Ramsgate (RAMZ-gayt), n. A door that opens the opposite way to the one you expect. (All institutional buildings are required by law to contain at least twenty.)

It was on the second day that Kingsley Shacklebolt fell in love with biros. He'd been as nervous as hell on his first day; fitting into Muggle life was hard enough without having a whole new political system to deal with, one fraught with its own competition and infighting. And being the secretary to the Muggle Prime Minister was no easy task even for one who did know the system. Hed gone to bed the first night almost shaking with nerves; keeping up appearances in front of the scheming, calculating denizens of a whole new world had seemed harder than any of the previous tasks hed faced as an Auror.

But on his second morning, when hed gained a lot more knowledge and felt a bit more comfortable as a Muggle, hed discovered his greatest ally. Biros. They were little miracles in blue, black and red. No smudges, no broken quill tips, no shortages of ink and they made up for the fact that he could no longer use Summoning Spells by being everywhere. In every drawer, on every table, somewhere there would lie an unassuming thin cylinder that could write a whole score of governmental reviews before giving up. It was the biros that gave him hope, that convinced him that he might just last out his time as a secretary/bodyguard to the most important man in England.

It was this biro-derived hope that enabled him to deal with his greatest enemy at Whitehall: the doors. Hed spent most of his first week crashing into them; some of them worked by a kind of automatic magic, but the rest worked on a completely random basis, if they worked at all. Some were to be pushed, some pulled, none were clearly labelled, and, above all and without exception, they all seemed to open in the opposite direction to the one in which Kingsley, usually with an armful of important papers, was attempting to open them.

It was on the fifth day, just as he was settling in, that he faced his greatest challenge of all: the door of the Leader of the Opposition. It was at the end of a long daunting-looking corridor, and as he approached it he realised with a sinking feeling that it was made of glass. Luckily, the man himself was working behind a large computer; all Kingsley could see was his bald head poking over the top, his eyes looking downwards and, thankfully, concentrating intently at what was on the screen.

The door had a handle, which, as far as Kingsley's limited knowledge of Muggle doors went, meant it was more likely to be a pull. Balancing his papers precariously on one arm, he reached for the handle and gave a small, unobtrusive tug.

There was no response from the door. Thankfully, the man inside was still staring at the computer, oblivious to Kingsley's efforts. Pushing the papers into a slightly safer hold, he leant confidently against the door.

It did not move.

Shifting the papers again, he tried another tug. The door still didn't budge, but the pull had the effect of rattling the glass which, to Kingsley's horror and embarrassment, made the man inside look up. Rapidly, Kingsley made a few more push-pull motions on the door, which stayed stubbornly in place. He looked desperately for some form of latch mechanism, and even stepped back slightly in case it was one of the automatic-open doors and hadn't yet realised he was here.

Inside the room, the man made an impatient sideways motion with his hand. Kingsley watched carefully and, baffled, repeated the motion himself. The man frowned, as though he suspected Kingsley of making a fool of him, and repeated the motion again, this time barking out a word that, to Kingsley, made the situation all the more surreal. "Slide!" Slide? Was it a code? Did the man suspect that Kingsley was not an ersatz secretary? Was he trying to catch him out? He stared at the door, which offered no help, as his mind tried to make the word relevant.

Slide? What did it mean? Unless... He stared at the bottom of the door. Surely it wasn't that simple... was it?

Slowly and cautiously, Kingsley bent down and, to the complete confusion of the man inside the room, carefully slid the relevant papers under the door. This done, he straightened himself again, brushed the lint off the knees of his suit, and, ignoring the baffled sputterings of the man behind the door, strode back down the corridor, making a mental note to himself to let Dawlish take the bodyguard duty for the next imperilled Muggle leader.

By Prieda Solo

A/N for American readers: The Leader of the Opposition is the person who is the head of whichever political party is not in charge: i.e., at the moment (but for how long? [sigh]), it is the leader of the Conservative Party. (Editor's note: This was written before the 2010 general election.)

A/N for English readers: I know its a little anachronistic now, but, yes, that was IDS. If only because David Cameron would probably have got up and opened the door himself. :)