[hp] corridors of power 6
Corridors of Power
Being An Originally Intermittent Account
of the Political (Mis)Adventures
of the Viscount Northallerton, Lord Malfoy of Wimbledon;
and the Rt. Honourable Harry J. Potter,
Member of Parliament for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Liberal Democrat).
Annotated, with Footnotes
REFRESHMENT SERVICES AND GIFT SHOP
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (LORDS)
Wednesday March 30th, 6:19 pm
Draco surveyed the overwhelming amounts of tat laid out before him. Etched glasses, faux-leather embossed notebooks, matchbooks, scarves, fake-tortoiseshell pens. The only remotely attractive items were the cufflinks, and even then there was something tacky about them.
"Good god," Harry's voice came from behind him, "this place is tiny."
It was. So small, in fact, that the House of Lords Gift Shop was the most profitable retail premises in the entire country, per square foot of real estate1. All seven square feet, Draco supposed.
"That would be because, unlike the other place, we try not to let the tourists in to roam around and cause havoc." Draco turned around from the glass case and made a disapproving face. "Or buy tatty key-rings and postcards. No need to spend taxpayers money on a swanky gift shop."
Harry shook his head, his mouth twitching up. "Oh, I do love it when you pretend to get righteous about taxpayers money."
Draco frowned. "That wasn't convincing?"
"A little too pat."
"I thought pat was--"
"You have to be Labour to do pat."
"Heaven help us."
"Too bloody right."
Draco cleared his throat and tipped his head down the empty hallway. "It's the door that's not a door--where's the book?"
Harry reached into his jacket's inside pocket and pulled out a rather battered paper crane, balanced it on the back of his hand and murmured a few words. The wings on the bird quirked and then flapped, fluttering faster until they blurred together. Resolved, the paper crane was Westminster: A Magical History, miniaturised to palm-size.
"I like that spell," Harry said, glasses skidding down his nose as he flipped through the book to the map section. He looked up. "I can't even do the origami."
Draco ran through any number of comments regarding bending and folding.
"Cheers," he said, instead, because after the debacle with the Mirror's 3 AM girls2, one tended to censor the things one said in public. "After you, then."
1. REAL ESTATE: This is true. The shop is tiny.
2. 3AM GIRLS: The Mirror's "gossip" "columnists".
SOMEWHERE VERY UNPLOTTABLE
PRESUMABLY UNDERNEATH THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Wednesday, Also Presumably
Draco's watch was running backwards.
Harry's simply wasn't working, but Draco thought that was because it was a cheap Korean Patek knock-off with a muggle mechanism, rather than the precisely engineered piece of thaumhorologic3 craftsmanship (made in Geneva in 1899 for Draco's maternal great-grandfather) that Draco wore.
The air down here--down here being somewhere no longer featuring on the maps in the book, much to Draco's horror and Harry's delight ("ooh, catacombs!")--felt condensed and tight, and that was without the pockets of prickly magic that assaulted them on occasion. That Harry's hair could actually find more directions to stick out in was entertaining enough; the discovery that wallowing through exogenous magic gave Draco the ability to static-shock Harry was bloody brilliant.
They'd come to a stop at the top of a flight of very narrow stone steps. Draco nearly overbalanced and put out his hand to the wall to stop an embarrassing fall.
Harry snickered.
Draco scowled and poked his finger between Harry's eyes. There was a satisfying snap of static.
"Would you STOP THAT?"
Grinning, Draco put his palm flat on Harry's cheek.
He would've sworn under oath there was a tiny green spark, but before he had a chance to do it again, Harry had yanked at his wrist.
"You kinky wanker, stop giving me shocks--"
"Mind. The. Watch."
Which was how he discovered it was running backwards. Not exactly Dark Magic of the sort one had nightmares about, but still. It was enough to give Draco pause. He looked at it closely. The Copernican orrery seemed to suggest all the planets were in perfect alignment; the calendar indicated that it was some time in the early nineteen seventies (Draco shuddered); and the discreet little scale pegged Potter as a Pureblood.4
"I think we should leave," Draco said.
