Autumn had not yet arrived according to the calendar but a sudden drizzling rain had swept across the countryside and brought with it a piercing cold that made the villagers of St. Catchpole feel the desolation of deep autumn long before its appointed time.
As far as the eye could see in any direction, the sky was smothered in grey.
At the eastern edge of the small wizarding village, before an old oak tree stood a crooked three-story wooden house.
The structure leaned slightly to the left. Paint peeled from its old boards in long strips, exposing grey wood underneath. The windows were small and smudged; their glass were distorted with age.
Yvonne stood motionless in the doorway gazing worriedly toward the Weasel Hill in the distance.
In spring and summer, during better times, the green grass swaying gracefully across those gentle slopes in the breeze had always been a sight to ease the soul and lift the spirits.
Yvonne had often paused in her work to gaze at that pleasant scene, finding a moment of peace in its simple beauty. But now, through the heavy curtain of rain that fell in sheets, that same grass looked suffocating in its darkness.
The grass stems were bent and broken by the relentless water, flattened against the earth in swirling patterns that spoke of the wind's violence.
The image pressed down on the chest, making breathing feel difficult, adding to the general atmosphere of oppression and decline.
Yvonne's stiff, unfocused gaze shifted gradually down and fell upon the fields at the hill's foot—those fields that should have been bustling with activity as farmers prepared for harvest.
Instead, they lay equally listless and neglected in the cold rain, crops were rotting where they stood for lack of workers to bring them in. Her already dark expression grew darker.
Bank after bank of heavy cloud rolled past over her head, borne along by the howling wind that tore at everything in its path. Even the ancient oak tree before the door thrashed and creaked wildly.
But Yvonne did not move from her position in the doorway. She stood and stared intently at the fields below Weasel Hill, her mind clearly elsewhere, wrestling with thoughts she could share with no one—Until—
A sudden, sharp smell of scorching flooded her nostrils without warning. Yvonne's smoke-stained face went pale. Her eyes widened with alarm. She spun around with a strangled gasp and rushed back into the kitchen.
In her panic, her mind wasn't working properly. Years of muscle memory took over, and she reached directly for the heavy iron pot on the stove.
"Hiss!"
The handle burned her hand viciously, sending sharp pain lancing up her arm. She jerked back with a cry, cradling her injured hand against her chest, tears springing to her eyes from the pain.
Eyes darting around the kitchen in rising desperation, seeking something, she could use to rescue the ruined meal, Yvonne's frantic gaze landed by accident on the windowsill beside the old iron stove.
There, half-buried under a pile of kitchen rags and forgotten behind a cracked earthenware jar, lay an old wand, bristling with loose feathers that stuck out at odd angles, thick with the accumulated dust.
Without much thought, she snatched the wand up in her good hand and gave it a sharp flick—
Bang!
With a tremendous crack, the lid was blown clean off the pot as if by an explosion. It shot up with tremendous force, trailing steam and droplets of scalding water, and lodged itself deep into the wooden ceiling above—punching through the floorboards of the first floor with a splintering crash. The stew itself—blackened beyond recognition, reeking of char and burnt vegetables toppled sideways across the stovetop. The thick, ruined liquid poured directly over the cooking flames with a sharp, violent hissing and sizzling that sent up clouds of pungent steam.
Yvonne stood frozen, still holding the wand, staring at the destruction she'd wrought with horror.
"What on earth are you doing, Yvonne?" A man's voice, rough with concern and confusion, cut through the kitchen chaos.
A middle-aged wizard stepped out of the fireplace set into the far wall of the kitchen. His hair was dripping wet, plastered to his skull. His heavy work robes were soaked completely through. He looked like he'd been working in the rain for hours without shelter.
The sight of the chaotic stovetop—the missing lid, the spilled stew, the clouds of steam, his wife standing there looking stricken with the wand in her hand left the middle-aged man momentarily stunned into speechless incomprehension.
John was dark-skinned from years of outdoor labor. His hands were enormous, rough-knuckled and calloused from a lifetime of physical work.
