[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]
Harry and Hermione stared at the Grimmauld Place dinner table in shock and not a little concern for their arteries. Two huge platters of Buffalo Wings flanked a tray piled high with thick roast beef sandwiches on kümmelweck rolls. A gravy boat full of au jus for the beef sandwiches sat to the right of the platters, next to a bowl of horseradish. To the left of the platters was a tray containing a pyramid of at least two dozen doughnuts, each one twice the size of the next largest doughnut Harry had ever seen.
Sirius sighed happily. "Isn't it magnificent?"
"It's…something," Remus said. "I'm not entirely sure what."
Hermione screwed up her nose adorably and cocked her head to one side. "It looks…almost like some sort of weird summoning ritual. Like, if we ate all of that food while chanting 'Beer, Bullets, and Burgers' over and over, eventually we'd summon some sort of hideously overweight ancient American of great and terrible power."
"You mean like Dennis Hastert?" Remus asked.
"Who?" Harry asked as Hermione nearly fell over laughing.
Sirius shrugged. "Shall we dig in?"
"We're going to need some help here," Harry said. "Would you mind if we invited Sue and Nev?"
"Not at all," Sirius said.
Hermione managed to pull herself back to an upright position using Harry as a support. "Great. While you do that, I'm going to run back home for something. I'll be right back."
About ten minutes later, just after Harry finished inviting Sue and Nev over, Hermione stumbled back through the floo. Harry caught her arm to steady her and she rewarded him with a quick kiss on the cheek.
"What was that for?" he asked.
"Being there to catch me," she answered.
Before Harry could ask her why she'd gone home, Nev and then Sue popped out of the floo.
"You mentioned something about an American feast straight out of our fever dreams?" Nev asked.
Sue shook her head. "I don't understand men sometimes. Harry said that and Nev's ears perked up immediately. My first thought was, 'Oh, Morgana, I'm going to be regretting this for the next week.'"
"Don't worry." Hermione pulled a small red box out of her purse. "I went home and grabbed a full box of Rennie's antacids."
"Antacids?" Sue asked.
"Muggle aid for dyspepsia," Hermione said. "It works by neutralising the stomach acid, so unlike the potion, it actually fixes the problem. It's one of the few things I think muggle medicines do better than the magical equivalent, at least that I've found so far."
Sue hugged her. "Bless you, Hermione. It's so nice not being outnumbered by idiot boys anymore. Back at Hogwarts these two would ignore my warnings during feasts and stuff themselves silly with Ron, then all three would lie around afterward in the Common Room and moan about their stomachs."
"I'm glad to be here," Hermione said. "Wait, though, I thought the Common Rooms were limited to members of individual houses."
"That was only a tradition, not a rule," Nev said.
"So of course we broke it as soon as we could get away with it," Harry added.
"Which was Fifth Year," Sue said. "Cormac and one of his friends tried to bully me out during the first week, but between all of the time I spent helping Harry with his combat training the previous year and my aunt letting me train with Auror Tonks that summer…well, let's just say those boys spent the rest of the year being very polite to me and every other girl in that house."
Harry shrugged. "I was going to teach them a lesson myself, but after the first few minutes I just sat back to enjoy the show."
"My favourite combination," Nev said, "was when she Vanished their trousers and undergarments, hit their hips with a Numbing Charm, and then hit their privates with a localised Freezing Charm using a non-standard incantation. She claimed it was a Todger-Shrinking Curse and they couldn't feel the cold so they didn't realise there was an alternate explanation."
"Well played," Hermione said, laughing.
Remus's voice rang out from the dining room. "If everyone is here, shall we get started with the feast? Sirius is drooling and it's significantly less cute than when he does so as Padfoot, and that's not a high bar."
Despite all of the jokes everyone made about American overindulgence, the feast was legitimately delicious. There wasn't even a single item on the table covered with cheese, so there went that stereotype. The "beef on weck" sandwiches were delicious, though only Harry and Hermione could handle them with more than a tiny amount of horseradish. The Buffalo Wings were also fantastic, even if everyone ended that course in tears from how hot they were. Fortunately the enormous donuts cooled them down a bit, though only Sirius and Harry were able to finish more than one.
