[hp] corridors of power 7
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
Rm 407
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (LORDS)
Saturday April 2nd, 12:23 pm
"Argh!"
"Oh!"
The door banged shut behind Draco, nearly catching his coat.
"What are you doing here?" he asked Blaise, who appeared comfortably ensconced in the Eames chair, parchment and abacus incongruous next to his laptop, if one wasn't used to that sort of thing. His black robe with the high Chinese collar made him look... witchy.
Blaise held up his hand (and slide-rule) while he tapped in formulas for the Russian Revolution or whatever it was that he was working on this week. "Thesis," he said around the Inca knot-string between his teeth.
"That's my desk," Draco said, "You have one of your own, which, might I remind you, is in your office-"
"Draco. It's Saturday. It's recess. I can hardly be blamed for imagining you would be anywhere within the M251, let alone at work."
"My desk." Draco had spent the previous day in a sulk after Potter's letter, and today he planned to continue functioning in the same snippy frame of mind. Sitting down heavily on the couch, he propped his feet up on the table. Noguchi be damned. "My office." He leaned over to the side table to gauge the level in the decanter. "Hmmpph."
"My, we are tetchy." Blaise didn't even look up, the bastard. "Shall I make you a cup of tea?"
"Please."
"Hemlock?" Blaise's tone was bright. He looked genuinely happy to see him.
Draco glared.
"I was trying to concentrate, if you must know. I have my viva seconde2 in a week, and Cecilia's invited all her Andalucian aunts and cousins for the weekend." He closed his eyes briefly. "There's no peace to be had."
"Potter challenged me to a wager."
Blaise frowned and studied something in front of him for a few seconds. "Ah."
"Never mind, I--"
"Properly?"
"I may have signed my name in a fit of temper, yes."
There was a long pause while Blaise pressed his middle finger to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Might I ask what rests on this wager?"
"What are your job prospects when you complete your Magisterium?"
Blaise's hand twitched. Draco had seen Blaise lose his temper twice. Thirteen-year-olds were still a little unfocussed with curses, and it had only been the far wall of the common room that bore the brunt of the explosion. At nineteen, there hadn't been much left of the house-elf.
And it was best not to think about the other rumours.
Quickly, he added, "I mean, I'm sure it's not that dire. It wasn't worded correctly. There'll be a loophole. Oxford have the stronger team this year. Um."
Blaise stared in horror, but by then Draco had got to his feet and grabbed Blaise's wand out of his reach.
Safer over by the window, really. Draco tried not to listen to the taptap and click of Blaise's annoyance being visited on the keyboard and waited, wondering if it were too late to take up the offer of hemlock tea. He'd watched a man in a red jacket walk the entire length of Westminster Bridge when Blaise put his hands on his shoulders.
"So," he said, taking back his wand and turning Draco around to face him, "you have, once again, endangered your livelihood and that of your friends because of a hopeless crush--"
"It'll be alright--"
"--and you know it, and really, most of us have never minded it, because you're a bit scary when you're obsessed with someth--"
"Yes, yes. Suggestions for loopholes, please?" Draco had heard this all before. Besides, Blaise always became suggestible when he was stressed. Dangerous, but suggestible. Draco thumbed open a couple of buttons on Blaise's robe.
Blaise narrowed his gaze for a second, but there was a smile tugging at his face nonetheless. "Stop that. You're not irresistible." He sighed. "One of these days I'll actually finish lecturing you."
"One of these days you won't be such a tart," Draco murmured, quite enjoying the damask of Blaise's robe slipping between his fingers.
"I'm helping you or I'm fucking you, Draco. Your choice." Blaise paused. "And there would be a right and a wrong option."
"Not both?" Draco let a strand of hair fall over his eyes.
Blaise lifted Draco's hands away gently. "Your mind is elsewhere, my friend."
He had a point.
1. M25: The circular motorway system that circumscribes the Greater London area. Outside are things like trees and parks and quaint villages and very large shopping centres.
2. VIVA: The second oral examination (oh, don't be filthy) for one's Magisterium thesis, which is somewhat like a Muggle doctorate. A PhD, however, does not have a practical component requiring the candidate to successfully incapacitate at least one examiner of the thesis with original spellwork.
THE DEPOT BRASSERIE AND WINE BAR
MORTLAKE, SW15
Sunday March 3rd, 11:32 am
At least his watch was working properly now, but Harry's annoying inability to keep time just added to the list of things that irked Draco this morning.