Then he came to understand strode ahead with a shake of his head. Grabbing a nearby cleaning rag to pad his palm against the residual heat, he righted the fallen pot and assessed what could be salvaged.
He managed to save perhaps half of the stewed potatoes—the portion that hadn't burned to complete inedibility or spilled across the stove.
He swirled the pot gently, peering at the blackened crust adhering stubbornly to the bottom in the dim light that came through the grimy kitchen window.
His wrinkled brow furrowed with concern.
"I lost my head—" Yvonne said sadly, her face was crumpling with guilt and self-blame. "I was trying to use the wand to lift the pot lid, just to check on the food. I haven't used magic properly in years, and I forgot how much force—I'm so sorry, John. I think I've completely ruined our lunch."
Her voice broke slightly on the last words.
"It's not that bad, honestly." John drew a long breath, forcing his voice to remain calm and reassuring. He turned to his wife with a smile. "Look—there's plenty left for both of us—"
His gaze drifted up to the pot lid now embedded in the ceiling. He added, "I've got time this afternoon anyway, it seems—I can patch those second-floor boards and that damned leaking roof while I'm at it. Might as well fix everything at once, eh?"
Yvonne gave a small nod of acknowledgment. She tossed the wand back onto the windowsill, wiped her reddened hands on her grease-darkened, food-stained apron, and said softly: "Sit down for a moment. Let me get this mess cleaned up properly. It won't take long."
John nodded his agreement and drew from his loose trouser pocket an old tobacco pipe, its bowl was worn smooth and dark from years of use by his calloused hands.
After a few experimental puffs that made the pipe gurgle unpleasantly, it began to breathe clouds of murky grey smoke that added to the general gloom of the kitchen.
He wandered slowly to the doorway, still trailing wisps of smoke, and stood looking out at the wind and rain engulfing the world beyond their threshold.
The storm showed no signs of abating; if anything, it seemed to be intensifying as the afternoon wore on.
His troubled gaze settled once more on Weasel Hill—now transformed by distance and weather into nothing more than a vast, looming shadow against the grey sky. A shadow of worry crossed his face.
"By the way, where's Bona? Is she upstairs in her room?"
He turned to look back at his wife, still busy in the kitchen trying to salvage their lunch and clean up the spilled stew from the stovetop and floor.
"Before the rain came this morning, she went up the slope to play with the Lovegood girl. Our Bona's very fond of her."
Yvonne's voice was distracted, most of her attention on scrubbing burnt food from the pot.
"Luna?" John thought for a moment, his brow were furrowing with puzzlement. "But isn't she at Hogwarts? Term should still be—"
"It's the summer holidays, John," Yvonne interrupted gently, pausing in her cleaning to give him a look.
She noticed the unease flickering in his eyes. She added quickly, her voice taking on a reassuring tone: "The Lovegoods are good people, John. You know that. They'll feed Bona lunch. And they won't…"
Her last words faded to almost nothing, the sentence was left incomplete.
But John knew exactly what she hadn't said. His eyes hardened at the unspoken words. He raised his voice, jaw tight with displeasure and defensive anger: "Nothing's been decided yet, Yvonne! The girl is only six years old—she still has a chance."
"Oh, of course! That's exactly what I think too!" Yvonne said quickly.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the dim room like fog. Neither of them wanted to voice the fear they both carried.
Yvonne set the salvaged, distinctly unappetizing lunch on their table. John washed his hands under the cold rainwater dripping steadily from the eaves outside the door and wiped them carelessly on his robes before sitting down heavily at the table.
The stew was oppressively rich in the worst possible way—salty and bitter in equal measure, with an underlying taste of char.
Both of them ate without a word, forcing the food down more from necessity than any actual appetite. They had no capacity for pleasure in food today, or any day lately. Eating had become merely a requirement for survival.
After eating as quickly as she could stomach it, Yvonne rose and went to the stove. She brewed John a cup of tea with the water still boiling in the kettle.
But John took no notice of the tea or the gesture. He continued to stare in brooding silence at Weasel Hill, now barely visible as a vast, dark shape through the thickening rain that had begun to fall even harder than before.
The downpour created a grey wall between their house and the rest of the world.
