[mp] an awakener [fergie]

The interview had been miserable but Henry had made a better impression than he feared—or not that many people wanted to liaise with muggles, perhaps. He had to force himself to think this. Often Henry felt like everyone in the world was fighting to get the same things he was, and everyone deserved them. The concept of being superior at anything didn’t sit well with him.

But he had a job! Not that it felt very mature yet. He and the other incoming employees had been run through a series of orientation activities: tours and lectures and forced enthusiasm. There was supposed to be more tomorrow, and for weeks after—but now they’d split up for their respective positions. Henry was headed to level three, to the Muggle Relations. He tugged at the sleeves of his new work robes and knocked on the doorframe.

The young man at the closest desk had looked up at his arrival, and Henry awkwardly approached. “Hi,” he said. “My name’s Henry Murphy, I’m looking for Mr. Flume?” He’d been pleased to discover that his contact in the department had been assigned to him as “buddy”—he glanced around the rest of the office, trying to gauge which person was most likely to be Fergie.

@Fergie Flume

Fergie had read the same line at least three times now and was about to make it four when he heard a knock on the door -- or, doorframe. He glanced up quickly and smiled welcomingly when he saw a boy -- young man -- standing there. Fergie’s face lit up; “Henry!” he exclaimed, getting to his feet and holding his hand out to shake. “You can just call me Fergie,” he grinned easily, “Mr Flume still makes me feel like someone’s talking to my Dad,” he explained. “Of course, have to use it when I’m meeting parents and that, but— Anyway, how’s the orientation going?”

“Well, guess I’m looking after you,” he smiled again, a hint of unease in his expression because he’d not done this buddying thing before (couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a new start, in fact). He stepped back towards where he’d been sitting, scanned the nearby vicinity and dragged Lysander’s chair over (he was out in the field) for Henry to use. “Have a seat,” he gestured, then sat.

“We’re in the process of working out something with the British Security Service -- MI5, if you’ve heard of them. They’re kind of like Aurors but the Intelligence officers rather than Investigations—” he moved some papers out of the way for Henry to get a proper space at the desk, in doing so unearthed a box of sweets. “You want any? Help yourself, my sister’s always sending me stuff.”

“We’ve got you a desk coming in at some point today—” He said apologetically, then looked around the office and frowned. “Not sure where we’ll put it, mind you, but we can probably move the pinball machine over.”

“So, you’ve been shown around?”

Blinking bemusedly, Henry shook the man’s hand, taking in his grin. “That’s you?” he said—probably rudely. “That I’ve been writing to?”

He wasn’t sure what this changed, exactly, that Fergie was closer to his dad’s age than his grandfather’s, but it sure was something. He’d have been a little less formal, at least. Not that he was less afraid of the bloke looking down at him than the one he’d pictured in his head—just…differently afraid. “Orientation’s alright,” Henry said with a smile and a shrug, forcing himself to act as if he hadn’t been thrown off at all. “Did they have this when you started?” When had Fergie started? He was curious.

He sat. “Like Aurors?” he repeated, leaning in toward Fergie’s desk with interest. He’d get to the candy box later. “What have we got to do with them?” He’d imagined it all to be far more mundane and less hard-hitting—but, as he thought on it, he realized wizards did harm muggles rather a lot for the sport of it. Merlin, he hoped he wouldn’t be dealing with a lot of that. He was far more keen on explaining their world to excited new ears, and learning about the other in exchange.

Fergie didn’t seem too fussed about it, though, so presumably no one’d been maimed or murdered. Henry scanned the room a second time, now making his guesses on what a pinball machine was. He pointed to a large, colorful metal box on legs. “Over there?” he asked. He’d have preferred to be sat closer to Fergie, as the only person aside from the interviewer he’d spoken to here, but he figured there was nothing to be gained by sticking to one friend.

“They’ve shown us around the Ministry,” he said. “All the floors, y’know. But not this office. I mean, as I’ve just walked in.”

Henry looked surprised -- confused, maybe. “Yeah.” Fergie smiled warmly. “When I heard you'd applied I put my hand up to be your buddy when you started."