The olive bread was rather lacklustre--granted, it was the busiest day of the year for Nico, and one had to book the year before to be assured of a table, but still. Draco jammed a piece into the balsamic and managed to splash the cuff of his pullover. Which ruined the argyle pattern, a bit.
More irking.
"No, over by the window!" Harry sounded pleased with himself. Draco turned around to what would have been a vision in white if it weren't for the supplementary vision-in-white carrying two squash racquets and smiling superciliously beneath a perfect blonde ponytail.
"Harry." Draco looked pointedly at his watch before turning and finding a smile from somewhere. "Cate."
Harry at least had the good grace to look like he was about to offer an excuse, but Cate tilted her head and said: "Do blame me, Lord Malfoy, I insisted on the best of three. And then there were simply no cabs in Kensington to be had."
"Who came out top, then?" Draco took the racquets and slid them under the table, pointing Harry to the seat opposite his own and pulling out the one with the worst view of the window for Cate.
"I did," said Harry, looking very directly at Draco, "I always t--"
"Could I get you any drinks?" the waitress asked.
Draco hated waitresses.
"Sparkling mineral water, slice of cucumber," said Cate, "and if you could have someone tell me when the Niyazov3 party arrives in the lounge?" She folded her hands together. "Sorry. I won't be staying."
"If you have previous plans, of course you mustn't," Draco said, and felt real affection for his mother's lessons in polite small talk.
"Lime and soda," Harry said, flipping over the menu.
Draco stared at him. "Another Guinness, please."
*
"Ta-ta to you too," Draco said to Cate's retreating form.
"Be nice," Harry said. "You won't play squash."
"That's because I think small rooms with white walls should be reserved for the clinically insane. Now. Order a bloody beer, you great nancy-boy. I want to talk about this bet."
*
"It would be the decent thing to do."
"Oh, hello." Draco stretched out his hand over the paella dish. "Have you met me? Draco Malfoy. Only up to C in the dictionary."
Harry fiddled with the slip of paper--their wager--underneath his glass. "Invoking an eighteenth century clause to get your peerage upheld for ten years is fucking dodgy."
"I thought it was clever," Draco said, hoping he sounded bored, because they'd never really had this conversation to the end and he felt inexplicably nervous. "Cunning, wily, etcetera. Besides. You said it yourself. Westminster clearly loves me. And it was Boris who found the legislation--"
Harry scowled. "No surprises there."
"Oh, because you've never had anyone juggle the rules on your behalf, have you?" This was better. Harry had a curious blind spot about his own behaviour, and Draco was not above exploiting it.
Harry looked out the window.
"Juggle, bend, break, disregard, rewrite--"
A glare, and silence.
"Are you even planning on presenting this Bill?" Draco thought now was as good a time as any to push the issue. "Or are you just winding me up? And what do your colleagues think about it all, anyhow... doesn't it look a bit odd, targeting a relatively harmless majority-voting cross-bencher--"
"Tuesday week," Harry turned back from the window, leaned forward. "I put it on the orders a month ago. Thought I'd give you the opportunity to resign gracefully."
Draco tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his belly and spluttered. "Opportunity!"
Harry stabbed a piece of steak onto his fork. "Well, you'd never do it without prompting, would you? Think of the press, Draco. Journalists outside your door. And what's your comeback--that's right. There's a place in Parliament for those brought up in the spirit of community service?"
"That was Howarth, you tosser."
"What is your argument, then?"
"I'm a Mal--"
"If you dare say I'm a Malfoy I'll stab you with this fork."
At least they were both laughing, Draco thought.
"Independent political opinion." Harry opened his mouth and made a noise but Draco continued. "Quiet. I mean it. You might think I'm some kind of ultra-conservative, but I just like to play devil's advocate with you."
"Please, don't try and tell me that secretly you're a trade unionist."
"Have you actually looked at my voting record?"
Harry's "Yes!" was exactly the sort of defensive squawk that meant "No! My constituency work is more important than reading Hansard, even if it means having an informed opinion," but the conversation was interrupted by the head waiter, armed with a loudspeaker and announcing the race was due to start in fifteen minutes.
Draco took advantage of the distraction to whip out the wager from under Harry's beer.
Redux, he wrote, and signed his name again before Harry could yank the paper back. He was halfway through his own terms--which were fairly detailed-- when Harry noticed what he was doing.
