voice, despite maybe not knowing where your coworkers stand? Would you risk dying just so you can say a few words?"
Mandy liked to imagine that she would stand up boldly in front of everyone for what was right, but she didn't know if she would, especially if the consequences were likely to include death and didn't accomplish anything real. It was for this exact reason she'd declined to join the Order of the Phoenix. Maybe those at the Ministry who still resisted Voldemort were trying to do something about it in secret, but everyone just had to be careful about saying anything publicly.
It had been like that at Hogwarts. Two years ago, when they were just beginning their sixth year, Mandy could still remember, it was common in Slytherin House to avoid talking about the war much, or about Voldemort; no one wanted to find out any unpleasant truths about their friends and housemates, so it was all best kept to oneself. There were a few vocal ones who clearly admired Voldemort and as such gave the house a bad reputation among the other houses. Mostly, though, the Slytherins were ambivalent and neutral about the war. But times had changed; the reach of the war had extended, and forced more people to make a decision and choose a side, like Mandy and her three closest friends.
"Did you know the place was that corrupt when you applied for that internship?" Russell asked.
"No. But as it happens, I'm probably quite well placed," said Melanie. "As far as the Ministry goes, the Department of Mysteries is a very separate entity from the rest, and is basically left alone and forgotten about. But it's still part of the Ministry, which gives me access to information. I might hear things once in a while. Besides, a couple of other members of the Order are employed there as well."
Mandy thought back to the two new registries the Ministry hoped to compile. That latter one about magical-Muggle marriages particularly worried her; Mandy's own father was a Muggle, and her mother was a witch. Just what exactly did the Ministry plan to do with this information? Her parents had been targeted once already – would it happen again?
"We can't just be bystanders, though," said Mandy. "My parents will end up on that marriage registry; they'll be in danger again."
Hector nodded. "And my girlfriend is Muggle-born. She'll be on the other list. Do you think Death Eaters would come to Hogwarts for the Muggle-borns?"
"Well, they did try to get in last year," Melanie said. "But Hogwarts is still safer than out here, with all the security spells and with Dumbledore there all the time. And you can trust the professors. Althea should be okay there." But she didn't look entirely convinced. A year from now, Althea Seward would be out of Hogwarts and having to face all of this anyway.
Hector scratched his head. "What happens if no one puts their names on the registries? How will that registry sign-up be enforced anyway, without any names?"
"Well, the Death Eaters will probably try to scare people into it," Russell reasoned. "Or make people think they have no choice, like they're doing now with that newspaper announcement."
"I wish there was a way to remind people somehow that they still have a choice," said Mandy. "A way we could tell everyone to not sign up."
"A way that doesn't lead back to us," Russell added.
"We can send out a bunch of owls to drop parchment all over the country that says 'Don't sign up for the Ministry's bloody Registry'," Hector suggested.
"How would we keep all the Muggles from seeing that?" asked Melanie.
Over the next quarter of an hour they mused on various methods of message delivery, but kept running into the problem that it was near impossible to get a message out to every magical person in Britain without being noticed by Death Eaters or Muggles, especially when the identities of the Death Eaters were unknown.
"I'm going to suggest to Althea that she not sign up, at least," said Hector eventually. "If she hasn't thought of that already. And she'll tell her friends and housemates too, I'm sure. You could do the same with your family, Mandy."
Mandy nodded emphatically. "Yeah. I totally will."
"And while Hector's plotting with the Hufflepuffs at Hogwarts," said Melanie, "I guess I'll stealthily take down the corruption in the Ministry from within."
"Let me know if you want to look good while doing so," Mandy offered. "I'll give you a discount on Gladrags dress robes."
"Such go-getters, the lot of you," said Russell. "I'll just keep eating your food."
The rest of the evening was rather uneventful, and after a bit more of friendly, laid-back conversation, Hector and Russell Apparated back home, what with the prospect of work early Monday morning for everyone except Mandy. Russell took the tub of ice cream with him, although most of it had melted by that point anyway.
Melanie went off to the bathroom sink to brush her teeth, and Mandy stood by the kitchen worktop and started writing a letter to her parents, pleading them to ignore the registry summons. Surely her mum must have seen the article, because she worked for the Daily Prophet. Maybe she was already planning to discard it. But as Mandy figured, a letter couldn't hurt.
It was something; the people she cared about might be safe a little longer, but it still didn't feel like enough. Nothing ever felt like enough. Mandy had big dreams of making a difference, but how could a few eighteen-year-olds possibly make a difference for a whole country of people who needed it?
She heard back from her parents the following day.
Mandy,
It's good to hear from you! I'm so glad to hear work is going well and that you're settling in to your new flat. I know you have today and tomorrow off, why don't you come visit? We'd love to see you.
Love,
Mum and Dad x
It was rather odd they hadn't addressed the topic Mandy had written to them about, but she did have time for a visit. She waited until the evening when her parents were sure to be home from their jobs, and Apparated onto the doorstep.
Mandy and her parents sat in the kitchen, and her mum set out tea for the three of them. It was a pleasant, cheery enough visit, until Mandy's mum brought up the topic of the owl Mandy had sent the previous day.
"Thanks for coming here in person – there's a lot to talk about that we can't risk putting in a letter. Your owl looked like it'd been intercepted. All ruffled, and its note was unsealed."
"I'm sorry," said Mandy, shocked. "I understand why you didn't say much in your response. I'll be more careful. But what about the Registry? You saw that article, right?"
"I did see it," said her mum. "We've been giving it a lot of thought since yesterday. And I don't think the signup really matters. In fact, I suspect the Census Commission already know of everyone who belongs on the list – they're just testing us all to see who admits to it."
Mandy hadn't thought of that. "Then do you think it would be safer to ignore it, or to sign up?"
"We're still not sure," said her dad. He looked tired, and his hair had a bit more grey than it had a few months ago. Mandy always remembered him as being enthusiastic about magic and taking pride in his wife's ability, but these days, now that magic had shown its ugly side to him, he seemed to find it less appealing.
Her parents shared a glance, and then her mum added, "Don't trust anything in the Daily Prophet these days, by the way. There's a lot they aren't printing – there have been a few Muggle-born deaths that have gone unreported. I was fired yesterday, as well, for attempting to publish those articles. I think the place may be under different management now."
"Death Eaters?"
Her mum nodded.
So even the newspaper was being controlled now. How was anyone ever supposed to know what was really going on, then? The Daily Prophet had been the one source she trusted. What was there now?
"Now what?" was all she asked.
"Well, to begin with, I'm making dinner tonight if you want to stay around for it," her dad offered. "As for the rest, we're still figuring it out. I think we should limit communication to the regular post, though. And you and Melanie should get a telephone. Your Ministry's Census Commission won't be monitoring either of those."
"By 'regular post', he means the Muggle one," said Mandy's mum with a half smile. "It's slower, but much safer. The safest, of course, is meeting in person."
"That makes sense," said Mandy. "And I'd love to stay for dinner."
When she got back home that night, she wondered how to pass the information to Hector and Russell up in Hogsmeade. Muggle post didn't go there, because Muggles didn't even know the town existed. And would telephones even work there, with all that magic around?
She figured she'd get very good at Apparating long distances over the coming year, if nothing else.
Author's Note:
Some disclaimers. The book Mandy refers to is Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. Ziggy Stardust is a creation of David Bowie.
And because I didn't mention it in the previous chapter notes: Everything you recognise in this story belongs to JKR. Only the plot and the original characters are mine.