Yer actyul ficcage
Oct. 2nd, 2007 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essayelI don't normally do challenges but the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hpmugglestudies one I couldn't resist. Sadly it doesn't fulfill the criteria - it's not short and it's not complete - but it was fun to do and this first chapter was enough fun for me to want to do a second.
so - um - here it is if you want to read it.
Title: Dancing By Moonlight
Author: essayel
Rating/Warnings: R for language at the moment
Spoilers: this bit will spoil PoA and [a bit] GoF
Topic: Charms and how they apply to wizarding life
Characters/Pairings: none as yet
Notes: Unbetaed as yet so please excuse mistakes, also this is a first draft. It'll get fiddled with a lot.
Summary: Gil Whimple starts work for the Experimental Charms Committee on rainy March day in 1993 – and it sort of goes on from there. Very much a WIP because I’ve never got the hang of writing nice little clear concise stories full of pithy meaning, so - I suppose - an exercise in how NOT to do it. More will follow, God willing.
Chapter One
Very early on a rainy morning in March, with the sun barely penetrating the heavy blanket of cloud, isn’t traditionally a good time to be awake. But for one bright- eyed Ministry worker this morning was particularly good.
Promotion, and particularly well-deserved promotion, will do that to a wizard.
Up with the lark, or at least the Muggle milkman, he showered – being early meant he got some hot water - and forced a comb through his curly hair. He dressed in an open necked flannel shirt over a Holyhead Harpies tee shirt and dark brown cords. Neat and tidy and hardwearing – that was what was required. Normally he would have made himself breakfast but his cupboard was bare so he just fetched his daily pint of milk from the doorstep, drank half of it and paused smiling into the mirror at the creamy moustache on his top lip.
“What do you think?” he asked his reflection as he pocketed his wand. “Should I grow a real one?”
It looked back at him – thick curly brown hair, dark brown eyes plentifully supplied with eyelashes, snub nose, wide white smile all pleasingly assembled on a slightly freckled face topping a smallish, slimmish body.
Not that he was short exactly. He just wasn’t quite as tall as most of the other wizards he knew.
“What do you think?” he asked again and licked off the cream then held one forefinger horizontally across his top lip.
The reflection made a rude snorting sound. “Forget it Gil,” it said. “You haven’t the gravitas to pull it off,” and Gil chuckled and picked up his robe, his cloak and his shopping bag. Two minutes later he was letting himself out of his flat and running down the stairs to join the throng of people on their way to work.
This was a predominantly Muggle area of London, but here, just off Lower Marsh Street, was one of the city’s many little wizarding areas. Mandrake Mews comprised two tall houses and the workshop where Madame Malkin’s work force assembled her ‘creations’. The two houses had once been the luxurious homes of wizarding families, but were now split up into flats. These were mainly taken up by lower echelon Ministry employees, who hadn’t been able to find affordable accommodation in the Diagon Alley area. Gil really liked his top floor flat, which had obviously once been the owlery and gave him excellent views over the back gardens and, if he craned his neck a bit, the corner of the Park. Bedroom, bathroom, living room were all small and snug but it was in the kitchen, with its huge window with the owl vents and roosting holes converted to cupboards, that he spent most of his time. Gil loved to cook – loved to cook for people – but he wouldn’t be doing that until he had been shopping.
Letting himself out of the front door he trotted down the three stone steps into the road and paused as he heard a called greeting from the steps next door.
“Morning, Tam,” he said and waited until his good friend Tamerlane Bullivant fell in at his side. “Tough night?”
Bullivant scowled. “I should damn well say so. While you were tucked up warm in your little white bed we were stumbling over miles and miles of windswept bloody Northumberland trying to find a place to have the Quidditch World Cup Final camping ground that wasn’t infested with Red Caps or Muggles.”
Tam was six feet three in his socks and broad in proportion and when he strode out Gil had to hop to keep up. They had been Sorted into Hufflepuff on the same day, and had struck up a friendship, mainly due to being the only two boys in their year who didn’t already know everyone else. Such friendships endure and they had remained close, but not too close, having enough differences between them to make things interesting. Whereas Gil had never realistically been going to pursue any career that didn’t involve charms, Tam had taken a while to settle on what he wanted to do. He’d been expected to join his brother, Till, in running the family owlery, had flirted with the idea of professional Quidditch, had even, briefly, considered teaching. But then he had realised that there was a profession that combined communication, keeping the peace and the application of reasonable force. Even now Tam was working his way up the ranks of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad. In his official robes, he looked roughly the size of a house.
“So it’s true,” Gil said, grinning madly. “Whoohoo! Can’t wait! Did you find a good place for it?”
“Eventually,” Tam growled. “Your mob is going to be kept busy. You’ll be needed to charm it to the rafters.”
“My mob, if I may remind you,” Gil said grandly, “is no longer the Ministry charm-smithy. I have gone on to greater things.”
Tam grunted unenthusiastically. “So you have. Well I know who to blame then if anything weird runs riot in the Ministry.” He glanced down at Gil who grinned at him and Tam sighed then gave him what to anyone else would have looked like a grudging smile.