Harry simply waved the book in the air and disappeared down the steps.
*
"Heights? You flew a broom."
"Yes, well, me flying is the operative clause there. Not me shuffling along a precarious ledge of stonework, barely able to see through the--" Draco flicked his hand out at the ghostly haze of political documents floating before them, "--ick, congealed goo of parliamentary collective unconscious--"
Harry reached out and a torturous sentence in seventeenth-century typeface floated onto his hand. Draco peered, making out conjuration and sorcery and pilniewinks before the words lost their form again and drifted away. Harry raised his eyebrows.
"Witchcraft Act of 1604," Draco supplied, shivering a bit.5
"I was just wondering if the Section 286 drafts are going to whip by next," Harry said, plucking at the air and sifting through sentences.
"It's coincidence. Might we keep going, please?"
Harry batted him an insubstantial page of Hansard with an insufferable tilt of his head. "See," he said, turning to scoot along the ledge again, "this place likes you."
...1999, House of Lords Reform Bill, Division 12... End membership of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage; to make related provision about disqualifications for voting at elections to, and for membership of, the House of Commons...7
"Piss off, Potter."
"It was your idea to go exploring." Harry's head dropped a foot, then another. "Stairs."
"That was before I was balanced dangerously above a body of water that may or may not be the heavily polluted Isis."8
"Thames, Malfoy."
"Whatever. Find the way out or I'll shock you in places that don't bear thinking about."
3. THAUMHOROLOGIC: Magic timepieces, duh.
4. DRACO'S WATCH: It looks a little something like this, but with more bells and whistles.
5. WITCHCRAFT ACT: Whilst England had Acts concerning the practice of withcraft on the books prior to this, the Act of 1604 was the one that the Witchfinder General took the greatest of dubious pleasures in enforcing.
6. SECTION 28: A ridiculous piece of legislature of the late eighties that insisted that government-funded local authorities (councils, schools etc) only present materials that portrayed homosexual lifestyles as "abnormal". Finally removed 2003.
7. REFORM BILL: The aforementioned Act which stripped Hereditary Peers of their right to sit in the Lords, consequently, something which Lord Malfoy would rather not dwell upon if at all necessary.
8. ISIS: The Oxfordian, and Wizarding, name for the River Thames.
The acoustics in the chamber were eerily perfect, bouncing the vibrant sound of debate down from the Commons with a delay of what Harry calculated was six days.
Draco was just pleased that the river made a soothing sort of rushing noise, because listening to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales plonk on about smoking in public places wasn't his idea of stimulating politics. It was Wales, for fuck's sake. Weren't they devolved already?
Privately he agreed with Blaise and thought that everywhere in England north of Luton Airport should be subject to devolution9.
That kind of opinion wasn't, like his suggestion fuelled by the sixth Singapore Sling (and Draco had restrained himself for two whole years about making member remarks, so it was doubly excruciating to see it the bloody tabloids), something to say in public.
Fun times, but very much a distant memory when one was stuck miles underneath the Houses of Parliament in a dumping-ground for old furniture with one door and a very turbid river as possible routes out. Magical fucking Westminster, bollocks.
"We could Apparate," Draco suggested, leaning back on a rickety civil-service wooden chair. He shrugged, trying to dispel the cloying feel of stale magic.
Harry, involved in trying each of the twelve doorknobs on the heavy oak door, snorted. "Right. You tried an explosive spell and your wand squeaked." He rattled a handle irritably. "Somehow I don't think spells will do us any--could you maybe get off your arse and give me a hand?"
Draco took a deep breath and wondered if this was how Granger and Weasley had spent their school careers, waiting around for Potter to get over himself and think of something useful. He said as much.
"Oi," said Harry, aiming his wand at Draco, "Crucio."
"Bugger off," Draco said. "That gives me a headache. Did you try turning more than one handle at a time?"
*
The door opened into Harry's office.
"Woah," Harry said.
