February 17th, 1982: Reginald Cattermole
Look, Magical Maintenance at the Ministry of Magic isn't the most glamorous job in the world. He basically spends his days cleaning up after people who can't be bothered to even cast a simple Scourgify behind themselves when they spill their food in the cafeteria or when the owls delivering their interdepartmental messages leave droppings behind themselves. There are some parts of the job that are actually interesting—learning to enchant the weather in the false windows, for example, or the project he's helping with right now to develop charmed memo notes and circumvent the need for owls altogether—but somehow, Magical Maintenance never seems to get credit for doing any of the actually interesting or challenging magic they're tasked with. They're expected to draw on whatever obscure magic is necessary to solve everybody else's maintenance problems, and they're never thanked or appreciated or respected for any of it.
The one upshot of this is that being unthanked also means being unseen. If people believe and treat you like you don't matter, soon enough, they stop seeing you when you're there—which also means they'll let slip interesting tidbits of conversation when you're tidying up after them.
Now, normally, Reg isn't much of a gossip. He knows how ironic that is when you look at whom he married: out of everybody in their year, Mary had the biggest reputation of all as a gossip at school, at least in the middle of their Hogwarts career—after she'd worked through her shyness, but before she'd tried to put a stop to her bad habits and grow up a little. And it wasn't just Mary: Ver and Amos and Davy were right up there with her, and they were all in Hufflepuff with Reg—all became some of his best friends.
But the Ministry would be an utter bore most of the time if not for the ample opportunities to eavesdrop. Anyway, it's not like Reg goes spreading around what he hears: he just files it away in the part of his brain reserved for piecing together mini-dramas that he forgets all about once his shift is over and he goes back to real life with his wife and their friends.
Today, around eleven o'clock, he's been tasked with doing plumbing repairs in the loo right outside the office of Minister Runcorn himself. Plumbing is one of those Muggle inventions that wizards adopted with the help of Muggle-borns but didn't quite know how to maintain without the help of magic. As such, wizards at the Ministry tend to be utterly hopeless when it comes to things as simple as clogged toilets and water leaks: when they try to fix such problems without training, they have a tendency of trying to slap bandages on the problem that just backfire and make everything worse.
That's how Reg ends up in the loo with the door propped open, inspecting the cascading water leak at every single sink and lamenting that the Ministry doesn't give its employees basic training on how to fix these kinds of things themselves. Of course, Reg can't be too torn up about it: if there were no Magical Maintenance, he'd probably be out of a job entirely.
He's been in there fiddling with the faucets for about five minutes when he hears footsteps outside. "A word, Runcorn?" asks the cool, slimy voice that he recognizes instantly as Lucius Malfoy's. Malfoy was a sixth year when Reg started at Hogwarts; he's still got vivid memories of the time Malfoy decided it would be funny to hex the shit out of Davy in the corridor just because Davy was a Muggle-born. Malfoy got away with it, just like he's gotten away with every underhanded thing Reg has ever seen him do at the Ministry.
Malfoy shuts the door behind himself—Reg can hear the click when it closes—but he and Runcorn don't bother keeping their voices down. Reg thanks the universe for thin walls and steps away from the sinks to prop the lavatory door open a little wider.
"I'm surprised you came down to my office personally," Runcorn is saying. "You're not just going to send one of your lackeys to try and intimidate me again?"
Malfoy ignores this. "We need to talk about Crouch," he says smoothly. Reg raises his eyebrows. Runcorn, Malfoy, and Crouch are all running against each other in the current Minister of Magic election; Runcorn is only filling the post at the moment on an interim basis, at least unless he wins the race.
"Why? He's trailing well behind both you and me in the polls. I see no reason to—"
"I'm not talking about his campaign; I'm talking about his post as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I know we have our… differences of opinion about the needs of this country, but I think we can both agree that keeping Crouch in power is a… disadvantage… to both of us."
There's a short pause after Malfoy says this, being careful, Reg thinks, to put the thing delicately. Runcorn sees right through Malfoy's bullshit, however. "I'm not replacing any of my department heads until after the election," says Runcorn stiffly. "You and I both agree that he's got to go at that time, but in the meantime—"
"What, because you're afraid of losing favor with the electorate if you oust anybody prominent before the special election? I would think the public would sympathize with you if you were to clean house of the man who turned in his own son as a Death Eater."
Runcorn insists, "And what would you have me do? Overturn every witch and wizard in a position of power in this Ministry just to replace them with all the people you know will do your bidding? Come off it, Malfoy. I'm not that thick; I know you're looking to take control of this Ministry whatever way you can, even if it's from the sidelines."
"I believe you'll find my—lackeys, did you call them?—much more amenable to our, ah… shall we say shared goals than Bagnold's picks."
"And who says I share those goals?" says Runcorn coldly. "I've heard the rumors. I know what you are. Let's not lie to each other."