“S’pose you earned it,” Tam said and ruffled his hair to make it stick up.
Gil chuckled patting the curls back down again “Too damn right,” he said. “Keep me posted about when the World Cup tickets are available, won’t you? A whole year to wait – but it’ll be worth it, because I really want to go.”
“You and the rest of the wizarding world, pal,” Tam agreed. “First stop the bakers?”
“Butcher and baker and I need a pound of candles,” Gil said, “but I was thinking of dropping into Sainsbury’s on the way home. If you came and helped me carry stuff,” he added slyly, “I’d probably cook you a curry. Muggles have such cool stuff.”
“I make no promises,” Tam said, which was reasonable enough when some Ministry big wig might demand an escort at short notice. “But if I can I will.”
Gil smiled, well satisfied with that, then nudged Tam as two witches rounded the corner ahead of them. A pair of Madame Malkin’s finest, they were dressed to kill and Gil groaned.
“Hello, hello,” he murmured. “Babes dead ahead.” And he straightened up, trying to lessen the difference in their heights.
Tam rolled his eyes and strode on, merely nodding politely to the two witches, while Gil greeted them enthusiastically, asking them to agree that it could be a nice day later. They peered at him through their rain-spotted impervious charms and giggled then went on their way.
Gil sighed, glancing back and grinning. “They both looked today,” he told Tam, wistfully. “At you, of course, but the dark one glanced at me too.”
“You’re in there, killer,” Tam said, suppressing a snicker and Gil gave him a scowl and hurried after him along the rain-washed pavement.
Half an hour later they parted in the Atrium of the Ministry building, Tam to take the lifts to his level and Gil taking a corridor through to the back of the building and the area occupied by the Ministry charm-smiths. Here he had worked very happily since leaving Hogwarts, and there were plenty of people to greet but he hurried past, smiling.
“Sorry, can’t stop. Don’t want to be late my first day,” he said and almost all of them laughed and waved him on his way. Justin Bulstrode was the only one to detain him, but that was to say, “You won’t forget us, will you, Gil? See you in the canteen later and you can tell us what we’ll be dealing with in six months.”
“Oh – yeah, will do,” Gil said, pleased, and hurried on.
A moment later he was leaving the building via a shielded back door and making his way across a patch of scrubby grass towards the steps of the building where he would be working from now on. He had had the tour before his interview and knew that the impressive, if battered, façade concealed offices and laboratories and conference rooms, and that the testing area on the roof had the strongest, most impressive shields he had ever seen anywhere. Just the thought of the complexity of the charms that had gone into their construction made his heart beat a bit faster.
Taking a deep breath he trotted up the steps and pushed the door of the Experimental Charms Division head quarters open. Purple smoke billowed out, so did the sound of voices raised in argument.
“You fucking idiot, Jelly. You got them in the wrong order. Rubricus, calidus, cerulis, calidus, mordantis you twat. Not rubricus, cerulis, calidus, calidus …”
Someone’s scream of, “Look out, ” was partially drowned by a boom and a further belch of purple smoke.
Gil coughed and two figures, robed and hooded and wearing long padded gloves, emerged from the lavender haze dragging a partially bald and wholly traumatised sheep whose remaining fleece was striped blue and red.
“Whoozzat?” one of them demanded and Gil coughed again.
“Wimple,” he said. “Gil Wimple. It’s my first day. Mr Bibley told me to be here at eight o’ clock.”
There was a moment’s silence as the two – men? It was hard to tell under the padding - looked him over then one said, incredulously, “Is that all you’re wearing?”
“Never mind,” the other one said, as Gil glanced down at his clothing. “Stairs at the end of the corridor, third floor, across the big room and the door behind the sandbags. Run along – you don’t want to be late.”
“Er – Thanks,” Gil said, and ran along as instructed. He was surprised to find the large building almost deserted. Apart from the two men inside the door, he saw nobody until he reached the third floor and pushed open the door to a large light and airy conference room with a big table and coffee making facilities at the near end. There was a door clearly marked ‘Rest Room’ and a scattering of messy desks and tables in the middle, and an arrangement of sandbagged screens at the far end. Both the big table and the rest room door had the tell tale shimmer of magical shields and the room was light and airy because it had a random arrangement of windows and skylights that suggested that someone had found it too much bother to repair the holes in stone or tile.
He took all that in at a glance but was then transfixed by the stare of several pairs of interested eyes.
“Er – hello,” Gil said, halfway through the door and fighting an impulse to dive back out again. “I’m new – was told to report to Mr Bibley’s office at eight o’ clock?”
One of the men turned his head and shouted, “BibLEEEEEEEE!” at the top of his voice then nodded to Gil. “Sit down and take the weight off,” he suggested, pointing to a chair.
“Oh but …” Gil said.
“Sit,” came the emphatic instruction. The chair suddenly knocked into the back of Gil’s knees and a heavy hand on his shoulder guided him into it. There was a silence then, from behind the sandbags, came a burst of furious clucking.
“He’ll be with us momentarily,” a dark eyed witch said coolly and continued to study him. Gil looked back, enjoying the view, because she was a tall slender woman, with striking features and long beautiful hands, marred only by a yellow stain on her forefinger.