Draco looked at him askance. Then he looked at his watch.
6:31pm.
"Very peculiar," he said. "Where's the scotch?"
9. DEVOLUTION: The United Kingdom has devolved parliamentary power to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, meaning that for certain levels of governance and financial administration, those regions act as independent bodies whilst still remain subject to and under control of the UK Parliament.
Rm B29.2
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (COMMONS)
7:02 pm
"Oi," Harry said again, this time quieter, "you alright?"
Draco considered admitting that he felt like throwing up, but he had a reputation and a lineage to uphold. If Harry could cope with mucking through seven hundred years of distilled power, so could he.
He threw up anyway.
THE ATHENAEUM CLUB
PALL MALL
Thursday March 31st, 10.32 am
"Great Hannibal and the elephants," Draco groaned, plucked from sleep by the insistent annoyance that was owl-wings against the window, "alright!"
He opened the sash and glared at Harry's owl balefully. "You are lucky this place is terribly old-fashioned, you know." He let her hop in the window and onto the desk. "Anywhere else and the double-glazing would've had you monumentally locked out. What do you want?"
Draco found it amusing that Hedwig had two moods: disapprovingly sniffy, and slutty for anyone who tickled her underneath the muzzle. Today he was getting the petulance rather than the charm offensive. It was always interesting to speculate how much of that was Harry's influence.
She shook her foot impatiently at Draco until he untied the letter, then bounced over to the table and pecked at a salmon vol-au-vent from the evening before.
"Take it, greedy wench," he said. The owl kicked up and headed out the window. "You're getting fat!" Draco yelled. It made his headache feel better.
*
Draco,
Feeling better?
Remembered last night -- roaring Thames and all that -- it's the Boat Race this weekend.
It's early this year. Anyhow, same old same old at The Depot? I rang Nico to get us a table.
If I don't hear from you I'll meet you there at eleven.
- Harry
PS Still on for a wager, I hope. Thought we might up the stakes a bit this year.
How about you resign if Cambridge win?
*
End, Part VI ~ Part VII
Being An Originally Intermittent Account
of the Political (Mis)Adventures
of the Viscount Northallerton, Lord Malfoy of Wimbledon;
and the Rt. Honourable Harry J. Potter,
Member of Parliament for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Liberal Democrat).
Annotated, with Footnotes
REFRESHMENT SERVICES AND GIFT SHOP
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (LORDS)
Wednesday March 30th, 6:19 pm
Draco surveyed the overwhelming amounts of tat laid out before him. Etched glasses, faux-leather embossed notebooks, matchbooks, scarves, fake-tortoiseshell pens. The only remotely attractive items were the cufflinks, and even then there was something tacky about them.
"Good god," Harry's voice came from behind him, "this place is tiny."
It was. So small, in fact, that the House of Lords Gift Shop was the most profitable retail premises in the entire country, per square foot of real estate1. All seven square feet, Draco supposed.
"That would be because, unlike the other place, we try not to let the tourists in to roam around and cause havoc." Draco turned around from the glass case and made a disapproving face. "Or buy tatty key-rings and postcards. No need to spend taxpayers money on a swanky gift shop."
Harry shook his head, his mouth twitching up. "Oh, I do love it when you pretend to get righteous about taxpayers money."
Draco frowned. "That wasn't convincing?"
"A little too pat."
"I thought pat was--"
"You have to be Labour to do pat."
"Heaven help us."
"Too bloody right."
Draco cleared his throat and tipped his head down the empty hallway. "It's the door that's not a door--where's the book?"
Harry reached into his jacket's inside pocket and pulled out a rather battered paper crane, balanced it on the back of his hand and murmured a few words. The wings on the bird quirked and then flapped, fluttering faster until they blurred together. Resolved, the paper crane was Westminster: A Magical History, miniaturised to palm-size.
"I like that spell," Harry said, glasses skidding down his nose as he flipped through the book to the map section. He looked up. "I can't even do the origami."
Draco ran through any number of comments regarding bending and folding.
