Year Three - Chapter Nineteen

The Ministry of Magic was filled with festive lights. There were fairies glittering with their wings all around, and lights that shone in a variety of colors. Tall Christmas trees released golden snowflakes, and the large atrium had been transformed into some kind of generously enormous buffet area with dance floor, a variety of Wizard-singers and bands playing at low volumes slow, yet charming Christmas-themed music.

Stepping inside was like arriving into another world, and I didn't mention this merely because I ended up using the Floo, and thus nearly risked throwing myself into another dimension in case of a slip of the tongue, but because the atmosphere was anything but that of a stuffy bureaucratic setting. It was cordial, and welcoming.

The buffet, as previously mentioned, was also enormous. "Oh, Albus! What a pleasant surprise!" the Prime Minister, Cornelius Fudge, a rumpled grey-haired portly little man. He was wearing a bottle-green suit and a pinstriped coat. He looked every bit like a kindly old man, but I knew better. Politicians were all vicious monsters from the depths of hell in the best of circumstances, and Italian politicians on the worst circumstances. Yes, the view was quite biased and utterly unconnected to reality, but it was my view on the matter at hand.

Never trust a politician in any book that deals with young adults. They'll always be portrayed as sympathetic, but would either be evil, or incompetent.

Fudge was the latter rather than the former, and I reckoned his Animagus form would be the Ostrich, and its tried and true tradition of hiding the head beneath the sand.

"And this must be the enviable little detective," the prime minister said next, looking at me. "Ah, a Ravenclaw," he had eyed my tie, the colors of my house clearly on display over it. "Leave it to the house of the witty to outwit criminals!" he winked at me, extending his hand and laughing at the same time.

I returned the handshake. "It's been a real pleasure, Prime Minister, sir," I said with a smile.

"Call me Cornelius, lad," he patted my shoulder and then apologized, before moving on to nearly ripping Harry Potter's hand and arm off by the strength of the handshake.

The Headmaster looked on with a slight grimace. "I told him to be nice and smile," I said offhandedly. "Didn't ruin his preconception of the world's ruling class by telling him just how misguided some politicians are, sir," I continued, quite kindly. "I did warn him about ostriches though."

"Ostriches are dangerous animals, Mister Umbrus," the Headmaster answered in turn, his lips twitching into a small smile. I looked around, my eyes scanning for anything out of the ordinary. No, that was a lie. I was looking for small, flying insects. Though I doubted that would be the case, my eyes were drawn to the fairies hanging over the trees. Whenever my eyes met those of the tiny creatures, they'd preen up to show their wings. Since fairies were the most vanity-obsessed of creatures, it wasn't uncommon to see them scream in their sharp wildly high-pitched tone just to catch your attention and your praise.

More wizards began to circle the Headmaster, shaking his hands, and then politely shaking mine in turn. It was mostly his, though. I took the chance, the moment I saw it, to quietly slip towards the buffet. There I found the most unlikely group, though I shouldn't have.

There was most of the Slytherin House gathered there. It was obvious. It was so obvious I would have laughed my socks off if I ever felt the need to laugh at a child's misery. My lips still did twitch upwards at the warm thought of having ruined Christmas for most of the Slytherin house. After all, Sirius Black was of a noble and pure house, wasn't he? And he had many members of his family who would have to show face at his official pardon, and since it had been organized for a great Christmas ceremony, it also meant that a lot of people had just gone from spending their Christmas at home, into spending them at a stuffy, official ceremony.

Thus, being I a noble and quite kindhearted guy, I braved the storm of green and silver ties and headed for the buffet.

Draco's sidekicks, Goyle and Crabbe, both were already munching on the food there. While some looked on with distaste, since food clearly wasn't supposed to be eaten yet, I silently grabbed a goblet, filled it with the most orange thing that I hoped was orange juice, and then found myself cursing inwardly as it turned out to be pumpkin juice.

Why couldn't these wizards have normal drinks? Why did it have to be pumpkin? Normal people had orange juice, not pumpkin! I was half-tempted to try the wine, but I reckoned that rather than it being actual wine, it might just as well be blood for the occasional vampire in attendance.

