Title: Fireworks
Author: Emmylou
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all its characters and concepts, are the creation of JK Rowling.
Rating: PG
Summary: Angelina and Fred's relationship is tested when they travel to Egypt on business for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.
A/N: thanks to Mystic Phoenix, QuenofRandomness, almostinsane, and TeahWeah (again!) Your reviews have kept me going.
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Donkor was keen to show them the factory, although not with a enthusiasm for the place but more of a determined 'let's get down to it' manner. To their surprise he did not indicate for them to Floo or Apparate anywhere. Instead he led them back into the tiny hall where they stood pressed against the furniture as he talked.
"My father was a great Alchemist – he even had the honour of working with Dumbledore once. But he found it very dull – he found more fun in hexing textbooks than he did in studying them! When he retired he said he would never be dull again, but he would devote his life to fun. Or at least the fun that includes fireworks – and what other fun is there?"
"You've got me there," muttered Angelina. Fred nudged her, but was too rapt with attention and pressed to far into a hat stand to do much else.
"This factory opened in 1901," said Donkor, apparently not realising that neither Fred nor Angelina could see one. "We have never been out of business since – no matter what the circumstances."
"Will we get to meet your father?" asked Fred eagerly.
Donkor sighed. "He has kept to his room much of late. He suffers a great deal with the troubles of business. I do all of his work for him now." He adjusted his Fez and turned to the stairs. "I will take you in."
He tapped the round wooden knob at the bottom of the banister with his wand. With a sound like a hundred Dominos collapsing, each step dropped downwards to the ground, clicking into place to form a wooden pathway to a previously hidden door.
Donkor walked along it and grabbed a piece of string hanging from the doorknob. He pressed his wand to it and a blue flame shot up the string, reaching the doorknob, which exploded, and the door swung inwards.
"May I humble welcome Weezley's Wizarding Wheezes to Donkor's Firework Factory," he said.
ooo
Fred pushed forward to get a good look first, leaving Angelina to wander down the path behind him. She heard his say "It's massive!" but found herself walking into him as he stopped suddenly.
"What?" she said. She stepped around him and looked herself.
Whatever she had expected when she envisioned the factory, it had not been this. In her mind's eye she had seen a great magical chocolate factory stuffed with explosives rather than sugar. She had expected colours everywhere, workers in strange uniforms, mysterious steaming vats, and perhaps even boxes of gunpowder with ACME written on them.
True to Fred's word, the factory was massive. Cavernous even. It was easy to see why the living quarters where crampt when the house backed onto this. But the walls were grey, and the boxes were brown. Everything was still, and all but three of the hundreds of work stations where deserted. Three men sat at them, not looking at each other, not talking, just funnelling grey powder into grey tubes.
It might have well as made ball bearings as exotic fireworks.
"Where is everyone?" said Fred in a tone that suggested someone had told him Father Christmas was dead.
"Gone," said Donkor sadly. "My father will allow no new workers into the factory. He says they are not to be trusted. Not after Zonko stole all our recipes."
"Who are they then?" asked Angelina.
Donkor walked over to the men. Two of them were the men who had dined with them just this morning. "My brothers – they gave up promising careers in Alchemy to save the factory."
"And when Weezly saves it we would appreciate returning to a career where we actually get paid," said one in a bitter voice. Donkor pretended not to have heard, but she noticed him whack his brother around the head once Fred had turned away.
"This is Garai Konzo!" said Donkor, slapping the back of a young man in a fatherly manner. "My star worker! He is just seventeen – a natural with fireworks."
Konzo was a thin gangly boy, totally covered by white robes. His face was unseen because he wore a large white hat that reminded Angelina of a Shepard in a nativity play. She wondered whether it really was a tea-towel.
"How can you trust him if no one else?" she asked.
"He is blind," said Donkor. "He tells by feel alone. He cannot steal what he cannot see."
"But I was expecting…people," said Fred, who seemed to have found his voice again. "Colours! Activity! We can't collaborate with just four people!"