“If he’s busy,” Gil suggested, “I could come back later?”
“Oh, don’t you dare move,” she said, giving him a sultry glower, so he didn’t, although he did glance round when he heard a door open.
“Ah, so you found it then,” said a jovial voice and the two men from downstairs passed him, shedding their gloves and hoods. “Lettice, put the kettle on, there’s a dear. I’m fair parched.”
“Put it on yourself,” said the witch who had spoken before. “Black no sugar,” she added with a smirk.
One of the other witches sighed and began to get up but, before the kettle could be filled, the doors behind the screen opened. Gil sighed with relief to see the man who had interviewed him appear and lope towards them.
“Aren’t any of you loafers putting the kettle on?” Bibley demanded. “Damn it must be nearly eight o’ clock and the new charm fodder’s coming at half past. Got to make a good impression.” He stopped and stared at his staff. “What?” he said then focussed on Gil and flushed. “You’re early,” he said accusingly.
Gil recalled his letter of appointment that had said ‘report to the headquarters of the Experimental Charms Committee on Monday 13th March at eight am sharp’, and murmured an apology.
“Oh don’t apologise,” Bibley said, filling the kettle and drawing his wand. “Never apologise for keenness, that’s what I always say. I expect you know everyone by now?”
“Er, no,” Gil said. “I – er – don’t.”
“Merlin’s beard, you lot,” Bibley said. “Do I have to do everything? Introductions, please! Come on, who’s going to start?”
There was another one of the silences then the dark-eyed witch pausing in lighting a cigarette and gave Gil a smile. “Welcome to the Experimental Charms Committee,” she said, “I’m Lettice Bodkin, specialising in transportation charms. Build a better Portkey – you know.” She took a drag of dark gold smoke and let it back out and it fell from her rouged lips and crawled across the table towards her neighbour
The man beside her waved the smoke away and said, “Chorley Hambone, specialising in household charms though really Lettice is exaggerating. We all do a bit of everything. Don’t we, Jelly?”
That brought forth a grunt from the large man next to him who actually reached across the table to offer Gil his hand. “Name’s Bean,” he said, ignoring the other man. “James Bean – not Jumping or Runner or French or – anything else.” He shook Gil’s hand gravely, ignoring his wince.
The next Committee member piped up immediately. “Elis Morgan,” he said, his accent strongly Welsh. He nodded his round closely cropped head to Gil’s hand. “Medical spells are my thing and I think maybe I ought to look at that - James doesn’t know his own strength, see.”
Working his fingers Gil smiled at him then turned to the next person to speak, a jolly looking witch with toffee brown hair piled on her head like meringue. “Cally MacDougal,” she said, enthusiastically. “I do lights – and darks. Charms to do with lighting anyhow. And I’m REALLY excited about the news about the Quidditch World Cup. That will be a chance for us all to show our mettle.”
That got a chorus of rather grudging agreement from the rest of the crew and the last two introduced themselves quickly.
“Bradley Dingle, communications,” said a red headed young man with huge thick lensed glasses and the girl at his side nodded and said, “Janet Dingle, me too.” Her hand was fast in his and sported a thick wedding band, still with the gloss of newness upon it.
Gil smiled. “Congratulations,” he said and smiled again to see them both glow.
“So Gil,” Mr Bibley said. “We know you’re competent, your work record shows that. And we’ve seen that you’re interested in being at the cutting edge of charm formulation – some of your suggestions to your superiors were eerily innovative. And your reference from Professor Flitwick impressed us all. But we find people work best at what they are interested in, so to speak. So – where is your area of interest?”
“Um – I – I’m not sure,” Gil admitted. “I’m just interested in the structures, I guess. In the way altering a small part of a charm can strengthen or weaken it. How combining several charms in the right structural matrix can make something completely new.”
The people around the table were nodding and James Bean grunted approval.
“Ri-ight,” Bibley said. “Well for the moment you’d better help out wherever you can. Who wants an assistant? Ah – Elis, you got your hand up first. Okay maybe you can fill Gil in on what he needs to know?”
“I’ll do my best,” Elis said with a grin.
“Grand,” Bibley said. “And the first job of the day can be to make the tea. Milk and two please.”
###
Used to going to work, picking up his day’s assignments and fulfilling them as quickly as possible – his record for charming the highest number of Stenoquills in a day was going to be hard to beat - Gil found himself at a loose end that first day
He made tea and coffee, fetched hot pies from the canteen and took the heavily shielded street exit to nip along to the delicatessen to fetch the smoked salmon sandwiches that Lettice insisted upon. He helped clear up after ‘experiments, assisted in experiments, allowed other Committee members to talk endlessly about the charms they were hoping to achieve, listened to Janet’s plans to redecorate her and Bradley’s new home and fed and watered the Committee’s livestock, some of whom were so bizarrely affected by the spells practiced upon them that it was a little hard to see what they had once been.
However, this relative inactivity had its good points. Gil was able to work with each and every one of the committee members, get an idea where their strengths lay and what their quirks were and which subjects should be avoided at all costs.
