Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Chapter 13
"Stop leading me on, you love him don't you?!"
"N..n..no I don't." Astoria's face came into focus. Tears streaming down her face, her cheeks flushed a deep red. Her hands came up to cover her eyes as her body was wracked by sobs. Her pained cries struck me deep inside and I felt a physical pain inside my chest. It felt as if my heart was physically breaking.
My eyes snapped wide awake. It took me awhile to become conscious of my surroundings; the morning sun had barely began to creep its way into my room. Suddenly it came to me, I was in my bed reliving that night from two months ago. The night that had come to haunt me.
The memory had become a reoccurring dream. Several times a week my subconscious revisited the night of Astoria's and my signing ceremony. And every time it was replayed I was forced to relive our fight; and of her denial that she loved that git. But she'd been lying to me when she'd said it. Her words had lacked conviction, and her face had crumbled when she'd said no.
I swiftly got out of bed, quashing the thoughts that the dream always evoked. There was no point on dwelling on it, on dwelling on her. I'd been successful these last few months in avoiding her. I didn't want to see her happy and smiling without me. I avoided social functions and I tried to circumnavigate the Department for the Advancement of Magic on level 3 of the Ministry of Magic so that I wouldn't accidentally run into her.
Thankfully the legislative session for the Wizengamot had begun shortly before our engagement had been annulled, so work had been keeping me fairly busy with having to sit through oral arguments from the different Ministry departments arguing why we should pass or veto certain laws before the court. The Wizengamot played a dual role in the Ministry. For five months a year it acted in a parliamentary role when it was in legislative session. And during the rest of the year it acted as the wizarding High Court for Britain; hearing cases that had made its way up the appellate system.
I made my way into the kitchen and with a flick of my wand toast appeared on a plate along with a cup of tea. Ambling towards the kitchen table, I set down the plate and cup as I heard The Daily Prophet owl peck at my window. I handed over a knut to the owl and took the copy of The Daily Prophet that was tied to its leg.
Returning to the table, I sat down to read the paper and eat my breakfast. Although I would've never admitted it to anybody, ever since Astoria and I had broken off our engagement I'd been more thorough when reading the paper. Before I used to skim all the articles that didn't have to do with Ministry news or Quidditch, but now I paid more attention to the society pages. I knew Geoff and Astoria were waiting for the appropriate time after our engagement had ended before announcing theirs. I knew from my connections that Geoff had decided to take the position in the Ministry and hadn't returned to Mongolia so it was only a matter of time before their engagement become public.
There was nothing of note in the paper today except for an article that caught my eye about that insufferable Hermione Granger-Weasley. The article described her highly anticipated transfer from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to the position of Permanent Under-Secretary in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was accompanied by a photograph taken last year when she'd succeeded in getting her house-elf legislation passed by the Wizengamot. I'd voted against her legislation, but it had still passed by an overwhelming majority.
It looked like she was still riding that git, Harry Potter's, wave of popularity. I gazed over her new title one last time, Permanent Under-Secretary, that meant I'd be seeing a lot more of that infernal know-it-all since it'd be her new job to represent the Department of Magical Law Enforcement before the Wizengamot. Lovely.
As I set The Daily Prophet aside another owl began pecking at my kitchen window. I let the owl in and took the letter. Opening the letter, I saw it was from Seren Llewellyn, a prominent Welsh member of the Wizengamot, and the Chief Whip for the Tories.
The Chief Whip's job within the party is to line-up the votes from the Tory members for legislation, and make sure the Tory members vote in accordance with the party. As a fellow member of the Tory Party, I highly respected her. Plus she had a knack for getting things done and she was highly connected.
The note was written in her messy scrawl. It requested that I come to her office for a meeting before today's session began. The owl patiently stood on the table as I got up to go in search for a quill and piece of parchment. Once I jotted down a quick affirmative to Seren's request, I handed it over to the owl and then began going about getting ready for the day ahead.
Several hours later I found myself sitting in the antechamber to Seren Llewellyn's office within the Ministry. Her secretary sat at a desk several feet away from me, and seemed to be shuffling through some correspondences. The scratches of the secretary's quill on parchment and the sound of parchment being moved were the only sounds to puncture the silence.
With no warning Seren's office door opened and two people came out. "Thank you for agreeing to see me Anthony. Oh I see Draco is here."
I got to my feet and shook hands with Seren, and then turned and shook hands with Anthony Rosier. He'd graduated a few years ahead of me at Hogwarts and was a fellow member of the Wizengamot. We'd worked together several times and got along fairly well.
"Nice to see you Anthony, it's been awhile. How's your sister doing? It's been what, a month, since her marriage to Urquhart?" I genially asked him.
He shrugged, "Something like that, she's doing well. They just got back from their honeymoon in Italy."
All three of us made the typical remarks in regard to Italy. How it was a nice time of year to visit. Did they have the opportunity to travel to all the grand cities. After a period Anthony halted the conversation.
"Well I must be going, I need to wrap up some paperwork before today's session begins."
"Give my best to the family," Seren smiled.
