soften our public image
“I’ll admit,” Percy Weasley starts. He’s hardly paying attention to anything outside the documents he’s perusing, throwing occasional glances at the small, constantly updating graph shimmering in the air beside him. “When Granger came to me with this idea, I thought she had finally gone mad.”
He snorts to himself and flips to another page, “It’d be about time, honestly. Dating my brother really should have done her in sooner. But Granger is smart. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. So, even though I thought the time had finally come to declare the one sane addition to my family, insane—I gave her the benefit of the doubt.”
Someone off camera clears their throat, “Mr Weasley, could you clarify what idea Ms Granger had that you’re referring to?”
Percy looks up with furrowed brows. He tilts his head and asks, “What do you mean? It’s obvious.”
“It’s obvious to us but not to the audience.”
“Ah,” Percy nods sagely. “I understand. Right. I am referring to Hermione Granger’s idea of filming a documentary about life inside the Ministry of Magic in an attempt to raise recruitment across various departments, of course.”
“The ministry gets a bad rap,” Hermione Granger says while walking briskly down the halls of Level One. The cameras jostle as their operators and the rest of the crew rush to keep pace. “People think we’re secretly dark. They think that underhanded things are happening in the underbelly of our ministry. They think we don’t have their best interests at heart,” she sighs, dismayed.
“As Junior Undersecretary to the Minister, I oversee many finer details of our departments here. And, lately, overall interest to work for the ministry has suddenly declined.”
She pauses before a door. It causes a small traffic jam as the crew suddenly stop with her. With one hand on the knob, she turns to address the camera head-on, “Each year, more and more students graduate from Hogwarts. The wixen population in England has flourished, but we’re not seeing an influx of CVs.”
A parchment bird flaps its folded wings, gliding its way past the heads of crew members, and lands on the little bridge Hermione’s wrist makes, pecking at her sleeve for attention. She glances down at it and plucks the bird up; her magic smoothes out the folds until all that’s left is a small piece of blue parchment with a brief note scrawled in decidedly messy handwriting.
She reads it as she continues, “That’s where you all come in. PR is Percy’s job, but with the Minister’s upcoming reelection push, he hasn’t got the time to spare. So I’m counting on this inside look on the ministry to soften our public image and make us more approachable…,” her voice trails off as she finishes reading.
Hermione’s head lifts slowly and warily. “As an aside, please do not speak with the Head Auror until further notice,” she stresses and enters the doorway leaving the crew behind.
“Welcome to the DMLE. Can I help you?” The reception Auror frowns, “Wait. Is that a camera? This is a restricted area with highly confidential—“
A crew member holds up a document.
“Oh.” A quick spell is cast over the parchment, and all seems to be in order as the Auror simply shrugs, “Well, I can’t argue with that. What do you want, then?”
“We were looking for the Head Auror?”
“Head Auror Potter?” There is a sudden disquiet from the crew. Potter couldn’t mean Harry Potter, right? “He’s in T6. Follow the arrows, and don’t touch anything, please.”
The Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Head Auror Harry Potter, stands casually in a training hall. He’s overseeing the strict regimen for the sparse few new Aurors. His robes are draped over his shoulders and not quite worn in accordance with uniform regulations, but no one has the guts to point it out.
He easily replies to the quietly asked question, “Hermione doesn’t want you speaking with me because she thinks nothing shifty is happening in the ministry. She also wants this documentary to go off without a hitch.”
Before he continues, Harry carefully shrugs, “Whereas I’m the opposite, really.”
Silence lingers before someone is brave enough to ask, “The opposite, Head Auror Potter-sir?”
Harry catches the eyes of the cameraperson who spoke up—they all flinch with the intensity of his stare—but he smiles softly and says, “Yeah. And just Harry is fine if you wouldn’t mind.”
A look is shared between the crew. Of course no one is ever going to address Head Auror Harry Potter as just Harry. That’s ludicrous.
There’s a brief moment where it looks like Harry is contemplating how to word his following sentence delicately, but his straightforward attitude seems to win out.
“Our Minister is a Dark Lord in disguise,” the unsaid ‘duh’ is loud and jaw-dropping even over the sounds of training spellfire, “so anyone with half a brain cell would be smart to keep away. And if we’re going to have a whole documentary trying to prove otherwise, I plan on doing everything I can to stop it.”
The camera slowly zooms in on Harry’s pleased little grin. And no one knows what to say for a long, long while.
Ron Weasley adjusts himself in the tall folding chair the crew set up in the Auror Break Area. He’s holding a small bag of crisps and diligently makes his way through it before straightening up in his seat.
His proper posture lasts all of three seconds before his shoulders droop like he’s carrying the weight of the world. Finally, Ron takes a deep breath, leans forward in his chair and cups a hand over one side of his mouth, preparing to whisper.
He looks very concerned and a touch manic as he says, “Harry is obsessed with the Minister.”
The Minister for Magic is unavailable for an interview at this time.