For instance Bradley’s parents, the Dingles, and Janet’s, the Crabtrees, ‘did not get on’. Both Bradley and Janet mentioned it to him separately at different times so it was obviously bothering them.
Hambone and Bean when not bickering, were inclined to pranking. It hadn’t taken Gil long to realise that the incident with the sheep had been a put up job to try and scare him off but some of their other reported pranks – charming the bottom six inches of all the chair legs into rubbery flexibility, substituting see-more granules for sugar on the tea table so everyone saw in extreme magnification for an hour – struck him as less amusing.
Lettice smoked her revolting cigarettes almost continually, favouring a blend of wormwood and sativa that made everyone’s head spin if they sat down wind. Gil would have objected, if he hadn’t noticed, that without one to hold her hands shook and she got more irritable even than a tobacco addict going cold-muggle – something that wizards had long since learned to avoid.
Why she needed the support of the cigarettes he might never have known, Lettice certainly wasn’t saying – but plump motherly Cally took a great interest in all her colleagues and mentioned that Lettice had never been the same since her brother, Havelock, had been sent to Azkaban.
“He worked in Goblin Liaison,” Cally whispered. “Was implicated in that attempted robbery at Gringotts a couple of years ago. Attempted, so he got Azkaban instead of the goblins. He’ll be out in a year or two, thank goodness but I don’t think the Bodkins will ever live it down.”
Cally herself was married to an upland farmer and flooed home every night to their home in the Cheviots. Her interest in everyone’s business, which might have been put down to sheer nosiness, seemed to Gil to be no more than the genuine concern shown by those who lived the sparsely inhabited rural areas of Britain. His own upbringing in a country district had inured him to the inquisition in the Muggle village shop when he made his regular trips home and the few witches and wizards were even worse for gossip.
Another one who could talk and talk was Elis, but his words were usually directed to himself. “Ah now, see, this is where it needs to go,” he’d murmur. “No, there. Now what do you think that will do, lovely? What, what? Ah now we have it!”
The first morning Gil worked with Elis he kept trying to answer the questions but by midmorning tea break he’d got the hang of remaining silent and was quietly fiddling with medical charms of his own.
Mr Bingley turned out to be a surprise.
For a start his name wasn’t Bingley at all but Gerimander Ogden, and his particular interest was in charming livestock to achieve unusual, and sometimes bizarre, effects. Flossie the blue and red striped sheep was a particular pet of his and was often to be found following him about the building. Like all the others Gil grew used to ducking when a flight of charmed sheep droppings whizzed past his head on their way to the nearest window.
“But,” Gil said to Elis on the Friday afternoon, “he SAID his name was Bibley. At the interview. The man from Wizard Resources who read me my Rights and Responsibilities called him Bibley and so did the stenowitch who recorded the interview.”
Elis nodded as he continued to adjust the structure of an eight level analgesia spell. “That’s because, for the past two weeks, he HAS been Mr Bibley. Next week it’s Chorley’s turn.” He looked up as Gil remained silent and reached out and gently closed his mouth. “Don’t want a memo to fly in it, now, do we?”
“So …” Gil blinked. “So you all take it in turns to be Mr Bibley? Don’t they notice?”
Elis chuckled. “As long as there is a Mr Bibley – he’s on the official lists as Head of the Committee - they’re usually so glad to get out of here the same shape they came in that it doesn’t occur to them to worry. Gil – you haven’t realised what you’ve got yourself into, have you, lad?” He put his pen down and shook his head. “This is the Committee for Experimental Charms. As long as we keep coming up with the goods nobody cares what we do, or how we do it. Any idea you have, no matter how bizarre, no matter how potentially dangerous, is perfectly valid.”
He grinned. “Within these four walls – and under this rather well ventilated roof – we can do as we like, on condition that what we do stays within these walls. In fact, other than the Aurors and the Unspeakables we’re the only Ministry department allowed to use Unforgivable Curses on a daily basis.”
“If we can’t use them ….” Gil said quietly.
“We’ll never find a counter for them,” Elis agreed. “And that, boy, is something we’d all like to find.
“Yes,” Gil said, his face sober but his eyes bright. “That’s really something to work for.”
Elis nodded approvingly. “Great – that’s you sorted then but for now, nip down to the canteen and fetch me a Danish will you. All this thinking is hard work.”
Gil nodded and got up but before he left the room he pointed to the parchment Elis had been scrawling on. “Localised chilling charm just … there,” he said pointing to one part of the diagram. “It’ll slow the blood loss down and encourage clotting. Won’t do much for an arterial cut but a venous one it would help.”
Elis looked and grunted then nodded slowly. “Yeah so it would,” he said and dug in his pocket for a galleon. He flicked it, winking gold, to Gil. “Two danishes,” he said, “and get something for yourself.”
“Thanks, Elis,” Gil said and made for the door, ducking another shower of sheep shit as he went.
hpmugglestudies one I couldn't resist. Sadly it doesn't fulfill the criteria - it's not short and it's not complete - but it was fun to do and this first chapter was enough fun for me to want to do a second.so - um - here it is if you want to read it.