Watching him sit like that, Yvonne pressed her lips together tightly. The cloudiness in her eyes deepened, fear and resignation mixing together. She already knew what he was about to say.
"The workshop still can't reopen," John said finally, as if speaking only to himself.
Yvonne's tone held no real surprise—she'd suspected as much from his mood, though she asked the question anyway, needing to hear the details.
"The Daily Prophet said that while the duel between Mr. Watson and You-Know-Who destroyed Diagon Alley, the fighting didn't spread to the industrial—"
"That's got nothing to do with it!" John's voice sharpened suddenly. His thick knuckles rapped against the table in quick, urgent beats that made the teacup rattle.
"It's Mr. Greengrass. The Ministry of Magic has issued an arrest warrant for him. They're saying that he's a Death Eater, that he was directly involved in the Diagon Alley battle fighting on You-Know-Who's side. They're calling him a war criminal."
The anxiety that flared suddenly in Yvonne's eyes was genuine now. She was truly frightened now, not just worried. This was worse than she'd imagined.
"But what does that have to do with the workshop closing?" Her voice climbed higher, turning shrill with panic and incomprehension. "Don't tell me—surely they can't—just because the Ministry thinks Mr. Greengrass is a Death Eater, they've shut down the entire broom workshop? That makes no sense!"
"It wasn't the Ministry who shut us down," John clarified, though his voice remained tight with fury.
He had no desire to burden his wife with troubles that could only multiply her pain and fear—yet he couldn't hold back the information, couldn't keep the anger from spilling over.
"The Greengrass family shut down the workshop themselves. One of their representatives came forward with an official statement."
John's jaw worked as he forced himself to continue:
"They said the Ministry's warrant and the public accusations have severely damaged the family's reputation beyond repair, and by extension the workshop's reputation along with it. Orders have been cancelled in droves. Clients don't want products associated with a Death Eater family, you understand."
He paused, swallowing hard against the bitterness rising in his throat.
"They claimed they simply can't continue operations under these circumstances, that the financial losses would be catastrophic. So they're being forced—forced, they said, as if they had no choice!—to suspend operations indefinitely. Reopening date to be announced at some unspecified future time."
John's fists clenched until his knuckles cracked.
"And it's not just our broom workshop, Yvonne. It's spreading like a plague. The cauldron forge where the two Shear brothers work—good men, both of them, with families to feed—that's been shut down too. Same reason given, same official statement. Of all the businesses in that whole industrial district—the only one that's completely unaffected is the Learner-Machine workshop."
Though she'd had some vague sense of how bad the situation was becoming, hearing it laid out like this in brutal detail still filled Yvonne with dread.
"Then… then…." She stared at her husband, his eyes were burning with fury, and couldn't get any more words out. Her mind was spinning with terrible calculations.
Clang!
"The Ministry owes us an explanation!" John's fist came down on the table with a thunderous crack that made the dishes jump and sent tea slopping over the rim of his cup.
His voice was rough with resolve and suppressed rage.
"The Ministry?" Yvonne was genuinely lost now, confused by the direction of his anger. "But you just said it was the Greengrass family who—"
"We can't get anywhere near those high-and-mighty pureblood lords, can we?!" John's face was hard as stone, his expression showed bitter determination.
"The Ministry is the only door we can knock on. And frankly, Yvonne, I don't care anymore about any of their grand principles—the fight against tyranny, the battle against evil, all of that high-minded rhetoric. I don't care if it's Watson or You-Know-Who or anyone else running the Ministry at this point."
His eyes blazed, "All I want is a decent life for our families. A job that pays. Food on the table. That's it. That's all we're asking for. But if it was the Ministry's war against You-Know-Who that put the workshop out of business, then they are responsible for making it right."
John's voice rose almost near a shout, "I can tell you this, Yvonne—we're already making plans—"
"You're making plans?!" Yvonne surged forward and seized his rough hands in both of hers. Tears of panic welled in her eyes and began streaming down her face.
"You—are you actually thinking of standing against the Ministry? Against Mr. Watson himself? John, this—this is madness! Are you trying to get yourself killed?!"
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