"Cheers," he said, instead, because after the debacle with the Mirror's 3 AM girls2, one tended to censor the things one said in public. "After you, then."
1. REAL ESTATE: This is true. The shop is tiny.
2. 3AM GIRLS: The Mirror's "gossip" "columnists".
SOMEWHERE VERY UNPLOTTABLE
PRESUMABLY UNDERNEATH THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Wednesday, Also Presumably
Draco's watch was running backwards.
Harry's simply wasn't working, but Draco thought that was because it was a cheap Korean Patek knock-off with a muggle mechanism, rather than the precisely engineered piece of thaumhorologic3 craftsmanship (made in Geneva in 1899 for Draco's maternal great-grandfather) that Draco wore.
The air down here--down here being somewhere no longer featuring on the maps in the book, much to Draco's horror and Harry's delight ("ooh, catacombs!")--felt condensed and tight, and that was without the pockets of prickly magic that assaulted them on occasion. That Harry's hair could actually find more directions to stick out in was entertaining enough; the discovery that wallowing through exogenous magic gave Draco the ability to static-shock Harry was bloody brilliant.
They'd come to a stop at the top of a flight of very narrow stone steps. Draco nearly overbalanced and put out his hand to the wall to stop an embarrassing fall.
Harry snickered.
Draco scowled and poked his finger between Harry's eyes. There was a satisfying snap of static.
"Would you STOP THAT?"
Grinning, Draco put his palm flat on Harry's cheek.
He would've sworn under oath there was a tiny green spark, but before he had a chance to do it again, Harry had yanked at his wrist.
"You kinky wanker, stop giving me shocks--"
"Mind. The. Watch."
Which was how he discovered it was running backwards. Not exactly Dark Magic of the sort one had nightmares about, but still. It was enough to give Draco pause. He looked at it closely. The Copernican orrery seemed to suggest all the planets were in perfect alignment; the calendar indicated that it was some time in the early nineteen seventies (Draco shuddered); and the discreet little scale pegged Potter as a Pureblood.4
"I think we should leave," Draco said.
Harry simply waved the book in the air and disappeared down the steps.
*
"Heights? You flew a broom."
"Yes, well, me flying is the operative clause there. Not me shuffling along a precarious ledge of stonework, barely able to see through the--" Draco flicked his hand out at the ghostly haze of political documents floating before them, "--ick, congealed goo of parliamentary collective unconscious--"
Harry reached out and a torturous sentence in seventeenth-century typeface floated onto his hand. Draco peered, making out conjuration and sorcery and pilniewinks before the words lost their form again and drifted away. Harry raised his eyebrows.
"Witchcraft Act of 1604," Draco supplied, shivering a bit.5
"I was just wondering if the Section 286 drafts are going to whip by next," Harry said, plucking at the air and sifting through sentences.
"It's coincidence. Might we keep going, please?"
Harry batted him an insubstantial page of Hansard with an insufferable tilt of his head. "See," he said, turning to scoot along the ledge again, "this place likes you."
...1999, House of Lords Reform Bill, Division 12... End membership of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage; to make related provision about disqualifications for voting at elections to, and for membership of, the House of Commons...7
"Piss off, Potter."
"It was your idea to go exploring." Harry's head dropped a foot, then another. "Stairs."
"That was before I was balanced dangerously above a body of water that may or may not be the heavily polluted Isis."8
"Thames, Malfoy."
"Whatever. Find the way out or I'll shock you in places that don't bear thinking about."
3. THAUMHOROLOGIC: Magic timepieces, duh.
4. DRACO'S WATCH: It looks a little something like this, but with more bells and whistles.
5. WITCHCRAFT ACT: Whilst England had Acts concerning the practice of withcraft on the books prior to this, the Act of 1604 was the one that the Witchfinder General took the greatest of dubious pleasures in enforcing.
6. SECTION 28: A ridiculous piece of legislature of the late eighties that insisted that government-funded local authorities (councils, schools etc) only present materials that portrayed homosexual lifestyles as "abnormal". Finally removed 2003.