Title: Dancing By Moonlight
Author: essayel
Rating/Warnings: R for language at the moment
Spoilers: this bit will spoil PoA and [a bit] GoF
Topic: Charms and how they apply to wizarding life
Characters/Pairings: none as yet
Notes: Unbetaed as yet so please excuse mistakes, also this is a first draft. It'll get fiddled with a lot.
Summary: Gil Whimple starts work for the Experimental Charms Committee on rainy March day in 1993 – and it sort of goes on from there. Very much a WIP because I’ve never got the hang of writing nice little clear concise stories full of pithy meaning, so - I suppose - an exercise in how NOT to do it. More will follow, God willing.
Chapter One
Very early on a rainy morning in March, with the sun barely penetrating the heavy blanket of cloud, isn’t traditionally a good time to be awake. But for one bright- eyed Ministry worker this morning was particularly good.
Promotion, and particularly well-deserved promotion, will do that to a wizard.
Up with the lark, or at least the Muggle milkman, he showered – being early meant he got some hot water - and forced a comb through his curly hair. He dressed in an open necked flannel shirt over a Holyhead Harpies tee shirt and dark brown cords. Neat and tidy and hardwearing – that was what was required. Normally he would have made himself breakfast but his cupboard was bare so he just fetched his daily pint of milk from the doorstep, drank half of it and paused smiling into the mirror at the creamy moustache on his top lip.
“What do you think?” he asked his reflection as he pocketed his wand. “Should I grow a real one?”
It looked back at him – thick curly brown hair, dark brown eyes plentifully supplied with eyelashes, snub nose, wide white smile all pleasingly assembled on a slightly freckled face topping a smallish, slimmish body.
Not that he was short exactly. He just wasn’t quite as tall as most of the other wizards he knew.
“What do you think?” he asked again and licked off the cream then held one forefinger horizontally across his top lip.
The reflection made a rude snorting sound. “Forget it Gil,” it said. “You haven’t the gravitas to pull it off,” and Gil chuckled and picked up his robe, his cloak and his shopping bag. Two minutes later he was letting himself out of his flat and running down the stairs to join the throng of people on their way to work.
This was a predominantly Muggle area of London, but here, just off Lower Marsh Street, was one of the city’s many little wizarding areas. Mandrake Mews comprised two tall houses and the workshop where Madame Malkin’s work force assembled her ‘creations’. The two houses had once been the luxurious homes of wizarding families, but were now split up into flats. These were mainly taken up by lower echelon Ministry employees, who hadn’t been able to find affordable accommodation in the Diagon Alley area. Gil really liked his top floor flat, which had obviously once been the owlery and gave him excellent views over the back gardens and, if he craned his neck a bit, the corner of the Park. Bedroom, bathroom, living room were all small and snug but it was in the kitchen, with its huge window with the owl vents and roosting holes converted to cupboards, that he spent most of his time. Gil loved to cook – loved to cook for people – but he wouldn’t be doing that until he had been shopping.
Letting himself out of the front door he trotted down the three stone steps into the road and paused as he heard a called greeting from the steps next door.
“Morning, Tam,” he said and waited until his good friend Tamerlane Bullivant fell in at his side. “Tough night?”
Bullivant scowled. “I should damn well say so. While you were tucked up warm in your little white bed we were stumbling over miles and miles of windswept bloody Northumberland trying to find a place to have the Quidditch World Cup Final camping ground that wasn’t infested with Red Caps or Muggles.”
Tam was six feet three in his socks and broad in proportion and when he strode out Gil had to hop to keep up. They had been Sorted into Hufflepuff on the same day, and had struck up a friendship, mainly due to being the only two boys in their year who didn’t already know everyone else. Such friendships endure and they had remained close, but not too close, having enough differences between them to make things interesting. Whereas Gil had never realistically been going to pursue any career that didn’t involve charms, Tam had taken a while to settle on what he wanted to do. He’d been expected to join his brother, Till, in running the family owlery, had flirted with the idea of professional Quidditch, had even, briefly, considered teaching. But then he had realised that there was a profession that combined communication, keeping the peace and the application of reasonable force. Even now Tam was working his way up the ranks of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad. In his official robes, he looked roughly the size of a house.
“So it’s true,” Gil said, grinning madly. “Whoohoo! Can’t wait! Did you find a good place for it?”
“Eventually,” Tam growled. “Your mob is going to be kept busy. You’ll be needed to charm it to the rafters.”
“My mob, if I may remind you,” Gil said grandly, “is no longer the Ministry charm-smithy. I have gone on to greater things.”
Tam grunted unenthusiastically. “So you have. Well I know who to blame then if anything weird runs riot in the Ministry.” He glanced down at Gil who grinned at him and Tam sighed then gave him what to anyone else would have looked like a grudging smile.
“S’pose you earned it,” Tam said and ruffled his hair to make it stick up.
Gil chuckled patting the curls back down again “Too damn right,” he said. “Keep me posted about when the World Cup tickets are available, won’t you? A whole year to wait – but it’ll be worth it, because I really want to go.”