While everyone was picking at their donut (their second, in Sirius and Harry's cases), Hermione directed the conversation away from the "weird happenings". Sue was updating Sirius and Remus on to a much safer topic of conversation: the fundraiser Harry and Sue were planning for the victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami.
"My Aunt," Sue said, "has been putting out feelers and she thinks we'll get the best attendance if we do a ball. Unfortunately, we won't have access to the Ministry resources because this will technically be a private event, and I know fuck-all about planning a ball."
"Same here," Nev said ruefully. "Even though Gran is living in the house again, she's always been a 'dinner' person instead of a 'ball' person. And we all know about Harry and balls."
Everyone laughed except for Hermione, who arched her eyebrows at Harry.
"Um…I had to open the Yule Ball during Fourth Year because I was technically a Triwizard Champion," Harry said. "I ended up going with Parvati Patil and was a disaster of a date. I barely talked to her and the only reason I didn't break any of her poor toes was that Sue made us practise dancing with her."
"On behalf of Harry's past and future dance partners," Hermione said to Sue, "thank you."
The other woman nodded regally. "I tried my best with all three of my boys. Ron was beyond help, though."
"He wasn't that bad," Harry said.
Sue shot Hermione a long-suffering look. "Yes, he was."
"Anyway," Nev said in a truly Gryffindor-worthy attempt to wrestle the conversation back on track, "I think we've all established that we'd be pants at arranging a dance. Remus or Sirius, could you help?"
Remus shook his head. "I'm afraid I didn't have the sort of upbringing that would have included lessons about that."
"I would have," Sirius said, "but I was thrown out and, well, was never very interested in that sort of thing in the first place. I could definitely arrange a ball for you, but it would end up involving the Rolling Stones and I'd hate to have to Obliviate them again."
"Again?" Hermione asked.
"It was the '70s," Sirius said. "Things were pretty crazy. We pulled most of the memories out of their heads to protect the Statute, but the weirdness was so deeply embedded in their lives at that point that we couldn't get rid of everything." He shook his head sadly. "They still think that house was haunted."
Hermione shuddered. "Merlin, you really are like Luna. I have no idea when either of you are messing with me."
Sirius nearly choked on a bite of doughnut at that statement and Sue practically fell out of her chair laughing. The others at the table looked around at each other, surprised.
"I didn't think you remembered!" Sue said after a moment.
"I told you I would," Hermione said.
"Did I miss something?" Harry asked.
Dobby popped up. Hermione looked down at him and said, "I haven't forgotten I owe you a chart, either."
"Yay!" Dobby cheered before popping away again.
"Did I miss several things?" Harry asked.
"Yes," Hermione said. "It's a long story."
"She," Nev said, "would definitely have fit in with us at Hogwarts."
Hermione blushed as everyone else at the table nodded in agreement. "Anyway," she said, "we should probably focus on the problem at hand: a lot of people in the Indian Ocean basin need help, we need to hold a ball to convince the xenophobic British Wizarding community to help those people effectively, and we're all pants at organising balls. Is that a good summary?"
Everyone else nodded.
"All right, then the solution is clear," Hermione said. "We need to outsource this."
"Outsource?" Harry asked.
"Oh, right," Hermione said, "you all missed all of the labour market news stories in the '90s. We need to basically hire someone else who knows what they're doing to put this together."
Harry shook his head. "Party planning might be a common skillset in the Muggle world, but in the Wizarding world it's mostly kept within families. Even if we could find someone, I'm not sure how to confirm they'd be competent or reliable."
"So you're saying," Hermione said with a small, self-satisfied smile, "that we need someone who is accustomed to making herself invaluable?"
"What do you…" Harry blinked. "Merlin, Hermione, how did you remember that? It's been months!"
"I have a good memory," she said, her smile growing wider as she spoke.
"Um…what are you talking about?" Nev asked.
"Hermione and I had a run-in with Tracey Davis at Madam Malkin's while we were getting Hermione some witches' robes," Harry said.