"Fuck."
"Yes," Draco said seriously, finishing the sentence and sliding the piece of paper back in Harry's view, his forefinger pressed above x___________. "Sign, please."
*
Watching Harry's face as he read was awfully satisfying.
*
"Get your wand and come with me," Harry said, pushing his chair back and standing.
Draco felt a vague thrill. "Ooh, are we going outside to settle this like men?"
"You--this--" Harry gesticulated furiously at the paper. "You're cheating. Else you wouldn't--Up. Now." Harry stalked off towards the back of the restaurant.
The family at the next table along eyed their places with keen interest. Draco flicked his sleeve up a bit and threw an evasive glamour over the table, smiling serenely at the group. They looked puzzled and turned back to their carbonara.
No point in losing the best seats in the house just for Potter's tantrum.
*
He caught up with Harry in a hallway through a door marked Staff Only, his outline a bit dim because Harry had cast the same evasive spell around himself.
"Give it here."
Sometimes Draco found that bossiness disturbingly arousing. Right now?
It irked.
There was also the small matter of the wand pointed back at him, and if he'd only been privy to Blaise's temper twice in his life he'd certainly witnessed his fair share of Potter-brand conniptions.
"You won't find anything."
"You think?" Harry tilted his head back and held out his own wand, tip-side in hand.
They both uttered Priori at the same time, standing back to let the spells echo off the floor. Draco added a time-bracketing modifier and a conjunctive for wandless magic and tried not to look too smug about it.
After a minute, he said, "I take it back, Potter. You do act like a wizard. One who has a fine grasp of housekeeping charms and never remembers his house keys--hmm, perhaps I won't tell anyone about that little curse, you should really--"
Harry sounded grouchy. "Are any of these spells not hexes?"
Draco shrugged. People irked him. "You're back to last Wednesday, you know." He sped up the priori spell on Harry's wand by skipping out the cleaning charms; it ran twice as fast and quickly came to a stop. Draco's followed likewise. The Ministry had delimited the spell for all but Aurors; it only searched a week.
Peace and Reconciliation, they'd said, after the War.4
The bell went off inside.
"Happy now?" Draco grinned. Blaise was fabulous. And unless Harry had really planned ahead (not likely, given his appalling time management), there was no way that Cambridge would win.
Harry was examining Draco's wand as if he expected it to start sprouting feathers. "Not really," he said, looking more puzzled than unhappy. "I'd ask you to look me in the eye and swear you didn't cheat, but you're a M--"
"Slytherin would be the word you're looking for." Draco plucked his wand from Harry's fingers. "Let's watch the boys pull strokes. Go Blues!"
*
"Fan-fucking-tastic!" Draco yelled as the Oxford crew came in by two lengths.
Harry stared. Draco smirked.
*
"But." Harry flicked his gaze over the crowded room to the blonde ponytail.
"Ahh," Draco said. "In political life, a man's secretary is meant to be his conscience."
"Eh." Harry looked defeated. "Accomplice."
"At least I didn't drag Blaise around a bloody squash court in order to do it."
3. NIYAZOV: Potter's admin keeps some interesting company.
4. RECONCILIATION: Not quite the same as "Let's Sweep All That Horrid Nonsense Under The Carpet And Pretend We All Didn't Do Horrible Things To One Another Only A Few Months Ago", but the Peace and Reconciliation tribunal in the Ministry had pretty much the same aim.
THE ARAB BOY
RICHMOND, SW15
4:09 pm
"Cheating makes the wager null and void," Harry said, a bit dumbly. Draco had suggested they walk to his house rather than try and fight the traffic. Or Apparate with over-the-limit blood-alcohol.
They'd stopped at the first pub and hadn't quite managed to move on.
"I cheated, you cheated. It cancelled out. Oxford won. Soooo... it really should stand." Draco had been trying not to jiggle with glee, but he was a bit pissed.
"Uh-huh."
"I think we should phone Ladbrokes. Or Lloyds. Or the Ministry. Get a professional opinion."5
"Null and void."
"Really." It could wait, but there was absolutely no way that Draco was letting this one slide. "It would be the decent thing to do."
*
5. LADBROKES: A high-street betting agency that parts Muggles from their money in exchange for the thrill of gambling. Lloyds is an insurance company that do much the same thing but on a larger scale.