"If you feel sick you need to tell me immediately," someone whispered in the background of my ears. I ignored it, my eyes deadly set on catching a beetle of sorts. Where could she be, that devious Rita Skeeter?

"I'm supposed to be thankful that my uncle's innocent, but his innocence just confirms what a blood traitor he is," Draco grumbled, catching my attention. "What a joke."

"Yeah," I said nonchalantly. "You know Draco, I'm happy you're so you."

Draco turned, looking at me in disbelief. "I mean," I continued, "Someone else might actually smile and keep a polite facade. You're very honest, you know that? Wonderful gift to find in a friend, horrible thing to have if you're a politician or want to become one."

I took another sip of the pumpkin juice. My disgust for the thing was making me grimace. Meanwhile, Draco was trying to understand if I was insulting him or not. I wasn't a Gryffindor. I had technically pulled him away from harm. At the same time I wasn't a friend of Harry Potter, that he knew of. I was a very big question mark, one he only knew had helped in clearing his uncle's name.

Thus, he didn't know what to say.

"Tell your two friends to stop eating. If they're found out they're ruining the carefully arranged buffet, it might make people angry at whoever's supposed to keep an eye out on them," I winked at him, and then moved away, silently shifting through the crowd of adults for some friendlier shores.

What I found was something utterly bizarre.

"Why are you using a tentacle to hold on to a goblet?" I asked the tentacle-witch who was carrying half a dozen goblets and seemed to be enjoying the bubble of peace around her.

"That way I get dibs on everything that normally ends by the party's end," the witch answered, grinning as she turned to look at me. "Why are you sipping that as if someone just killed your cat?"

"Because I despise pumpkin juice, but I've been taught to always finish whatever I pour," I answered in turn.

"Ouch, that's a harsh lesson," she replied. "Want to swap? I've got grape juice in one of these," she moved her tentacle forward, and due to the twitching that subsequently happened, most of the goblets spilled their contents on the ground, much to the witch's chagrin. "Ops-" she muttered.

"Nymphadora Tonks!" a stern, older lady snapped at her, walking closer with fury in her eyes and a sour expression on her face. Her brown hair and eyes were looking incredibly livid, just like her face. It had to be some kind of special motherly ability. "What do you think you're doing?" she hissed, "Look at the mess you're making."

"Mom," Nymphadora whined softly, "Don't yell that hard. It's just a spill, just a wand away from fixing it."

"It was partly my fault," I added, "Just wanted to swap pumpkin for grape juice, honest."

The stern middle-aged lady looked at me for the briefest of seconds, and then snorted. "Listen here young man, just because you got around to freeing Sirius from trouble doesn't mean you get to do a repeat performance, especially not on my clearly guilty daughter," as she began to berate me quite sternly, I nodded along Nymphadora Tonks.

"Andy!" Sirius' black jovial voice cut through the trouble, and with a big bear-hug worthy of the king of bears, Sirius literally made the stern woman do a spin. "How's my favorite cousin? You don't look a year older than when I last saw you!" Harry Potter was standing slightly behind him, puzzled. Perhaps he hadn't been told about the extended family, and even so, he still had to see Malfoy, since the sparks had yet to fly.

Meanwhile, a man that had all the looks of being Andromeda's husband. He was fair-haired and big-bellied, and his voice had all of the calming qualities you'd find in a snake charmer. "Looks like our little Nymph got into trouble again-"

"Tonks," Nymphadora muttered, her hair and skin turning bright, vivid red. "It's Tonks, dad."

"Oh, I'm Shade," I raised a hand and gave a friendly wave. "Guilty of not liking pumpkin juice."

"I don't like that either," Tonks' father said with a charming smile. Very calmly, he had meanwhile pulled out his wand and removed the spill from the floor, settling the goblets back in a neat little pile against the wall. "Want to try our luck with recovering something tastier?"

"Sure," I said with a nod. I looked at Harry, who seemed half lost. Then I realized that it wasn't like he'd be any more shocked by the end of the night than realize that he actually was in some way or the other family to the other Slytherins in the room.

Thus, I followed Ted Tonks' charming voice back towards the buffet.

We simple, common-sense men had to stick together.

In this world of madness...

...logic made us kings.