Reg has to strain his ears hard to make out Malfoy's next words. "You're telling me you want Mudbloods and their sympathizers to run amok sullying the purity of this country? But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at you, Runcorn. You always were willing to do whatever it took to ensure your own personal wealth and power, even if it meant sacrificing your morals."
Runcorn laughs; it sends a chill down Reg's spine. "You're one to lecture me about morals, Malfoy. You know as well as I do that, at the end of the day, your obsession with Muggles and Mudbloods begins and ends at your desire to control them. Has it ever occurred to you that you'll no longer be in the ruling elite if you wipe out all the people you claim are tarnishing this country's purity?"
"You're after power just as much as I am," sneers Malfoy. "The only difference between us is that you don't understand that you lose power the moment you start making your decisions in order to retain that power in title."
Malfoy doesn't give Runcorn the opportunity to get the last word in, instead choosing that moment to stalk out of Runcorn's office. Reg can hear the door opening and Malfoy's footsteps clacking down the corridor.
The conversation unsettles him. No, it does more than that: it grips him in a paralyzing fear that continues to follow him around as he goes about his day. On the bright side, Runcorn is the one currently in office, not Malfoy, and Runcorn at least seems unwilling to do anything that might be perceived as unpopular, up to and including ousting Light witches and wizards from positions of power. On the other hand, Malfoy, whom everybody knows is a wizarding supremacist as black as they come, spoke to Runcorn as if he already knows that Runcorn shares his purist beliefs—and Runcorn clearly had no reservations about calling Muggle-borns "Mudblood."
If Malfoy is elected, what's he going to do—instill purists in every department head position in the Ministry? It certainly sounds like that's his goal, anyway. And if Runcorn wins the election and remains in office for a full term, will there be anything to stop him from doing the same, once he has the security of a successful election behind him? From how it looks from here, his only hesitation is that he doesn't want to do anything too bold while his Minister post is still an interim one.
They're going to be stuck with one of these two men as Minister: Crouch is too far behind both of them in the polls to catch up. What's going to become of Wizarding Britain when the dust settles? What's going to happen to Mary? She's Muggle-born, and it doesn't sound like either candidate has any willingness whatsoever to protect her from the bloody civil war that's going on out there. Besides, if she really is a vigilante—
Reg has been burying his head in the sand for years, denying to himself that anything Mary's friends have dragged her into is related to vigilante justice, but what if it is? Reg never approved of it, especially under Minchum and then Bagnold, who were outspoken critics of You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters. It seemed like Mary was risking her neck for no good reason when there were people—good people, trained people—in positions of authority who could go about their investigations and arrests and prosecutions the right way, the safe and legal way. But if Runcorn or Malfoy, whichever takes office for the next seven years, has got no qualms about throwing people like Mary under the bus—
Besides, a small voice in the back of Reg's mind tells him, what about people like Alice Abbott, who's an Auror, and Marlene McKinnon, who was a Hit Wizard? If the system were really working as it should, why would they feel the need to jump in and fight when they're off duty from the Ministry?
He feels like he ought to tell somebody—anybody—what he's heard, to get somebody in a position of authority aware of what's happening right under everybody's noses so that they can put a stop to these people's ascension to power. But who's Reg going to tell? It's not like the whole country doesn't already know that Malfoy is a purist and suspect it of Runcorn, too. Even if both of them publicly deny wanting to see You-Know-Who and his people win the war, that doesn't mean they're on the side of people like Mary—and judging by the poll numbers, people don't care and are willing to keep voting for them anyway.
He suddenly, desperately wants to tell Mary what he's heard, what he's thinking and feeling—but he can't. If she's reckless enough to take matters into her own hands (and Reg ought to accept by now that she seems to be), and he clues her in—
Of course, he realizes, she might already have her hand in the upcoming election. Are there any limits on what the vigilantes are willing to do? Do they just show up at Death Eater attacks to defend the defenseless, or are they willing to get their hands dirty muddling in political affairs to try to swing a favorable outcome?
And then an awful, sickening, unforgettable thought strikes him: would it be so bad if they did?
Back at home, Mary seems to notice right away that something is off with Reg today. "Did something happen at work, honey?" she asks as she's serving dinner: steak and kidney pie. "You're not usually the chattiest, but you're usually not this quiet, either."
"Everything's fine," he says quickly—too quickly. "I'm just… worried about the Minister election. I don't want to see anything happen to you if Malfoy or Runcorn…"
Mary presses her lips together. "Nothing's going to happen to me. I'll be fine, I promise."
But they both know she can't promise that, not in this world where being Muggle-born is practically a death sentence nowadays and especially not when she's off at all hours of the night doing god knows what for—he may as well face it—Dumbledore's vigilantes. He wonders how much longer he and his wife have left together, but he quashes that thought as quickly as it pops up.