End, Part VII ~ Part VIII
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
Rm 407
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (LORDS)
Saturday April 2nd, 12:23 pm
"Argh!"
"Oh!"
The door banged shut behind Draco, nearly catching his coat.
"What are you doing here?" he asked Blaise, who appeared comfortably ensconced in the Eames chair, parchment and abacus incongruous next to his laptop, if one wasn't used to that sort of thing. His black robe with the high Chinese collar made him look... witchy.
Blaise held up his hand (and slide-rule) while he tapped in formulas for the Russian Revolution or whatever it was that he was working on this week. "Thesis," he said around the Inca knot-string between his teeth.
"That's my desk," Draco said, "You have one of your own, which, might I remind you, is in your office-"
"Draco. It's Saturday. It's recess. I can hardly be blamed for imagining you would be anywhere within the M251, let alone at work."
"My desk." Draco had spent the previous day in a sulk after Potter's letter, and today he planned to continue functioning in the same snippy frame of mind. Sitting down heavily on the couch, he propped his feet up on the table. Noguchi be damned. "My office." He leaned over to the side table to gauge the level in the decanter. "Hmmpph."
"My, we are tetchy." Blaise didn't even look up, the bastard. "Shall I make you a cup of tea?"
"Please."
"Hemlock?" Blaise's tone was bright. He looked genuinely happy to see him.
Draco glared.
"I was trying to concentrate, if you must know. I have my viva seconde2 in a week, and Cecilia's invited all her Andalucian aunts and cousins for the weekend." He closed his eyes briefly. "There's no peace to be had."
"Potter challenged me to a wager."
Blaise frowned and studied something in front of him for a few seconds. "Ah."
"Never mind, I--"
"Properly?"
"I may have signed my name in a fit of temper, yes."
There was a long pause while Blaise pressed his middle finger to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Might I ask what rests on this wager?"
"What are your job prospects when you complete your Magisterium?"
Blaise's hand twitched. Draco had seen Blaise lose his temper twice. Thirteen-year-olds were still a little unfocussed with curses, and it had only been the far wall of the common room that bore the brunt of the explosion. At nineteen, there hadn't been much left of the house-elf.
And it was best not to think about the other rumours.
Quickly, he added, "I mean, I'm sure it's not that dire. It wasn't worded correctly. There'll be a loophole. Oxford have the stronger team this year. Um."
Blaise stared in horror, but by then Draco had got to his feet and grabbed Blaise's wand out of his reach.
Safer over by the window, really. Draco tried not to listen to the taptap and click of Blaise's annoyance being visited on the keyboard and waited, wondering if it were too late to take up the offer of hemlock tea. He'd watched a man in a red jacket walk the entire length of Westminster Bridge when Blaise put his hands on his shoulders.
"So," he said, taking back his wand and turning Draco around to face him, "you have, once again, endangered your livelihood and that of your friends because of a hopeless crush--"
"It'll be alright--"
"--and you know it, and really, most of us have never minded it, because you're a bit scary when you're obsessed with someth--"
"Yes, yes. Suggestions for loopholes, please?" Draco had heard this all before. Besides, Blaise always became suggestible when he was stressed. Dangerous, but suggestible. Draco thumbed open a couple of buttons on Blaise's robe.
Blaise narrowed his gaze for a second, but there was a smile tugging at his face nonetheless. "Stop that. You're not irresistible." He sighed. "One of these days I'll actually finish lecturing you."
"One of these days you won't be such a tart," Draco murmured, quite enjoying the damask of Blaise's robe slipping between his fingers.
"I'm helping you or I'm fucking you, Draco. Your choice." Blaise paused. "And there would be a right and a wrong option."
"Not both?" Draco let a strand of hair fall over his eyes.
Blaise lifted Draco's hands away gently. "Your mind is elsewhere, my friend."
He had a point.
1. M25: The circular motorway system that circumscribes the Greater London area. Outside are things like trees and parks and quaint villages and very large shopping centres.
2. VIVA: The second oral examination (oh, don't be filthy) for one's Magisterium thesis, which is somewhat like a Muggle doctorate. A PhD, however, does not have a practical component requiring the candidate to successfully incapacitate at least one examiner of the thesis with original spellwork.
THE DEPOT BRASSERIE AND WINE BAR
MORTLAKE, SW15
Sunday March 3rd, 11:32 am
At least his watch was working properly now, but Harry's annoying inability to keep time just added to the list of things that irked Draco this morning.