“Aye, wasn’t as well organised back then though,” he frowned softly at the thought before glancing back at Henry and smiling again.

Like Aurors? “Yeah,” he nodded, resting back in his seat for a minute, wondering if there was a better way to explain what the Security Service did without overplaying the amount of excitement to normally expect in the Muggle Liaison Office. “Well, that eejit in the Prophet—” the one apparating in and out of the royal residences, “—has sort of, been a bit of a catalyst to get us working with the Muggles. There’s been talk about us being a bit more… proactive, I suppose, for a wee while but, this has hurried us along. Not really sure how it all fits into the Statute, of course, but that's above my pay grade. And yours." He offered a prim smile.

Fergie followed Henry’s look over his shoulder to the pinball machine, frowned again when he realised that would be putting Henry next to Liz, and nobody deserved that. “Yeah, might shuffle things around a bit,” he said, turning back to face the younger man. 

“Well,” the Scotsman reached into the box of sweets he’d unearthed a few minutes prior and pulled out a packet of (experimental) fudge, helping himself to a square before offering the bag to Henry, “I can give you the grand tour first if you like?” He popped the fudge into his mouth and started chewing. “This stuff can wait,” he said -- still chewing -- and patted the files next to him.

He got to his feet and then immediately grimaced as the flavour of the fudge changed as he chewed from chocolate to— he paused, mince pie. His eyebrows rose in appreciation: not bad. “Sorry, she sends me stuff to test out. Christmas.” It was July, but one could never start too early for the holiday season. “Anyway,” Fergie gestured around, “this is us, really. Liz and Lowell over by the machine, and Lysander usually sits here, he’s out starting on the Muggleborns.”

Henry didn’t understand Fergie’s explanation about the Muggle Aurors at all, but he did his best to not look it too obviously. He knew he should have read the news more carefully before starting at the Ministry! “Proactive?” he repeated. “Like…” He stopped there; anything further would have been assuming too much. But the thought of them doing something more like Aurors did was definitely on his mind.

(As a kid he’d always fancied himself doing something a bit more daring.)

He took a bit of fudge. “Thank you,” said Henry, on his best behavior today. He couldn’t wait to have been here long enough to ease up a bit—with all the prefect shite it felt like he’d been on his best behavior for years. Glancing over the other desks, Henry wondered what his non-Fergie co-workers were like, whether someday they’d all be mates and get a beer at the Leaky after work sometimes or whatever office people did.

Maybe just Fergie at the least. They could be friends, right? How old was he? Henry wasn’t sure how many years was too many to be usual between mates, and he already knew he would be too nervous to ask anyway. But if Fergie were to invite him out for a drink sometime, you know, after they’d been working together a bit…?

His conversation with Gene that time drifted uncomfortably through his head. Warm-cheeked, Henry swallowed his fudge.

“The Muggle-borns, like, starting Hogwarts in September?” he asked. “How many of them are there?” He held himself back from asking whether he’d get a go. Surely he wouldn’t be fully trained in time, maybe next year…but he couldn’t help but imagine.

“Well, have you heard the ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ analogy? Great muggle proverb—” Henry looked perplexed, Fergie ploughed on, “— It’s basically saying you’re better to prevent people falling off the cliff in the first place, build a fence or whatever, so I suppose that’s what Shacklebolt wants us doing.” Part of him wondered why nobody had tried this before, but he supposed it all came into the Statute and not having a supremacist puppet for Minister probably helped too.

Fergie smiled as Henry accepted the fudge -- saved him eating it, didn’t it? “What d’you think?” he asked, having another bit because the box was open now (so much for not eating it).

“Yeah,” Fergie nodded. “Er, only three this year I think. Well, one’s the son of a squib but that’s a bit different.” Knowing he was taking Henry on, Fergie had let one of the others take that case -- there wasn’t a lot of precedence for squibborn children joining Hogwarts and it could be a very delicate situation.