“You and the rest of the wizarding world, pal,” Tam agreed. “First stop the bakers?”
“Butcher and baker and I need a pound of candles,” Gil said, “but I was thinking of dropping into Sainsbury’s on the way home. If you came and helped me carry stuff,” he added slyly, “I’d probably cook you a curry. Muggles have such cool stuff.”
“I make no promises,” Tam said, which was reasonable enough when some Ministry big wig might demand an escort at short notice. “But if I can I will.”
Gil smiled, well satisfied with that, then nudged Tam as two witches rounded the corner ahead of them. A pair of Madame Malkin’s finest, they were dressed to kill and Gil groaned.
“Hello, hello,” he murmured. “Babes dead ahead.” And he straightened up, trying to lessen the difference in their heights.
Tam rolled his eyes and strode on, merely nodding politely to the two witches, while Gil greeted them enthusiastically, asking them to agree that it could be a nice day later. They peered at him through their rain-spotted impervious charms and giggled then went on their way.
Gil sighed, glancing back and grinning. “They both looked today,” he told Tam, wistfully. “At you, of course, but the dark one glanced at me too.”
“You’re in there, killer,” Tam said, suppressing a snicker and Gil gave him a scowl and hurried after him along the rain-washed pavement.
Half an hour later they parted in the Atrium of the Ministry building, Tam to take the lifts to his level and Gil taking a corridor through to the back of the building and the area occupied by the Ministry charm-smiths. Here he had worked very happily since leaving Hogwarts, and there were plenty of people to greet but he hurried past, smiling.
“Sorry, can’t stop. Don’t want to be late my first day,” he said and almost all of them laughed and waved him on his way. Justin Bulstrode was the only one to detain him, but that was to say, “You won’t forget us, will you, Gil? See you in the canteen later and you can tell us what we’ll be dealing with in six months.”
“Oh – yeah, will do,” Gil said, pleased, and hurried on.
A moment later he was leaving the building via a shielded back door and making his way across a patch of scrubby grass towards the steps of the building where he would be working from now on. He had had the tour before his interview and knew that the impressive, if battered, façade concealed offices and laboratories and conference rooms, and that the testing area on the roof had the strongest, most impressive shields he had ever seen anywhere. Just the thought of the complexity of the charms that had gone into their construction made his heart beat a bit faster.
Taking a deep breath he trotted up the steps and pushed the door of the Experimental Charms Division head quarters open. Purple smoke billowed out, so did the sound of voices raised in argument.
“You fucking idiot, Jelly. You got them in the wrong order. Rubricus, calidus, cerulis, calidus, mordantis you twat. Not rubricus, cerulis, calidus, calidus …”
Someone’s scream of, “Look out, ” was partially drowned by a boom and a further belch of purple smoke.
Gil coughed and two figures, robed and hooded and wearing long padded gloves, emerged from the lavender haze dragging a partially bald and wholly traumatised sheep whose remaining fleece was striped blue and red.
“Whoozzat?” one of them demanded and Gil coughed again.
“Wimple,” he said. “Gil Wimple. It’s my first day. Mr Bibley told me to be here at eight o’ clock.”
There was a moment’s silence as the two – men? It was hard to tell under the padding - looked him over then one said, incredulously, “Is that all you’re wearing?”
“Never mind,” the other one said, as Gil glanced down at his clothing. “Stairs at the end of the corridor, third floor, across the big room and the door behind the sandbags. Run along – you don’t want to be late.”
“Er – Thanks,” Gil said, and ran along as instructed. He was surprised to find the large building almost deserted. Apart from the two men inside the door, he saw nobody until he reached the third floor and pushed open the door to a large light and airy conference room with a big table and coffee making facilities at the near end. There was a door clearly marked ‘Rest Room’ and a scattering of messy desks and tables in the middle, and an arrangement of sandbagged screens at the far end. Both the big table and the rest room door had the tell tale shimmer of magical shields and the room was light and airy because it had a random arrangement of windows and skylights that suggested that someone had found it too much bother to repair the holes in stone or tile.
He took all that in at a glance but was then transfixed by the stare of several pairs of interested eyes.
“Er – hello,” Gil said, halfway through the door and fighting an impulse to dive back out again. “I’m new – was told to report to Mr Bibley’s office at eight o’ clock?”
One of the men turned his head and shouted, “BibLEEEEEEEE!” at the top of his voice then nodded to Gil. “Sit down and take the weight off,” he suggested, pointing to a chair.
“Oh but …” Gil said.
“Sit,” came the emphatic instruction. The chair suddenly knocked into the back of Gil’s knees and a heavy hand on his shoulder guided him into it. There was a silence then, from behind the sandbags, came a burst of furious clucking.
“He’ll be with us momentarily,” a dark eyed witch said coolly and continued to study him. Gil looked back, enjoying the view, because she was a tall slender woman, with striking features and long beautiful hands, marred only by a yellow stain on her forefinger.
“If he’s busy,” Gil suggested, “I could come back later?”
“Oh, don’t you dare move,” she said, giving him a sultry glower, so he didn’t, although he did glance round when he heard a door open.