"Oh, I see," Sue said. "That suggestion has potential. Do you think we can trust her?"
"With our secrets? Not a chance," Harry said. "With planning a ball? Absolutely. Her business depends on people perceiving her as competent."
"That's a good point," Nev said. "If we give her this, she'll need it to go well."
"Exactly," Harry said. "If you're all OK with this, I can reach out to her."
"I think it's a clever solution," Remus said. Everyone else agreed, by which point Hermione's smile was so wide she was actually showing her teeth.
Hermione came close to asking Harry to Obliviate all knowledge of their scheming so she could focus on her studying, but he convinced her not to do so both because of the risks of removing that much of her recent life and because what she considered sub-par studying was still far faster than he'd learnt the same material at Hogwarts. She did her best to focus during her one-on-one study sessions, though, and she thought she successfully hid her distress from everyone. Until Friday, anyway.
At the stroke of noon on the grandfather clock in Harry's sitting room, a blonde witch tumbled out of the floo. "Hullo, Hermione!" she said brightly.
"Hello, Luna," Hermione said as she helped her new friend to her feet. "How is your pregnancy treating you?"
"Mildly, all things considered. I've been lucky this time." Luna looked at Hermione thoughtfully. "Oh, dear," she said. "You've acquired some of Harry's wrackspurts."
"I've what, now?" Hermione asked.
"This happened sometimes in school," Luna said. "Harry always had wrackspurts surrounding him, but every now and then, when things got really bad they would start to fly around his friends, too. I was terribly lonely for my first few years at Hogwarts, but at those times I certainly didn't envy Harry's friends."
"Everything's OK, really," Hermione said. "Harry's just under a lot of stress right now with his return to work and his joint project with Sue to promote an aid package to some of the hardest-hit areas around the Indian Ocean."
"Of course," Luna said. "I understand completely."
"Oh, good," Hermione said. A little voice in her head added, "Damn it, woman! You're not supposed to sound relieved! Why are you so bad at this?"
"Those wrackspurts always heralded some incident where Harry saved lives," Luna said. "I have no doubt they still do and I know he's lucky to have you helping him, even if you probably don't feel lucky for it some of the time."
Hermione slumped as several different types of relief flooded her body. "You have no idea."
"I certainly don't," Luna said. Then, just as Hermione was starting to relax, Luna patted her reassuringly on the arm and added, "at least, that's what I'll say to anyone who asks."
The shorter woman didn't even bother to watch Hermione react in a woefully unsubtle manner to that declaration. Instead, she merely turned around on her heels and marched into the sitting room. "Shall we begin?" she asked over her shoulder.
"Y…yes," Hermione said, and forced her unsteady legs to follow her. She would have plenty of time to drink a shot of tequila and curl into a ball on the chesterfield after the lesson.
While Luna was visiting Hermione, Harry stumbled out of an unfamiliar floo and rested his hands on his knees for a moment until the room stopped spinning around him. After a moment, his eyes were able to focus on the sitting room of a Diagon Alley flat decorated in Mid-Century Modern furniture…out of date for the Muggle world, perhaps, but daringly modern for the Wizarding world.
"All these years later, Potter, and you're still pants at flooing," a female voice said drily. "Welcome to my humble flat. Please do sit down."
"Thanks, Davis." Harry sat down heavily in an armchair angled to face the sofa on which his old classmate was sitting. While he did so, Tracey waved her wand at the kitchen and a tea tray floated out.
"Would you like some tea?" she asked as she poured herself a cup.
Harry nodded and made himself a cup, too, with a splash of milk and cube of sugar. It might have been his imagination, but either the hot liquid itself or the sheer familiarity of it settled his stomach a bit.
She blew on the tea before speaking again. "So, what can I do for you? Since this is a personal visit, I'm assuming it's a great deal more complex than crupp-walking."
"That it is," Harry said. "I assume you know about how Susan Bones and I are leading a push to raise funds for the victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami?"
"I do," Tracey said. "You've done reasonably well so far, given your general inability to manage the press."