“Anyway, it’s an ongoing process -- can’t just turn up, tell someone they’re a wizard, and bugger off like they used to. We start with that and then come back to escort them to Diagon for the first time and everything. Meet them at King’s Cross.” He liked to think they’d come a long way in the last few years. “If you want you can come along to mine? Going next week after her birthday. I’ll have to do all the talking but you can observe.” He gave Henry a once-over; his robes were very appropriate for the Ministry but not so much for visiting muggles. “You got a muggle suit?”

Henry stretched his mouth into an apologetic grimace. He had only the barest sense of what an ambulance was in the first place, not enough to know any related analogies. But Fergie went on, and Henry thought he sort of got it. Enough to let on that he did, anyway. “Sure.”

The fudge was a pleasant peppermint flavor, but after a few seconds he felt a fizzing sensation on his tongue. Henry looked into his open mouth in the glass of the window behind them. His tongue now appeared to be candy-cane striped.

He gave Fergie a thumbs-up.

There weren’t that many muggle-borns this year. Maybe Henry’d go round the next, when he had any idea what he was doing. “Wouldn’t the son of a squib know about magic already?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine not telling his family if he were one, especially if his children had a chance of being magical. “But—” Sheepishly, he shrugged. “I s’pose it’s not our business either way, is it?” Not every family was like his. He knew even Harry Potter, who came from one of the oldest pure-blood families around, hadn’t known anything about magic before he started Hogwarts.

That thought always seemed so miserable to Henry. If he’d been a kid, shoving away his peas and slamming doors with accidental magic without knowing magic was real, he’d have felt so worried and alone. There were already enough things that made him feel worried and alone.

“You do all that?” he asked. (We do, Henry—you’ve already been hired.) It sounded sort of fun. He’d always fancied school shopping for some reason, as disinterested as he had been in academics. But he’d gone shopping with his dad. There was no guarantee the muggle parents, or indeed the children,  would be as much fun.

He grimaced again and scratched above his ear. “I haven’t got a suit, no,” he admitted. “Reckon it would’ve made sense to get one, knowing I’d be dealing with muggles, but I didn’t think to…” Maybe his dad or granddad had something. From a million years ago, though—how often did muggle fashions change?

Fergie’s face lit up as Henry poked his tongue out. “That’s new.” He would have to tell his sister she was outdoing herself.

Henry asked a valid question and Fergie hesitated over how best to explain tactfulness-- thankfully Henry got there on his own and saved him the trouble. “Yeah, pretty much. Just have to treat everyone as if they don’t know, without being condescending.” Was he being condescending now? “We haven’t had a squibborn in a while, so it really depends if their parents have kept it quiet or not,” he explained. “Can be a lot of emotions going on, I’m sure you can imagine.”

But moving on to slightly easier topics: “Aye, we try to use a sort of buddy system I suppose, a bit like this--” he gestured between them, “--so they’ve got one point of contact. Not quite as overwhelming. The initial meeting they generally just think you’re talking out of your--” he grimaced after realising he should try to be a bit more professional with the new start. “But you should see their faces when we take them to Diagon, it’s class,” he grinned, a little more easily.

He didn't have a suit. “That’s alright," Fergie reassured him, "we can always find something if you’ve not got anything.” Worst case scenario Fergie would ask Lowell for some budget to go and buy the kid one.

Fergie glanced around and checked his pockets in that way that signalled one was about to depart. “Right, shall we?”


[ out ]

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Henry replied, looking thoughtfully over Fergie’s desk. Quite frankly he was looking forward to getting a window into so much different family drama, but he was sure that wasn’t a desired quality in this job so he’d kept it quiet. At least he’d spent a couple years honing his diplomacy skills. But not with adults beyond the Hogwarts staff, to be fair. The thought of protective parents unnerved him a little.

Were they supposed to mention all the unrest and terror? The discrimination their child would surely face from peers and professors alike? Henry loved the wizarding world, but he had to admit it didn’t sound great on paper.

The news of a buddy system buoyed his spirits a little. He didn’t dare ask if that meant Fergie would be his, surely not. He’d get Liz or Lowell or whoever. But it sounded like he’d be part of the suit-finding process. “What, have you got a dress-up bin?” asked Henry with cheerful laugh. He could think of far worse ways to start his professional career. “Can’t wait.”

[end]