“Ah, so you found it then,” said a jovial voice and the two men from downstairs passed him, shedding their gloves and hoods. “Lettice, put the kettle on, there’s a dear. I’m fair parched.”
“Put it on yourself,” said the witch who had spoken before. “Black no sugar,” she added with a smirk.
One of the other witches sighed and began to get up but, before the kettle could be filled, the doors behind the screen opened. Gil sighed with relief to see the man who had interviewed him appear and lope towards them.
“Aren’t any of you loafers putting the kettle on?” Bibley demanded. “Damn it must be nearly eight o’ clock and the new charm fodder’s coming at half past. Got to make a good impression.” He stopped and stared at his staff. “What?” he said then focussed on Gil and flushed. “You’re early,” he said accusingly.
Gil recalled his letter of appointment that had said ‘report to the headquarters of the Experimental Charms Committee on Monday 13th March at eight am sharp’, and murmured an apology.
“Oh don’t apologise,” Bibley said, filling the kettle and drawing his wand. “Never apologise for keenness, that’s what I always say. I expect you know everyone by now?”
“Er, no,” Gil said. “I – er – don’t.”
“Merlin’s beard, you lot,” Bibley said. “Do I have to do everything? Introductions, please! Come on, who’s going to start?”
There was another one of the silences then the dark-eyed witch pausing in lighting a cigarette and gave Gil a smile. “Welcome to the Experimental Charms Committee,” she said, “I’m Lettice Bodkin, specialising in transportation charms. Build a better Portkey – you know.” She took a drag of dark gold smoke and let it back out and it fell from her rouged lips and crawled across the table towards her neighbour
The man beside her waved the smoke away and said, “Chorley Hambone, specialising in household charms though really Lettice is exaggerating. We all do a bit of everything. Don’t we, Jelly?”
That brought forth a grunt from the large man next to him who actually reached across the table to offer Gil his hand. “Name’s Bean,” he said, ignoring the other man. “James Bean – not Jumping or Runner or French or – anything else.” He shook Gil’s hand gravely, ignoring his wince.
The next Committee member piped up immediately. “Elis Morgan,” he said, his accent strongly Welsh. He nodded his round closely cropped head to Gil’s hand. “Medical spells are my thing and I think maybe I ought to look at that - James doesn’t know his own strength, see.”
Working his fingers Gil smiled at him then turned to the next person to speak, a jolly looking witch with toffee brown hair piled on her head like meringue. “Cally MacDougal,” she said, enthusiastically. “I do lights – and darks. Charms to do with lighting anyhow. And I’m REALLY excited about the news about the Quidditch World Cup. That will be a chance for us all to show our mettle.”
That got a chorus of rather grudging agreement from the rest of the crew and the last two introduced themselves quickly.
“Bradley Dingle, communications,” said a red headed young man with huge thick lensed glasses and the girl at his side nodded and said, “Janet Dingle, me too.” Her hand was fast in his and sported a thick wedding band, still with the gloss of newness upon it.
Gil smiled. “Congratulations,” he said and smiled again to see them both glow.
“So Gil,” Mr Bibley said. “We know you’re competent, your work record shows that. And we’ve seen that you’re interested in being at the cutting edge of charm formulation – some of your suggestions to your superiors were eerily innovative. And your reference from Professor Flitwick impressed us all. But we find people work best at what they are interested in, so to speak. So – where is your area of interest?”
“Um – I – I’m not sure,” Gil admitted. “I’m just interested in the structures, I guess. In the way altering a small part of a charm can strengthen or weaken it. How combining several charms in the right structural matrix can make something completely new.”
The people around the table were nodding and James Bean grunted approval.
“Ri-ight,” Bibley said. “Well for the moment you’d better help out wherever you can. Who wants an assistant? Ah – Elis, you got your hand up first. Okay maybe you can fill Gil in on what he needs to know?”
“I’ll do my best,” Elis said with a grin.
“Grand,” Bibley said. “And the first job of the day can be to make the tea. Milk and two please.”
###
Used to going to work, picking up his day’s assignments and fulfilling them as quickly as possible – his record for charming the highest number of Stenoquills in a day was going to be hard to beat - Gil found himself at a loose end that first day
He made tea and coffee, fetched hot pies from the canteen and took the heavily shielded street exit to nip along to the delicatessen to fetch the smoked salmon sandwiches that Lettice insisted upon. He helped clear up after ‘experiments, assisted in experiments, allowed other Committee members to talk endlessly about the charms they were hoping to achieve, listened to Janet’s plans to redecorate her and Bradley’s new home and fed and watered the Committee’s livestock, some of whom were so bizarrely affected by the spells practiced upon them that it was a little hard to see what they had once been.
However, this relative inactivity had its good points. Gil was able to work with each and every one of the committee members, get an idea where their strengths lay and what their quirks were and which subjects should be avoided at all costs.
For instance Bradley’s parents, the Dingles, and Janet’s, the Crabtrees, ‘did not get on’. Both Bradley and Janet mentioned it to him separately at different times so it was obviously bothering them.