Harry arched his eyebrows at her, but she only glared at him in response.
"You know you're shite at dealing with the press," she said. "Just take the compliment."
"Humph," Harry said. "I suppose that's kind of why I'm here, though. Susan's heard from a reliable source that we need to turn this into more of a social cause, and neither of us are exactly social butterflies."
"That's putting it mildly," Tracey said. "I don't think I've seen you at an event since you broke up with the Weasley girl. So you need a publicist?"
"We need an everything," Harry said. "We'd like you to arrange the event. Sue doesn't want to give the appearance that her aunt is making this a government event, so Neville, Sirius, and I will handle the budget." Well, Neville and Sirius would handle the budget. Harry didn't have enough in his own vault for this project and had never been able to bring himself to claim the Potter Vault.
Tracey's jaw dropped. "You want me to arrange the social event of the Merlin-damned season?"
"We do," Harry said.
She took a deep breath. "Why me?"
"Well, we didn't know that many people and you've got a good reputation," Harry said.
"You're Harry Fucking Potter," Tracey said. "You could have anyone you wanted for this job. Why me?"
"I just told you!" Harry said, nearly spilling his tea as yelled. "What do you want from me?"
"Because my life is not this good!" Tracey shot back. "I have scraped and bowed and smiled through shit you would not believe and then the opportunity of a lifetime drops into my lap. I am not that lucky. So tell me why you really chose me, Potter, or you can get yourself another Arranger."
"Oh." Harry ran his free hand through his hair and took another sip of tea. "Fine. That's why we chose you, Davis. Your livelihood is too precarious for you to screw this up. Sure, I could get Sirius to call up his dear cousin Narcissa and she might throw the ball of the century…or she might set the whole thing up to fail to make us look bad. We needed someone who would be as invested in the event's success as we were." He took another sip. "Do you still want to work with us?"
She stared at him.
"What?" Harry asked.
"The goal of your whole plan is to make the event successful?" she asked. "That's it?"
"Of course we want it to be successful," Harry said. "Why would we bother otherwise?"
Tracey sighed. "Most Slytherins would be trying to accomplish at least two objectives with this ball, with its stated goal being a distant third at best. This is what I get for forgetting I'm dealing with a Gryffindor. It literally did not occur to me that your real goal here was to raise money for the needy."
"What did you think my goal was?" Harry asked. "Now I'm curious."
"Improving your image, schmoozing to create a new power bloc in the Wizengamot, stuff like that." She finally drank some more of her own tea.
"I see," Harry said. "I'm…sorry?...to disappoint you, but I just wanted to raise more money. So will you do it?"
"Yes," Tracey said. "I'll require a flat fee of eight hundred galleons, one-quarter payable up front, with the remainder in instalments throughout the process. I also have one more condition: that you let someone else take the credit for my work."
"Wait," Harry said. "The pay is reasonable, but didn't we just establish that holding you accountable was one of the main reasons we wanted to work with you?"
"I'm offering you something better to hold over my head," Tracey said. "Do you remember Daphne Greengrass?"
"Vaguely," Harry said. "She was in our year, right?"
"You mean you don't remember the drop-dead gorgeous blonde girl in half of your classes?" Tracey asked.
Harry shrugged. "I mean, I kind of remember her, but I spent more time trying not to die than chasing girls back then."
"Only you, Potter," Tracey said. "Anyway, Daphne was my best friend at Hogwarts and she's now an Unspeakable. She's a brilliant, brilliant woman, but she prefers her research to the company of most other humans. I think I'm the only person she willingly spends time with, but now her father is pressing her to find a husband. The problem is that most Pureblood men are looking for girls right out of Hogwarts or not much older."
"Ewww," Harry said. "That seems…ugh. That's just sleazy."
"No argument here," Tracey said. "So wankers like that see twenty-four-year-old Daphne—who is, I might add, still gorgeous—and think, 'Nah, too old.' Giving her the credit for a big ball like this would make her much more attractive as the lady of a great house and put her back in the game, as it were."