The olive bread was rather lacklustre--granted, it was the busiest day of the year for Nico, and one had to book the year before to be assured of a table, but still. Draco jammed a piece into the balsamic and managed to splash the cuff of his pullover. Which ruined the argyle pattern, a bit.
More irking.
"No, over by the window!" Harry sounded pleased with himself. Draco turned around to what would have been a vision in white if it weren't for the supplementary vision-in-white carrying two squash racquets and smiling superciliously beneath a perfect blonde ponytail.
"Harry." Draco looked pointedly at his watch before turning and finding a smile from somewhere. "Cate."
Harry at least had the good grace to look like he was about to offer an excuse, but Cate tilted her head and said: "Do blame me, Lord Malfoy, I insisted on the best of three. And then there were simply no cabs in Kensington to be had."
"Who came out top, then?" Draco took the racquets and slid them under the table, pointing Harry to the seat opposite his own and pulling out the one with the worst view of the window for Cate.
"I did," said Harry, looking very directly at Draco, "I always t--"
"Could I get you any drinks?" the waitress asked.
Draco hated waitresses.
"Sparkling mineral water, slice of cucumber," said Cate, "and if you could have someone tell me when the Niyazov3 party arrives in the lounge?" She folded her hands together. "Sorry. I won't be staying."
"If you have previous plans, of course you mustn't," Draco said, and felt real affection for his mother's lessons in polite small talk.
"Lime and soda," Harry said, flipping over the menu.
Draco stared at him. "Another Guinness, please."
*
"Ta-ta to you too," Draco said to Cate's retreating form.
"Be nice," Harry said. "You won't play squash."
"That's because I think small rooms with white walls should be reserved for the clinically insane. Now. Order a bloody beer, you great nancy-boy. I want to talk about this bet."
*
"It would be the decent thing to do."
"Oh, hello." Draco stretched out his hand over the paella dish. "Have you met me? Draco Malfoy. Only up to C in the dictionary."
Harry fiddled with the slip of paper--their wager--underneath his glass. "Invoking an eighteenth century clause to get your peerage upheld for ten years is fucking dodgy."
"I thought it was clever," Draco said, hoping he sounded bored, because they'd never really had this conversation to the end and he felt inexplicably nervous. "Cunning, wily, etcetera. Besides. You said it yourself. Westminster clearly loves me. And it was Boris who found the legislation--"
Harry scowled. "No surprises there."
"Oh, because you've never had anyone juggle the rules on your behalf, have you?" This was better. Harry had a curious blind spot about his own behaviour, and Draco was not above exploiting it.
Harry looked out the window.
"Juggle, bend, break, disregard, rewrite--"
A glare, and silence.
"Are you even planning on presenting this Bill?" Draco thought now was as good a time as any to push the issue. "Or are you just winding me up? And what do your colleagues think about it all, anyhow... doesn't it look a bit odd, targeting a relatively harmless majority-voting cross-bencher--"
"Tuesday week," Harry turned back from the window, leaned forward. "I put it on the orders a month ago. Thought I'd give you the opportunity to resign gracefully."
Draco tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his belly and spluttered. "Opportunity!"
Harry stabbed a piece of steak onto his fork. "Well, you'd never do it without prompting, would you? Think of the press, Draco. Journalists outside your door. And what's your comeback--that's right. There's a place in Parliament for those brought up in the spirit of community service?"
"That was Howarth, you tosser."
"What is your argument, then?"
"I'm a Mal--"
"If you dare say I'm a Malfoy I'll stab you with this fork."
At least they were both laughing, Draco thought.
"Independent political opinion." Harry opened his mouth and made a noise but Draco continued. "Quiet. I mean it. You might think I'm some kind of ultra-conservative, but I just like to play devil's advocate with you."
"Please, don't try and tell me that secretly you're a trade unionist."
"Have you actually looked at my voting record?"
Harry's "Yes!" was exactly the sort of defensive squawk that meant "No! My constituency work is more important than reading Hansard, even if it means having an informed opinion," but the conversation was interrupted by the head waiter, armed with a loudspeaker and announcing the race was due to start in fifteen minutes.
Draco took advantage of the distraction to whip out the wager from under Harry's beer.
Redux, he wrote, and signed his name again before Harry could yank the paper back. He was halfway through his own terms--which were fairly detailed-- when Harry noticed what he was doing.