"Five," said Donkor. "Sometimes Pili helps when she has no other chores."
"Five then! Weasley's Wizard Wheezes had big plans for this collab," he said in a defeated voice.
Donkor looked shamefaced. "I'm sorry I made things seem more impressive than they are. But this is my father's dream. In truth, I do not tell him about the factory. I lie. I tell him about colours and people, as you said. He sits in his rooms and designs fireworks I do not have the money to build."
Donkor turned to Fred desperately. "But you do! You work only in one country and yet we hear about your adventures – about your products over here. My friends are hoping for a sample of your Skiving Snackboxes. You have the money and ingenuity to take over the magical world – I have an unused factory for your use and many, many unused plans for fireworks. We could surpass any firework made before! We could return my business to glory and make yours legendary!"
"And how will this work?" demanded Fred. "I mean, whose name will be on the product?"
"You run a joke shop – I am fireworks factory. You sell my fireworks in your shop. I sell them exclusively to you."
Angelina wandered over to the three men who were back tipping powder into tubes.
"What are you making?" Angelina asked Konzo.
Konzo didn't look up – but then, he didn't have to. "Bangers. There is so little magic in them that even Muggles could use them."
He sounded understandably bored and his accent was so strong it might as well been fake.
"Do you like it here?"
He tipped some pink powder onto a scales set. "I like working with Mr. Donkor – we envision great fireworks together. But I only am allowed to go and invent with him in the afternoon. In the morning I tip powder into tubes for pittance."
"Oh, well…" she glanced back to where Donkor and Fred were in animated discussion, "things will probably liven up here soon. They usually do when Fred gets an idea in his head."
"Are you his wife?"
"No…still just his girlfriend. You'll get on with him marvellously. He can invent fireworks that spell out rude words and…well, that was back in the days when he was more interested in what the fireworks did rather than who made them."
She leant onto Konzo's desk, taking the weight off her knee. "So did you go to school in Egypt? Your English is very good."
"I have family in England. I went to school here."
His hand slipped suddenly, the floor in front of Angelina was sprayed with fine pink powder and it exploded the second it hit the ground.
Donkor dived forward, babbling in his native language and clearly giving Konzo the telling off of his life.
"Are you all right?" said Fred. He steered her away from Konzo and lifted her effortlessly onto an empty desk. "My heart isn't half pounding – it just exploding in front of you like that!"
He looked rather pale and for the first time in months Angelina felt a surge of love for Fred. He was sweet when he was worried.
"I'm fine – I think it just made a noise. I hope Donkor doesn't sack Konzo – you'd be down another employee." Not really that eager for Fred to start talking about business again, she avoided asking what he and Donkor had been talking about, but as quickly as usual, Fred's business head returned.
"I've been talking with Donkor and frankly, his terms are very acceptable. This is better than collaboration with one firework – this is practically partnership! I can't wait to Floo George. We're setting up a whole system where no one employee sees the whole process – that way the fireworks can be made but not stolen!"
"Oh, good," said Angelina, who noticed how quickly Fred's worry about her knee had disappeared. "I, uh, I'm going to go up to my, our, room."
Please make an insinuation, she thought. The old Fred would have practically carried her, any excuse for a quickie, before bouncing back to work with a spring in his step.
"You do that, you'll need some rest," he patted her arm and turned back to Donkor who was fast approaching. Donkor paid her no heed, so she slipped away towards the door.
She literally walked into Pili who was walking through the hall as she came out of the factory. The lack of space caused Pili, who had been carrying a pile of laundry with a scrap of parchment balanced on top, to be practically catapulted into the hat stand. Once they had gathered up the clothes and put the fez back into place, Pili handed the scrap of paper to Angelina.
"An owl Miss. It came for you five minutes ago."
She shuffled past Angelina, who looked at the message, intrigued, for only seconds. She recognised that crest…
The results, she thought. This was it.
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Another chapter – you realise this is the most I've written in a year? Reward me with a review…
Seriously, I'd love to know what you think.