Hambone and Bean when not bickering, were inclined to pranking. It hadn’t taken Gil long to realise that the incident with the sheep had been a put up job to try and scare him off but some of their other reported pranks – charming the bottom six inches of all the chair legs into rubbery flexibility, substituting see-more granules for sugar on the tea table so everyone saw in extreme magnification for an hour – struck him as less amusing.
Lettice smoked her revolting cigarettes almost continually, favouring a blend of wormwood and sativa that made everyone’s head spin if they sat down wind. Gil would have objected, if he hadn’t noticed, that without one to hold her hands shook and she got more irritable even than a tobacco addict going cold-muggle – something that wizards had long since learned to avoid.
Why she needed the support of the cigarettes he might never have known, Lettice certainly wasn’t saying – but plump motherly Cally took a great interest in all her colleagues and mentioned that Lettice had never been the same since her brother, Havelock, had been sent to Azkaban.
“He worked in Goblin Liaison,” Cally whispered. “Was implicated in that attempted robbery at Gringotts a couple of years ago. Attempted, so he got Azkaban instead of the goblins. He’ll be out in a year or two, thank goodness but I don’t think the Bodkins will ever live it down.”
Cally herself was married to an upland farmer and flooed home every night to their home in the Cheviots. Her interest in everyone’s business, which might have been put down to sheer nosiness, seemed to Gil to be no more than the genuine concern shown by those who lived the sparsely inhabited rural areas of Britain. His own upbringing in a country district had inured him to the inquisition in the Muggle village shop when he made his regular trips home and the few witches and wizards were even worse for gossip.
Another one who could talk and talk was Elis, but his words were usually directed to himself. “Ah now, see, this is where it needs to go,” he’d murmur. “No, there. Now what do you think that will do, lovely? What, what? Ah now we have it!”
The first morning Gil worked with Elis he kept trying to answer the questions but by midmorning tea break he’d got the hang of remaining silent and was quietly fiddling with medical charms of his own.
Mr Bingley turned out to be a surprise.
For a start his name wasn’t Bingley at all but Gerimander Ogden, and his particular interest was in charming livestock to achieve unusual, and sometimes bizarre, effects. Flossie the blue and red striped sheep was a particular pet of his and was often to be found following him about the building. Like all the others Gil grew used to ducking when a flight of charmed sheep droppings whizzed past his head on their way to the nearest window.
“But,” Gil said to Elis on the Friday afternoon, “he SAID his name was Bibley. At the interview. The man from Wizard Resources who read me my Rights and Responsibilities called him Bibley and so did the stenowitch who recorded the interview.”
Elis nodded as he continued to adjust the structure of an eight level analgesia spell. “That’s because, for the past two weeks, he HAS been Mr Bibley. Next week it’s Chorley’s turn.” He looked up as Gil remained silent and reached out and gently closed his mouth. “Don’t want a memo to fly in it, now, do we?”
“So …” Gil blinked. “So you all take it in turns to be Mr Bibley? Don’t they notice?”
Elis chuckled. “As long as there is a Mr Bibley – he’s on the official lists as Head of the Committee - they’re usually so glad to get out of here the same shape they came in that it doesn’t occur to them to worry. Gil – you haven’t realised what you’ve got yourself into, have you, lad?” He put his pen down and shook his head. “This is the Committee for Experimental Charms. As long as we keep coming up with the goods nobody cares what we do, or how we do it. Any idea you have, no matter how bizarre, no matter how potentially dangerous, is perfectly valid.”
He grinned. “Within these four walls – and under this rather well ventilated roof – we can do as we like, on condition that what we do stays within these walls. In fact, other than the Aurors and the Unspeakables we’re the only Ministry department allowed to use Unforgivable Curses on a daily basis.”
“If we can’t use them ….” Gil said quietly.
“We’ll never find a counter for them,” Elis agreed. “And that, boy, is something we’d all like to find.
“Yes,” Gil said, his face sober but his eyes bright. “That’s really something to work for.”
Elis nodded approvingly. “Great – that’s you sorted then but for now, nip down to the canteen and fetch me a Danish will you. All this thinking is hard work.”
Gil nodded and got up but before he left the room he pointed to the parchment Elis had been scrawling on. “Localised chilling charm just … there,” he said pointing to one part of the diagram. “It’ll slow the blood loss down and encourage clotting. Won’t do much for an arterial cut but a venous one it would help.”
Elis looked and grunted then nodded slowly. “Yeah so it would,” he said and dug in his pocket for a galleon. He flicked it, winking gold, to Gil. “Two danishes,” he said, “and get something for yourself.”
“Thanks, Elis,” Gil said and made for the door, ducking another shower of sheep shit as he went.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 10:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-11 07:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-11 11:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 03:28 am (UTC)I love Gil, and you've given the rest of the department lovely distinct personalities that I can't wait to get to know better!
*cough* Though there's a Bingley or two in there where I think it should be Bibley.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-11 07:45 am (UTC)Thanks for the support. I think I'll have fun writing this but it's a long term thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-03 10:24 am (UTC)Teehee, I love this. But then, I always do. So easy to please, me...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-11 07:48 am (UTC)