Cheers, congratulations, and praise swirled above the arrival plaza with no sign of dying down.
It wasn't only to celebrate for the Ministry's remarkable resolution of the afternoon's crisis. It was also for the other heartening announcement Bryan Watson had just made, almost as an afterthought, in the midst of the impromptu press conference that had assembled itself around him.
"—What I can tell you," his voice rang out, clear and pitched to reach the back rows of the gathered crowd with the same clarity it reached the journalists pressed close at the front,
"is that the Ministry of Magic, under Minister Bones, has never lost sight of the people's welfare. The Ministry will be issuing living subsidies to low-income families throughout wizarding Britain, calculated on a household basis. We are currently working to compile a registry of all permanently resident British wizarding families, and I am confident you will see this policy put into practice very soon."
As expected, the declaration sent a wave crashing through the crowd, Bryan's expression never wavered from its faint, composed smile throughout any of it.
"Oh—subsidies for low-income families—" A reporter with golden curls, her quill already moving across her notepad at pace, cried out with excitement. "I can't believe the Ministry would actually do this! Can I ask—is there any chance this policy could be implemented before the year is out, Mr. Watson?"
"I won't deceive you." Bryan said honestly. "This year is almost certainly out of reach. The Ministry's aim is to have the poverty household registry established and the first round of subsidies disbursed no later than June of next year."
.....
"Subsidies for low-income families…"
At the back of the crowd, in a cluster of young witches and wizards who had drifted somewhat apart from the main press of bodies, Ron murmured the words to himself while lost in a daze.
"Unbelievable." He shook his head slowly. "Mum's going to be over the moon."
"Oh, this probably won't apply to your family, Ron—"
Hermione was gazing up at Professor Watson on the platform with admiration as she spoke without much thought.
"Professor Watson wouldn't let you slip through a loophole."
'A loophole?!'
Harry blinked, slightly startled by the phrasing, and turned to look at Ron whose face had already begun assembling itself into a scowl with impressive speed.
"What's that supposed to mean, Hermione? You're saying my family would be cheating?"
"Oh—sorry, Ron, that came out wrong—"
Hermione caught herself immediately and looked at him with a flicker of remorse as she registered exactly how the sentence had landed.
"What I meant was—well, objectively speaking, Mr. Weasley's salary isn't actually that low, is it? It's a respectable Ministry position. The reason things are tight for your family is because, er—"
"Ah. Right." Ron nodded slowly. His face had gone flat. "Because there are too many of us."
Harry pressed his lips together hard, working to suppress a smile.
"So then, Mr. Watson—how will the Ministry define a low-income family?"
A reporter's question, ringing out clearly from the main crush near the platform pulled the little group's attention back toward the platform.
"The precise threshold is still under discussion," Bryan replied. "The preliminary figure under consideration is an annual household income below one hundred and fifty Galleons. As for the specific subsidy amounts, those will require a series of complex and detailed calculations involving household size, regional cost variations, and several other factors. I'm afraid I cannot speak to specifics just yet."
For families who had lived in poverty for years, this policy would be nothing short of a lifeline.
Though Bryan had made clear that he could say no more on the specifics, the reporters pressed forward regardless, peppering him with questions about every conceivable angle and detail with the relentless, undiscourageable energy.
"Does the Ministry have further support policies planned for lower-income groups, Mr. Watson?"
One reporter waved an arm with considerable vigour to catch Bryan's attention over the heads of his colleagues.
"Now that is an interesting question."
Bryan gave the young reporter an approving look. Then he raised one hand and directed the crowd's attention toward the open fields spreading below the platform, golden-yellow and flecked with touches of green.
"I believe you have all heard: the reconstruction of Diagon Alley is set to break ground very soon."
He let his gaze move across the crowd, taking them in.
"What I can tell you is that this is an incomprehensibly vast undertaking. Nothing of its kind has ever been attempted in the recorded history of magical civilisation not in Britain, and as far as the Ministry's researchers have been able to determine, not anywhere. The projected timeline, at a preliminary and almost certainly conservative estimate, could stretch across several decades."
A murmur moved through the crowd at the scale of the number.
"For a project of this magnitude, the Ministry cannot simply assign its own staff to the work, the way it did for last year's Quidditch World Cup venue. Only a small number of Ministry wizards can be spared for supervisory and guidance roles within the construction effort.
The actual labour will require drawing heavily on the labour of the low-magic community within wizarding Britain. I believe this will not only breathe life into the lower end of the employment market but also improve the living standards of the many low-income families who choose to take part."
The sheer accumulated weight of the announcements Bryan kept producing, one after another with barely a pause between them, hadn't numbed the reporters in the slightest if anything, each new revelation seemed to sharpen their attention rather than dull it.
They questioned him with tireless, almost competitive enthusiasm, each one trying to extract some additional fragment of detail before anyone else could claim it, giving him no natural opening to declare the impromptu press conference at an end.
In the end, it was the weather that came to his rescue.
A dark cloud, drifting with indifference moved across the sky until it settled directly over their heads, blotting out the sun and scattering a merciful, sudden coolness over the crowd below.
Most of the workshop operators Bryan had invited to the negotiating table had already departed through the fireplaces, back to whatever remained of their afternoons, presumably to begin the considerable work of processing what they had just agreed to.