"I see what you mean," Harry said. "It's just…I don't feel right about depriving you of the credit, even if that's what you want."
"Don't worry about it," Tracey said with a wave of her free hand. "Daphne was my best friend in school and her support was the reason my half-blood arse didn't get bullied constantly down in the Snake Pit." She grinned. "Besides, if Daphne does land a husband with this, she's going to need to keep me around to do all of the planning he thinks she can do."
Harry had to laugh at that. "OK, that's quite clever. We have a deal, Miss Davis."
She rose and extended her hand. "You can call me 'Tracey,' Potter. You won't regret this."
"Then you'll have to call me 'Harry,'" he said as he rose to shake her hand. "And I have a great deal of confidence that I won't."
On the other end of Diagon Alley, Ludo Bagman was at the bar in the Leaky Cauldron mourning a Wasps loss when a grotesque vision crept out of the corner of his eye and solidified into his depressingly real blackmailer, Dolores Umbridge.
"Good evening, Ludo," she simpered.
"Good…" was as far as he got before she whispered "Confundo" and a bolt of pink light leapt out of her cloak pocket and across the foot or so separating them. After that, it was only natural for him to agree to her suggestion to continue their discussion in one of the rooms upstairs. Some part of his rational mind screamed and begged and pleaded for someone to notice the spell and help him, but no one did.
Halfway down the bar, though, one man rose to his feet anyway.
As soon as Dolores was alone in the room with Ludo, she shut the door with a precisely cast Locking Charm, then backed it up with an Anti-Unlocking Charm just to be on the safe side. She didn't want any witnesses to this conversation.
"Dolores?" Ludo asked as the Confundus Charm wore off. "What do you—"
"Quiet, you imbecile!" she snapped. "Incarcerous!"
The big man yelped as ropes bound him tightly in ways more than a little reminiscent of traditional Shibari, or Japanese Rope Bondage. Umbridge cursed her subconscious intent and hoped Ludo didn't know enough about Japan or their pornography to make the connection.
"Now," she said, "you're going to answer—"
The door jiggled as an Unlocking Charm smashed into it, but her counter-charm held. Before she could do more than spin around and raise her wand, the door burst inward in a shower of splinters.
Umbridge didn't waste time negotiating with whoever this was and put her extensive study of Wilbert Slinkhard's advanced defence texts into practice. As she expected, the fight was over within seconds.
Rupert Selwyn finished repairing the door before looking down at her with disgust. The older man waved his wand over the stump where her casting hand used to be and sang "Vulnera Sanentur." "There you go," he said. "No sense you bleeding out just yet, Dolores."
"Thank you, Lord Selwyn," she said. "I knew this was a misund—"
"Sectumsempra." The man ignored her and slashed his wand horizontally in Ludo's direction, decapitating the man. Blood spurted from his neck and splashed across the wooden ceiling before falling back to the ground in a warm, viscous rain. Some mingled with the ash of her charred wand as it fell and transformed it into a horrific mockery of mud.
"Why?" was all Umbridge could muster through the pain.
"No witnesses," Selwyn said.
"But…if I die…"
"They sent me the folder," Selwyn said. "The unopened folder. Unlike you, whoever stole your blackmail material wasn't stupid enough to make an enemy of a marked follower of the Dark Lord."
"It was…just business, Lord Selwyn," she said. "I didn't mean—"
"I don't care." Selwyn knelt down as he spoke and put the tip of his wand to her neck. "You're a hard woman to track down outside of your home or the Ministry Dolores, but my informants told me you were looking for Ludo and he's not hard to find at all. In an hour, all you're going to be able to think about is how much you envy his quick death. And in two hours, all you're going to be able to think of is pain. That's not the worst of it, though. Do you know what's worse?"
Dolores whimpered.
"The worst part of it," Selwyn continued, "is that you're going to live for three hours."
Roughly three and a half hours later, deep in the bowels of Gringotts Bank, the slowly pulsing brown light in Dolores Umbridge's life gem faded away to nothingness. The goblin on duty took no small pleasure in noting her death and passing it along to the notification group.
