Minister Weasley's Troubles
"A decision is what a man makes when he can't find anybody to serve on a committee." (Fletcher Knebel)
Lucius Malfoy strode into the large board room three doors down from his office at the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes on level three of the Ministry of Magic. Seemingly in keeping with the rather somber occasion for the meeting maintenance had chosen a gloomy and rainy exterior for the enchanted windows of the deep, cavernous room.
The wizard closed the tall door behind him and took a quick look around to orient himself. Almost everyone seemed to have made it to the meeting before him. Among the muggles, witches and wizards who sat around the large, oval mahogany table he recognized Arthur Weasley, the Minister of Magic himself. In the dim, dull light Lucius thought he saw hectic spots on the harried-looking face of the wizard. His battered, grey felt hat sat precariously off to one side of his thinning ruffled shock of bright red hair and his threadbare tie was half-undone.
The elder Malfoy felt his lips twitch with a smug sneer at seeing his old enemy so flustered and put-out by the recent events. He himself in contrast showed perfect composure in his flawless attire, from the rich brushed velvet sheen of his cloak to the starched stiffness of the silk cuffs of his pressed and spotless shirt.
Scanning the table for empty seats, he saw an unoccupied chair next to his old associate Daimon Spofford, which suited him fine. With a swish of his cloak he rounded the assembled ministry employees and took his place, carefully leaning his serpent cane against the table top as he settled in. He deliberated for a moment, then sought to make eye contact with the muggle Sedgewick, who was sitting opposite him and obviously had not been killed, forced a grimace of a smile on his face and nodded briefly. The professor swallowed nervously and nodded back.
"So good of you to finally grace us with your presence, Mr. Malfoy," snapped Weasley at him and leaned forward over the table. "After all the safety of our guests and counterparts only happens to be your personal responsibility. We have been waiting for you for twenty minutes! Your secretary said initially you even refused to attend, she had to beg and plead with you to come."
Lucius leaned back in his chair, forced himself to remain calm and propped his elbows up on the armrests. He would get the little tattle-tale of a witch for mouthing off about him like that. Who did she think she had to answer to? Keeping the sudden surge of anger he felt to himself, he regarded the red-haired wizard with amused detachment. Weasly seemed almost ready to propel himself across the table to strangle him.
"Please, Arthur, obviously that was a misunderstanding," he drawled. "As soon as I had informed myself as to the gravity of the situation I rushed here from Wiltshire as fast as I could. Of course this is a terrible tragedy, and you can believe me when I say that my department will do everything in our power to extend our full cooperation to the investigation and get to the bottom of this appalling incident. So, who is the victim of this unfortunate tragedy?"
For a moment the minister seemed unable to speak.
"As if you didn't know!" he finally spluttered. "Here you are, pretending that you of all people don't know what's going on!"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." The blond wizard shook his head. "Arthur, now I know that all muggle and wizard liaisons are my responsibility. And believe me: I take that responsibility very seriously. But I have only just arrived. You will have to brief me. Or did you intend that statement as some kind of unfounded accusation?"
His mild and slightly patronizing tones had sharpened as he spoke the last sentence.
"Hem, hem!" interrupted someone from the side of the table, and Lucius discerned the dumpy form of Dolores Umbridge.
"Please, if I may be so bold, minister," she chirped. "The murdered muggle was Dr. Evan Morris, our healer liaison, Mr. Malfoy."
Weasley shot her a vicious glance, but Lucius gave her a condescending nod. Her well-timed interruption had managed to keep the situation from escalating.
"How do we know it was murder?" he asked her.
"Well, a knife to the back usually says murder to me," answered a sarcastic, rumbling voice.
Lucius looked around to the latest speaker and saw a heavy-set man in an ugly, functional grey suit with short-cropped hair and a walrus moustache. He tried to keep the disgust out of his face. A muggle had dared to address him uninvited and unintroduced.
"And, pray, who are you?" he asked with a brief snort of annoyance.
The man stared at him brazenly and curiously. He had obviously never seen a true wizard before. His muddy brown eyes traveled from Lucius' long blond hair over his pale, aristocratic face, down to the curved serpent pin that held his silk cravat in place, and along the rich black velvet trim of his robes to his elegant, manicured hands. He seemed to find what he saw faintly amusing. Lucius decided he disliked the muggle immensely already.
"Detective Jones, Scotland Yard," he said curtly.
That didn't seem to make a lot of sense. The man certainly had nothing Scottish about him. Judging by his accent he was Cockney through and through. If "detective" had the same Latin word root as a detego spell he was a "finder". A finder of what, of murderers?
"He's some sort of muggle auror, apparently," hissed Spofford next to him in a hurried whisper and Lucius nodded as if he'd been in the know all along.
"Anyway," interjected a nasal voice now. "As I was saying before this interruption: we would not be here had it not been for the minister's unfortunate and hasty policies."
Lucius turned away from his old Death Eater associate and now found himself listening to Percy Weasley, who ran the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. He smirked. So this was to turn into yet another internal Weasley family feud. While tedious to witness he welcomed it this time. It meant the pressure would be off him for the next few hours at least while Weasel senior and junior were fighting it out between them. It wasn't the first meeting like that since he had assumed his position.