7. REFORM BILL: The aforementioned Act which stripped Hereditary Peers of their right to sit in the Lords, consequently, something which Lord Malfoy would rather not dwell upon if at all necessary.
8. ISIS: The Oxfordian, and Wizarding, name for the River Thames.
The acoustics in the chamber were eerily perfect, bouncing the vibrant sound of debate down from the Commons with a delay of what Harry calculated was six days.
Draco was just pleased that the river made a soothing sort of rushing noise, because listening to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales plonk on about smoking in public places wasn't his idea of stimulating politics. It was Wales, for fuck's sake. Weren't they devolved already?
Privately he agreed with Blaise and thought that everywhere in England north of Luton Airport should be subject to devolution9.
That kind of opinion wasn't, like his suggestion fuelled by the sixth Singapore Sling (and Draco had restrained himself for two whole years about making member remarks, so it was doubly excruciating to see it the bloody tabloids), something to say in public.
Fun times, but very much a distant memory when one was stuck miles underneath the Houses of Parliament in a dumping-ground for old furniture with one door and a very turbid river as possible routes out. Magical fucking Westminster, bollocks.
"We could Apparate," Draco suggested, leaning back on a rickety civil-service wooden chair. He shrugged, trying to dispel the cloying feel of stale magic.
Harry, involved in trying each of the twelve doorknobs on the heavy oak door, snorted. "Right. You tried an explosive spell and your wand squeaked." He rattled a handle irritably. "Somehow I don't think spells will do us any--could you maybe get off your arse and give me a hand?"
Draco took a deep breath and wondered if this was how Granger and Weasley had spent their school careers, waiting around for Potter to get over himself and think of something useful. He said as much.
"Oi," said Harry, aiming his wand at Draco, "Crucio."
"Bugger off," Draco said. "That gives me a headache. Did you try turning more than one handle at a time?"
*
The door opened into Harry's office.
"Woah," Harry said.
Draco looked at him askance. Then he looked at his watch.
6:31pm.
"Very peculiar," he said. "Where's the scotch?"
9. DEVOLUTION: The United Kingdom has devolved parliamentary power to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, meaning that for certain levels of governance and financial administration, those regions act as independent bodies whilst still remain subject to and under control of the UK Parliament.
Rm B29.2
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (COMMONS)
7:02 pm
"Oi," Harry said again, this time quieter, "you alright?"
Draco considered admitting that he felt like throwing up, but he had a reputation and a lineage to uphold. If Harry could cope with mucking through seven hundred years of distilled power, so could he.
He threw up anyway.
THE ATHENAEUM CLUB
PALL MALL
Thursday March 31st, 10.32 am
"Great Hannibal and the elephants," Draco groaned, plucked from sleep by the insistent annoyance that was owl-wings against the window, "alright!"
He opened the sash and glared at Harry's owl balefully. "You are lucky this place is terribly old-fashioned, you know." He let her hop in the window and onto the desk. "Anywhere else and the double-glazing would've had you monumentally locked out. What do you want?"
Draco found it amusing that Hedwig had two moods: disapprovingly sniffy, and slutty for anyone who tickled her underneath the muzzle. Today he was getting the petulance rather than the charm offensive. It was always interesting to speculate how much of that was Harry's influence.
She shook her foot impatiently at Draco until he untied the letter, then bounced over to the table and pecked at a salmon vol-au-vent from the evening before.
"Take it, greedy wench," he said. The owl kicked up and headed out the window. "You're getting fat!" Draco yelled. It made his headache feel better.
*
Draco,
Feeling better?
Remembered last night -- roaring Thames and all that -- it's the Boat Race this weekend.
It's early this year. Anyhow, same old same old at The Depot? I rang Nico to get us a table.
If I don't hear from you I'll meet you there at eleven.
- Harry
PS Still on for a wager, I hope. Thought we might up the stakes a bit this year.
How about you resign if Cambridge win?
*
End, Part VI ~ Part VII