I shook his hand and said goodbye before he made his exit. Once he'd left the antechamber Seren turned towards me, "Thank you for coming on such short notice. I had a meeting fall through this afternoon which opened up some time. Please come in and have a seat. Would you like anything to drink?"
"No I'm fine." I replied as I walked into her office and sat down in one of the leather chairs sitting in front of Seren's mahogany desk. It was your standard politician's office with certificates on the wall of bills Seren had successfully pushed through the Wizengamot and moving pictures of her shaking hands with many of the most famous witches and wizards in Britain.
"It's that time of year again to start working on next year's annual budget." She stated once we'd both sat down.
"Ah. I was a little surprised when I received your owl today. I didn't think budget discussions would begin so soon."
"Rowen MacDonald and I have been discussing and we've decided to make some major inroads on implementing some changes this year when it comes to the budget. We feel as if the government is too bloated right now and we'd like to focus on trimming the budget in order to create a more efficient government. This will take more planning of course if we are to execute it properly. So although session arguments on the budget aren't suppose to start until a couple of weeks from now, we're trying to organize our plan and put everything into order."
The MacDonald family was a bastion within the Conservative Party. They had been on the founding families of the political party and had always held high positions within it. Rowen MacDonald is the current Tory leader and if he and the Tory leadership had decided to try and implement massive changes to the budget this year, it was going to be a long year. Budget discussions never went smoothly.
"What type of changes are you looking at?"
"The Tory leadership is currently coming up with a list of governmental departments that we believe are a waste of government funds. However, we've already decided that our number one target will be the Department for the Advancement of Magic.
Their sole purpose is to develop new spells, which in this day and age is redundant and unnecessary. In the end they create more work for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Just the other day the head of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad, Winston Callihan, was in here complaining about how he felt like his department was being over-burdened and under-staffed."
Shite. The Department for the Advancement of Magic is where Astoria works. I tried to automatically repress all thoughts of her that sprung up, but I couldn't ignore the sinking feeling I felt in the pit of my stomach.
Seren continued on, "Now it has been brought to my attention that," she paused as the readjusted her glasses and looked down at a sheet of parchment that laid on top of her desk, "your ex-fiancée currently works at the Department for the Advancement of Magic, one Astoria Greengrass." She turned up from the sheet of parchment and gave me a measuring look.
I felt my lips purse at the mention of Astoria and I nodded my head solemnly.
"That's not going to cause any issues will it? My understanding is that the engagement was annulled on the Malfoy side so this shouldn't cause a conflict of interest; I hope." She authoritatively stated the last part, almost as an order.
This put me in a complicated position. As a junior member of the Tory Party I was suppose to follow. To go against the Party could spell the end of my political career. If the Party black-balled me I would be ostracized and I'd politically speaking become a lame duck. None of my work would be support by the Tories and there was no possible way the Labour Party would accept me, nor would I want to become a member of the Labour Party.
But to ruin Astoria's career… to support the destruction of the job she was so passionate about… I don't think I could do it. But this wasn't the time or place to bring that up. I needed to come up with a plan.
So I calmly replied, "No it won't be a problem. It was an arranged marriage orchestrated by my mother, there were no feelings there. And it's over now."
A smile spread across her face in response, "Good. As the current occupant of the Malfoy seat in the Wizengamot you hold a position of power over the pure-blood faction within the Party. I will be depending on you to exert your power to help me drum up the support we'll need to get these measures passed amongst that faction."
I nodded my head solemnly.
"Good. Well I believe that concludes our meeting. Today's session will be starting shortly." She got up from her desk and walked me to the door. "I'll be seeing you shortly. Old Barnaby Than is going to be speaking during today's session about compliance issues the Spirit Division has been having with a group of ghosts in Cornwall. It promises to be a dull day." She shook my hand and I departed her office.
My mind was quickly jumping into action trying to formulate a plan. There had to be a way for me to save the Department for the Advancement of Magic and keep my political clout at the same time.
Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. I froze in the hallway I'd been walking down as I began to mesh out the details. My face blanched once I realized what I'd have to do. Dread filled me at the idea. I was going to have to ask for help from that insufferable know-it-all Hermione Granger-Weasley. There just was no other way around it.
Pausing, I wondered to myself whether Astoria really was worth having to deal with Granger. But the answer was simple, she was.
A/N: Yay! I updated in less than a month! This chapter was all about setting up the plot for the rest of the story. I know there were a lot of minute details, and I'm sorry. I put a lot of thought into it and did a lot of research on what JK Rowling has told us about the British wizarding political system. There wasn't a ton of details in the book about it so I decided to go with what we do know and then basically overlay the muggle British political system (or what I understand of it) on top of it to fill in the blanks. I decided to keep the current British political party names to make it easier to follow.
Politics are going to play a huge part in the rest of this story. I'm going to try and not get too political though. Basically the only political issue I'll be exploring is the debate about whether to increase or decrease funding to programs such as NASA (the Department for the Advancement of Magic being similar to NASA and other scientific programs).
Anyway I hope you enjoyed this new chapter! Drop me a note with your thoughts. Were my explanations of the British wizarding political system too complicated?