"Fuck."
"Yes," Draco said seriously, finishing the sentence and sliding the piece of paper back in Harry's view, his forefinger pressed above x___________. "Sign, please."
*
Watching Harry's face as he read was awfully satisfying.
*
"Get your wand and come with me," Harry said, pushing his chair back and standing.
Draco felt a vague thrill. "Ooh, are we going outside to settle this like men?"
"You--this--" Harry gesticulated furiously at the paper. "You're cheating. Else you wouldn't--Up. Now." Harry stalked off towards the back of the restaurant.
The family at the next table along eyed their places with keen interest. Draco flicked his sleeve up a bit and threw an evasive glamour over the table, smiling serenely at the group. They looked puzzled and turned back to their carbonara.
No point in losing the best seats in the house just for Potter's tantrum.
*
He caught up with Harry in a hallway through a door marked Staff Only, his outline a bit dim because Harry had cast the same evasive spell around himself.
"Give it here."
Sometimes Draco found that bossiness disturbingly arousing. Right now?
It irked.
There was also the small matter of the wand pointed back at him, and if he'd only been privy to Blaise's temper twice in his life he'd certainly witnessed his fair share of Potter-brand conniptions.
"You won't find anything."
"You think?" Harry tilted his head back and held out his own wand, tip-side in hand.
They both uttered Priori at the same time, standing back to let the spells echo off the floor. Draco added a time-bracketing modifier and a conjunctive for wandless magic and tried not to look too smug about it.
After a minute, he said, "I take it back, Potter. You do act like a wizard. One who has a fine grasp of housekeeping charms and never remembers his house keys--hmm, perhaps I won't tell anyone about that little curse, you should really--"
Harry sounded grouchy. "Are any of these spells not hexes?"
Draco shrugged. People irked him. "You're back to last Wednesday, you know." He sped up the priori spell on Harry's wand by skipping out the cleaning charms; it ran twice as fast and quickly came to a stop. Draco's followed likewise. The Ministry had delimited the spell for all but Aurors; it only searched a week.
Peace and Reconciliation, they'd said, after the War.4
The bell went off inside.
"Happy now?" Draco grinned. Blaise was fabulous. And unless Harry had really planned ahead (not likely, given his appalling time management), there was no way that Cambridge would win.
Harry was examining Draco's wand as if he expected it to start sprouting feathers. "Not really," he said, looking more puzzled than unhappy. "I'd ask you to look me in the eye and swear you didn't cheat, but you're a M--"
"Slytherin would be the word you're looking for." Draco plucked his wand from Harry's fingers. "Let's watch the boys pull strokes. Go Blues!"
*
"Fan-fucking-tastic!" Draco yelled as the Oxford crew came in by two lengths.
Harry stared. Draco smirked.
*
"But." Harry flicked his gaze over the crowded room to the blonde ponytail.
"Ahh," Draco said. "In political life, a man's secretary is meant to be his conscience."
"Eh." Harry looked defeated. "Accomplice."
"At least I didn't drag Blaise around a bloody squash court in order to do it."
3. NIYAZOV: Potter's admin keeps some interesting company.
4. RECONCILIATION: Not quite the same as "Let's Sweep All That Horrid Nonsense Under The Carpet And Pretend We All Didn't Do Horrible Things To One Another Only A Few Months Ago", but the Peace and Reconciliation tribunal in the Ministry had pretty much the same aim.
THE ARAB BOY
RICHMOND, SW15
4:09 pm
"Cheating makes the wager null and void," Harry said, a bit dumbly. Draco had suggested they walk to his house rather than try and fight the traffic. Or Apparate with over-the-limit blood-alcohol.
They'd stopped at the first pub and hadn't quite managed to move on.
"I cheated, you cheated. It cancelled out. Oxford won. Soooo... it really should stand." Draco had been trying not to jiggle with glee, but he was a bit pissed.
"Uh-huh."
"I think we should phone Ladbrokes. Or Lloyds. Or the Ministry. Get a professional opinion."5
"Null and void."
"Really." It could wait, but there was absolutely no way that Draco was letting this one slide. "It would be the decent thing to do."
*
5. LADBROKES: A high-street betting agency that parts Muggles from their money in exchange for the thrill of gambling. Lloyds is an insurance company that do much the same thing but on a larger scale.
End, Part VII ~ Part VIII