A handful remained, however, scattered through the edges of the crowd, listening with sullen, unhappy expressions as Bryan continued to sing the praises of the Ministry's benevolent new policies to an audience that, for once, seemed entirely inclined to believe him.
The villagers from the march had been escorted back to the Ministry by Kingsley and Sirius.
An attack on the life of the Minister for Magic was a matter of the gravest consequence regardless of the marchers' own innocence in its planning, and the Aurors were bound by both procedure and prudence to screen every last participant, however unlikely their involvement
One could already picture, with some sympathy, the long nights ahead for the Auror Office. It would not be a quick process, however clear the eventual conclusion.
When Bryan Watson finally announced that the press conference was concluded, the arrival plaza erupted at once in a chorus of protests and disappointed groans.
"Let's go—"
Much as she would clearly have liked to stay and absorb every remaining detail of the afternoon's extraordinary developments, Hermione knew Professor Watson's habits well enough by now to recognise when further pursuit was futile.
He had said what he intended to say, and not a single word further would be extracted from him today regardless of effort expended. She sighed faintly and looked toward Harry and Ron.
"I left everything at Flourish and Blotts before all this started. I need you both to come with me to collect my things."
"Oh, can't you go on your own?"
Lavender, who had remained attached to Ron's arm with the tenacity of a barnacle through the entire press conference, made no particular effort to conceal her irritation at Hermione issuing orders to her boyfriend.
"I really do need to go back to Flourish and Blotts, Lavender—"
The glance Hermione directed her way carried a weight of contempt that was, Harry thought, fairly impressive given how briefly it lasted.
Ron, watching this exchange happen across him, flushed scarlet to the very tips of his ears and hurried to interject before the temperature of the conversation could rise any further.
"Harry and I still haven't bought our new textbooks and supplies either!"
"I'd like to come along—"
Luna offered this.
She seemed, Harry thought, watching her, in extraordinarily good spirits for someone who had spent the last several hours disguised as a man, held a knife to Harry's throat in public, and very nearly died beside a pair of human bombs.
"I need to buy new books too. But I didn't bring very much money with me—"
Hermione took Luna's hand with affection.
Hermione took Luna's hand with a warmth.
It was only then that Harry remembered that he hadn't bought his own books either. Malfoy and Borgin and Burkes, and the alchemical device, and the cursed necklace, and everything that had happened in that dim, cluttered shop before the explosion derailed the entire afternoon had thoroughly interrupted that particular errand.
He thought briefly about mentioning it now, then decided to wait until tonight, back at Grimmauld Place, before telling Hermione and Ron what had happened.
"Oh, by the way—"
Watching Ron lean down to murmur something into Lavender's ear, Harry had no clear idea why, but Ginny's face flashed through his mind.
He didn't think anything of it. He only asked, as if the thought had just occurred to him:
"Has anyone seen Fred and George? Mrs. Weasley was with Ginny earlier, going shopping—where would they all be now?"
Ron's face went pale with speed.
"Fred and George can look after themselves—they always do, the gits." He waved that part of the concern away easily enough.
"But Mum and Ginny—if they were out shopping when the riot started, they might've Apparated straight back to the Burrow the moment things went bad. And then when she couldn't find any of us, couldn't get word that we were all right—"
He grimaced picturing a very particular kind of trouble arriving at his front door. "She's going to be furious."
"Would you like me to smooth things over with your mum, darling?"
Lavender, still practically fused to Ron's arm, gazed up at him with an expression that contained actual visible stars, entirely undeterred by the prospect of meeting Molly Weasley in a state of maternal fury for the first time.
Harry summoned every ounce of willpower available to him in order not to laugh outright.
He could not conceive of a single way Lavender's presence would stop Mrs. Weasley from losing her temper.
"That's a fair point—someone should go back to the Burrow and let her know we're all in one piece, before she works herself into a state."
Hermione said it with worry creeping audibly into her voice. Then she turned her gaze, deliberately, onto Harry.
Harry understood perfectly why he'd been chosen. Lavender was here; clearly Ron was no longer available to be dispatched to deliver reassurance to his own furious mother. Hermione had her books to collect. Luna and Lavender were not, in either case, the natural choice.
Which left him.
Rolling his eyes — discreetly, Harry gave a single nod.
"Fine. I'll be back in a moment. Stay here and wait for me—"
He set off toward the nearest fireplace.
"And where do you think you're going, Mr. Potter?"
The voice came out of nowhere, rooting Harry to the spot.
"Ah—Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, Miss Brown, and Miss Lovegood as well?"
Bryan stood a dozen feet away from the small group of young witches and wizards, smiling with a depth that was peculiar and entirely unreadable, and entirely aware of the curious eyes that had already begun turning toward this new development from every direction.
The press conference might have officially concluded, but a significant portion of the crowd had not yet dispersed.
"What a remarkable coincidence," Bryan said, "finding you all here."
And so it was that the bystanders who had remained in the vicinity of the plaza witnessed a curious sight: a row of Hogwarts students drawing themselves up, almost in unison, into a posture of perfectly still, meek anxiety.
'When was the last time we got into trouble? '
Harry stared at his own shoes, genuinely trying to remember the most recent precedent for this particular feeling.
"Come along—"
Bryan gave a cool, quiet laugh and beckoned to them with one hand.
"Let's find somewhere more private to talk."
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