The wizard let the heated exchange between the two men wash over him and considered.
Percy Weasly didn't like him. Well, Lucius could hardly fault him for that. After all, several years ago he had slipped his sister Lord Voldemort's old diary and had caused a very serious case of possession that had nearly killed her. If someone had tried to harm his sisters in this way they would not be sitting at the same table as him now, they would be dead – so young Weasley had actually shown considerable restraint.
Percy's downfall in the blond wizard's opinion was his almost pathological ambition. One of Fudge's last orders as Minister of Magic had been the young man's promotion to head of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes – and while Weasley junior had avidly accepted, he was in way over his head. At least he was smart enough to recognize that Lucius knew many secrets around the ministry and was still able to call in favors and pull strings, so – grudgingly – he asked for the older man's help and on occasion sought his advice. The former Death Eater was only too happy to oblige – for his own reasons.
Now young Percy sprouted the lines Lucius had fed him surreptitiously over the last few weeks regarding muggles and the errors in his father's policies and the blond wizard listened with some degree of smug self-satisfaction as the two Weasleys sparred kicking back and forth his arguments. It was always fun watching one of his sock puppets in action.
The rising volume of voices brought him back and he found that both wizards had actually got up and stood facing each other across the board-room table, their faces about as red as their ruffled hair.
"And then you allow people to make someone like HIM chief muggle liaison!" yelled Percy Weasley at his father with a nasty side-look at Lucius.
The blond wizard sat up straighter. This assuredly was not an opinion he had inculcated in the young man. It seemed his anger and his personal feelings had finally got the better of him. This situation needed to be salvaged, but before Lucius could intervene, a lanky, bespectacled man had risen and waved his hands to interrupt the two wizards.
"Please, gentlemen," Professor Sedgewick pleaded. "Please! Mr. Weasely! I appreciate that there is some difference of opinion here about how quickly and how thoroughly our worlds should come in contact with each other – believe me, we are having the same arguments on our side, too. But I won't have Mr. Malfoy slandered. I think Lucius is an excellent choice for muggle liaison! And I know for a fact that there are people out there who are trying to discredit him. I won't have anything said against him!"
Lucius blinked in surprise and noticed that several jaws dropped around the table. This was a heartfelt endorsement he had hardly expected. He knew he had effectively hoodwinked the muggle with regards to Narcissa's biography, but even he had not expected the man to be this stupid and trusting. Muggles truly were a ridiculous breed of humans. Hell, there were kneazles out there with more intelligence.
"Lucius," Sedgewick now turned to him with a smile. "Couldn't we solve this by giving everyone this Veriserum drink that you told me about the other day?"
The blond wizard raised his brows and fought the impulse to correct the silly muggle on yet another term he had got garbled in his mind. Without anything to hide for once in his life and in possession of a disturbingly clear conscience he found that he wasn't objecting to this suggestion half as much as he should. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Excuse me," interrupted a voice next to him before he could speak, however, and he found himself looking at Daimon Spofford who regarded the muggle with a look of outrage on his face. "No one can be forced to take Veritaserum without a warrant. And a warrant can only be issued if there are compelling grounds for suspicion. This would be the protocol we would have to follow by law if a wizard was murdered. I don't see why we would want to deviate from this for a mere muggle."
"Mere muggle!" objected Arthur Weasley with a scowl in the direction of the elderly wizard and a moment later Spofford and the minister had got into an argument.
Lucius sighed – this would result in a splitting headache, he already knew it – and watched Sedgewick sit down again, his long face slack with embarrassment and disappointment at being turned down and sidelined. He forced himself to give the man an encouraging smile.
'Like throwing a stale crust of bread to a house elf,' he thought in contempt as he watched the parapsychologist push his glasses up his nose and smile back in gratitude.
Spofford and Weasley senior were still quarreling. It was time to bring his former Death Eater associate down a notch.
"Daimon, Daimon, methinks the lady doth protest too much," he hissed under his breath during one of Arthur's attacks. "You haven't been a naughty wizard playing with knives now, have you?"
The wizard stared at him in alarm and closed his mouth. With Spofford finally silenced Arthur Weasley calmed down somewhat.
It appeared that now the muggle in the grey suit who had maintained during his introduction that he was from Scotland had something to say.
"It seems to me we are arguing as if it was a foregone conclusion that a wizard killed Dr. Morris. Isn't that a bit rash? Wouldn't you lot have used magic to kill him?" asked the detective gruffly. "Like wave one of those wands at him, stick a couple pins in a doll, some voodoo, whatever you do to get rid of someone? Do wizards really have to use knives?"
This didn't go down too well with either the younger Weasley, who obviously wanted to pin the murder on his father's misguided policies, nor with the older Weasley, who would have liked nothing better than to see the murder laid at the feet of his old enemy, Lucius Malfoy, and to get rid of him for good. They both objected loudly, until Ms. Umbridge had managed to cough long enough to gain everyone's attention.
