Celestial Being

Ron walked around the table, passing behind his brother with a simple, “Percy” then behind Draco with a quick squeeze on Draco’s shoulder that could have been encouraging, or threatening. He was dressed in his formal red uniform, complete with medallion that marked him Overseer of Military Affairs. It added a level of gravity to his presence that completely overshadowed the jovial man Draco knew him as. He took the seat directly across from Fudge, directly to Draco’s right. “Apologies for arriving late. What have I missed?” There was nothing friendly in his terse smile.

The battle of wills that raged between the three overseers played out silently. It was all Umbridge and her beady eyes, and Fudge with a nearly quivering lower lip. This portly little man with ruffled gray hair did not look prepared to mediate the conflict brewing in front of him. Especially not when Draco’s aunt sat to his other side, with Hermione beside her. Fudge glanced form left to right, with a sort of sharp fear that may have come from knowing everyone thought they could do his job better.

Fudge cleared his throat and tried to project competence. “You arrived just in time. I formally call this meeting of the Small Council to order, for the purpose of reviewing programs to cut due to the king’s lost funds.”

Only this did not inspire confidence. The room immediately devolved into bickering over the agenda.

Ron said, “You said we could discuss the treaty.”

Hermione said, “You can’t cut his programs the moment Harry leaves.”

Percy said, “The king requested different reports.”

Draco said, “This must be the most Weasleys ever to attend a Small Council meeting. Thank goodness I’m here, Overseer Fudge, I can help you balance this conversation out.”

Fudge stared wide eyed at Draco as if Draco had cast him a lifeline. The elder man cleared his throat a little. “No need, Mr. Malfoy. I chair this council and the agenda has been set. In fact, Dolores and I have decided to approve our previous course of action-”

“Ah! You’ve already identified potential cuts,” Draco chimed in. He made himself sound excited even though they were talking about programs and financials and neither of those things were exciting.

Umbridge reasserted herself with that same booming voice from before. There were only six people with her and she didn’t have to speak so loud, but maybe she wanted to assert herself and intimidate those around her. “The king agreed, if he could not make his programs sustainable, he would stop wasting our country’s money on poorly constructed charities. His leadership on these has been a disaster, and it’s time to bring them to an end. Especially with the Durmstrang army at our door.”

So much to unpack, and also so much to skip over. Unless you were Ron, who went at his fellow overseers head on. “The western mountains is hardly at our door, Dolores. And you well know, if we took the time to review the treaty we could assure the Durmstrang army would disperse.”

Draco could see Umbridge just waiting to wade into this argument so he spoke up first. “Ron, I mean Overseer Weasley,” Draco put a hand on Ron’s nearest arm and squeezed, possibly reassuring, absolutely not intimidating. Maybe hard enough to get him to listen. “You are being disrespectful to Overseer Fudge. He already set the agenda. Right now we’re talking about cutting money to, I don’t know, charities. I’m sure Percy has a report that will outline all the money we’re spending on,” Draco vaguely remembered a masquerade conversation in the library, “feeding the poor. And other things poor people may require. Percy, could you please pass your reports out? Overseer Weasley, there will be a lot of numbers on yours but don’t worry, I will be here to explain it to you and I’m sure Overseer Fudge’s decision will make perfect sense in the end.” This might have been one of those too far moments, but as Draco expected, insulting Ron made Umbridge smile.

Ron looked angry. It wasn’t the sneaky kind of anger, like when Draco was rude to Hermione and Ron decided on revenge. It was real anger. The scary sort. Like, if Draco were lucky, Ron would just throw him out of the room instead of pummeling him. That would be as unhelpful as trying to change a small council decision with brute force when you were outvoted two to one. Where were the other overseers? The king had more friends than this, but maybe they were off on the same mission he was. So Draco did something drastic. He pinched Ron. With just as much force as Hermione had used back at the king’s birthday party every time Draco tried to fuck up the politics. Ron winced, and it was probably just the shock of it, but he shut up.

At least long enough for Andromeda to finally speak. “Percy, I will take that report now.” She spoke with an innate authority that gave credence to Draco’s suggestion that he could not have mustered for himself. Which bought them enough time for Percy to in fact hand out the reports.

It was so many pages of reports. Percy wrote the numbers very tidy and very small. He had so many copies, mostly in his own hand. He must have stayed up all night making them that he didn’t even have time to properly dress. Draco hoped to god that whatever was in them was important because else he would never forgive Percy for treating himself so poorly, or himself for buying Percy the space to lecture him about budgets.

“First of all, I found all the money former Overseer Slughorn stole.” Percy said this primly, and not at all pointed at any individual overseer. “And as you’ll see in pages seven to twenty three, I have devised a plan to audit all departments to assure there are no other instances of mismanagement of funds, and to identify potential inefficiencies in process that can be streamlined in order to identify savings.”

This was as impressive as it was unwelcome. “Young man, we are not here to discuss auditing,” Fudge warned.

Percy wasn’t one to smile if he didn’t mean it so he could only stare all stern and serious. It wasn’t a good look on him, and the pinched shape it created was unfamiliar. Percy was never stern at home. “Of course, sir. You are seeking to eliminate the king’s social programs. If you look at pages thirty to thirty seven,” fuck, how many pages were there, “You’ll see the king’s proposal to eliminate the current funding model for these programs, as agreed to by the Small Council-”

“Excellent,” Umbridge said with relish.

“-and then replace the funding stream with savings from our audit program. You’ll see how funding for the next three months has already been identified from our initial audit findings of the transportation programs. Overseer McGonagall was more than willing to participate in my review.”

Umbridge’s face was nearly as pink as her puffy dress. She was sputtering, looking for the words to express her anger.

Draco was quicker. “I, for one, would love to hear all about Overseer McGonagall’s inefficient programs. Percy, could you walk us through the mismanagement you discovered?”

Hermione may or may not have squawked at that, but she didn’t have a vote and didn’t matter. Fudge was riveted by the idea. He was the sort who could better manage his insecurities by finding the flaws in others. He listened in depth (unlike Draco, who bravely did not cup his ears to keep out Percy’s explanation). It must have taken an hour, and if Draco was willing he would have learned something. It kept dragging on because people kept asking questions. Mostly Fudge, but even Ron got in on it, and then Hermione found herself entranced. Something about inventory storage and redundancy in processes, and perhaps Percy even did a monologue on tariffs.

Fudge was nodding now. He was excited. Draco’s plan, such as it was, had worked. It had actually worked!

Umbridge’s pink face had long since turned red as she realized she was losing. “We cannot use this money on useless programs that encourage slovenly behavior in our kingdom! Cornelius, let’s allocate these revenues to our national defense to dissuade Durmstrang from invading.”

That, Draco had questions on. What the fuck was happening with Durmstrang?

“We have a treaty!” Ron all but bellowed. Apparently, a treaty was what was going on with Durmstrang. “Harry is on his way back to sign it tonight. Your review and approval is a courtesy, he can sign it with or without you.”

Oh, that was good! The king would just sign the treaty, and then no one would invade anyone, and Draco would have plenty of time to ask Percy, and Ron, and everyone else what had almost happened…

“He’ll sign the treaty and marry Prince Viktor, and the king of Durmstrang will agree to peace.”