"Please, ladies, gentlemen," she warbled, spreading he stubby fingers placatingly. "Aren't we here for improved understanding and cooperation among each other? Why are we as wizards so eager to claim responsibility for this shameful deed, as if we secretly wish we had committed it?"
Both Weasleys looked at her in outraged shock and shut up rather abruptly.
"I think we should listen to what this excellent muggle detective has to say. Perhaps it was none of us. Perhaps this was some internal muggle affair. Perhaps this man had enemies, perhaps it was some random act of violence. What messages are we sending to our newfound friends, preening ourselves over this horrible incident?"
Lucius smirked at her. Umbridge seemed to prove to be a rather valuable addition to the team after all. That had been a very nice way to shut down the two Weasels, but then, as others joined the exchange, he found that he began to have doubts. He knew he hadn't stuck a knife into that muggle, much as he might wish he had. So who was responsible? And were they perhaps sitting in the very room with them? Would they argue for a wizarding killer or a muggle killer?
The blond wizard found his thoughts drift as the discussion moved back and forth once again. There was more to people's positions than met the eye. Had Umbridge deflected suspicions back onto the muggles, because she had something to hide? Why had old Spofford reacted so strongly to the suggestion of Veritaserum? Why would the Weasleys advocate a wizard or witch as the murderer when that served only to weaken their prized muggle relations?
Lucius felt his head swim and rubbed his temples. What in the blazes had really happened? He was sure that the discussion in the stuffy board room would not yield any answers. The solution might very well already be waiting for him at home. If Eleanor had managed to identify the sender of the book they could be looking at a good candidate for the murder. He needed to get back to Malfoy Manor and to the discoveries his wife had made.
Time to take control of this farce. Lucius stood up tossing back his cloak in an imperious gesture of resolve. People stopped talking and looked at him
"As chief of muggle liaisons I have found it most illuminating to listen to the insightful and valuable opinions that have been expressed here today," he announced.
Minister Weasley scowled at him in annoyance. He had little reason to approve of Lucius taking up the role of elder statesman.
"I would like to thank everyone for their candid appraisals of this terrible incident. However at this point we seem to have reached an impasse. If my esteemed muggle counterparts and Detective Jones approve I would like to propose that we need to obtain more facts before we continue to argue fruitlessly about mere opinions and conjectures. The current discussion only serves to engender mistrust and dissent among us, which will only poison our newfound spirit of openness and cooperation.
Perhaps we should let Mr. Jones head the muggle side of the investigation and –," he quickly scanned the table and saw the familiar face of his wife's friend Marigold Brannock looking at him, "– Auror Brannock here the wizarding side. Both teams should be encouraged to freely share information about their findings."
He looked around and registered some deep frowns as well as quite a few assenting nods. Before anyone else could speak, however, Professor Sedgewick had also risen.
"I think this is a splendid idea," he exclaimed. "In fact I am extremely pleased to hear that my friend Lucius is the one voice of reason and sanity in this meeting. Speaking for our side of the delegation I fully endorse the proposal."
Both Weaselys looked surprised and slightly miffed, but after the muggle's declaration there was little they could do. Lucius sat back down with a slight sneer in the direction of the minister and lapsed again into detached silence as other members of the Ministry worked out the details of the investigation with the muggles.
An hour or so later the meeting was finally drawing towards a close. Sedgewick stopped Lucius as everyone was leaving the room and ostentatiously slapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. The blond wizard winced at the familiarity, but noticed that other attendants were watching closely and controlled himself as the muggle congratulated him on his unprejudiced level-headedness and thanked him for the cooperation he was extending Scotland Yard. The Weasleys seemed finally united in shooting him dark looks as they squeezed past him.
Eventually it was all over. Lucius contemplated stopping by his office and reducing his gossipy secretary to a heap of quivering misery for reporting their conversation in his fire-place verbatim to the minister but thought better of it. He was more interested in finding out about Eleanor's investigation.
As he approached the bank of fire-places in the entrance hall that would allow him to floo home, he suddenly felt a tug on the sleeve of his robes.
"Pst," hissed a quiet voice, and as he glanced around in annoyance he found himself looking into the shifty eyes of Mundungus Fletcher. He sighed.
"What do you want?" he drawled. "I'm in a hurry."
He realized he hadn't even been lying when the pong of Fletcher's pipe tobacco hit him. What did this man smoke? Hag's hair and bat droppings?
"Well, would it interest you to know that Mr. Borgin recently sold a knife in Knockturn Alley?" the crook asked him sidling up to him.
Lucius tried to hold his breath without making it too obvious.
"As it happens, I am particularly interested in knives right now," he whispered, suddenly alert. "What do you have for me?"
Mundungus pulled out a battered old sepia picture depicting a vicious-looking dagger with a curved black wood handle and a flame-shaped damasked blade. Lucius barely suppressed a gasp as he saw the Malfoy serpent etched along its center. With a jolt he recognized the knife as a custom made naga keris given to his father by a business associate. He had sold it with other items of his father's effects some years ago.
He softly swore under his breath and found to his annoyance that his hands trembled slightly as he took the photograph from his associate to give the weapon a closer inspection.