Paragraph 3 - 39 : The Double Deal

When Judith woke up the following morning, she was eager to hear from her parents what was their call. On reaching the breakfast table, at which her parents were already seated, finishing their meal, she asked tentatively :

So ?

Her father answered :

There is a lot for us to tell you, and we don't have enough time to do so now, therefore we will talk during dinner about it

This left Judith in an anxious state of mind that would persist all day. She was unusually absent minded, for she wondered whether her father secretive stance in the morning was good news or bad news. Did her parents need time to put Judith back on down-to-earth tracks and to tell her she should leave things as they are ? Did they rather envision taking time to warn her before letting her act ? At lunch, her parents were not home, and she started pouring water in her glass. But her train of thought was making her drift away so much that she stayed before the tap during two whole minutes, without noticing that her glass wasn't beneath the tap, and that water was in the meantime going down the drain. In the evening, when dinner time was coming closer and closer, she got at the same time worried and excited, very much like during the past night. Finally, they were all around the table, ready to start having dinner. Her father dipped his hand in his pocket, and retrieved from it a parchment, before reading it and saying :

We will allow you to go and look for information about the disappearance mentioned in the Daily Prophet involving Peter Perklus, if you get the approval of people working for the Department of Control of Underage Sorcery. They will most likely set forth strict conditions. If you are then ready to abide by the corresponding rules, you will be free to perform the kind of magic that is legal for a student fresh from Hogwarts, yet only during a limited time, and only as long as it is related to the Peter Perklus case

There was a short pause, which let mixed feelings develop in Judith's mind. She had overcome one obstacle, but there was now another, bigger one to face. Overall, she was hopeful, though. Getting support from her father and gaining entry to the Ministry, even if that was only to attend an intimidating hearing, was already a little accomplishment. She nodded in approval. Her father concluded :

I will give you a date for your appointment with the Department of Underage Sorcery as soon as my colleagues there make a potential date known to me

The dinner then proceeded in silence. While the quietness of the previous day's evening was mostly a result of embarrassment, the lack of conversation this time was due to a steeply mounting amount of seriousness. Two days elapsed, without Judith getting an appointment at the Department of Control of Underage Sorcery, which made her worry that the people at the Ministry could be just looking down on a request that originated from a teenage witch. Finally, her father passed on her a date and a time for the hearing. It would take place in a week. Judith recalled the numerous conversations in which her father had bemoaned the slow pace that would come with every decision, whether important or insignificant. Therefore, she considered that a week's delay was not overkill, although it would give her seven days less to try and perform her own amateur investigation. She had not communicated through embroidery with the three others, because she feared one or several of them would attempt to deter her from going on with her plan, and that would generate an additional embarrassment. Days went by slowly, while Judith was waiting for her appointment at the Ministry. She didn't feel like doing anything, except pacing in her bedroom. The hearing was at 11am, on a Wednesday. Judith would have liked having an opinion from her mother about what she should wear in such formal circumstances, but her mother was a Muggle, so she couldn't tell what would be acceptable formal attire at an official hearing at the Ministry of Magic. Judith thought it was ridiculous to have to take into account one's dress in order to be taken seriously, in spite of the fact that one could be gifted with a sense of fashion and of what was appropriate wear while being a terrible investigator. In the end, she had to request advice from her father, which was yet again slightly embarrassing. She opted for a blue robe with a white collar and her Hufflepuff tie hidden behind the robe. In the mind of fourteen-year old Judith, this was sober and elegant. Furthermore, her father agreed that the ensemble looked good, and he was positive she was lovely in it. However, Judith didn't know if her father was an adequate judge. Once again, mixed feelings pervaded her mind. She liked her dress, but was worried people at the Ministry would find it unsuitable or frivolous. Were the collar and the tie a bit too much ? Anyway, it was now too late to regret or complain. Both Judith and her father travelled by Floo powder to the Ministry. Judith's father gave her the directions for the location where the hearing would take place, then went to the gates of one of the Ministry's entrances where he would spend his day working. Judith used the lifts to go to the ascribed corridor, hoping she would then have time to get in the mood for what would be some sort of screening. On her way, she looked at the wizards and witches, especially the witches, to check if her chosen dress looked in line with the standards regarding appearance at the Ministry. Judith felt reassured, given that she saw witches clad in very fanciful pairings, including one who was confidently wearing a pink silky skirt falling under the knees and what might be a pale green tunic on top of it with matching hat. Nobody seemed to notice her, which was probably a good sign. The corridor which gave access to the room where she would be interviewed was unremarkable, except for the walls, the bricks of which emulated brown wood, not black stone. To create a contrast, the doors' surface looked like it was made of a thin film of black stone. Since there was no chair nor bench to sit in the corridor, Judith leaned on the wall with her back to it. She had expected other people to be waiting for a hearing too, but actually, she just saw wizards and witches opening doors, walking up and down the corridor, and closing doors shut behind them. 11am came, but nobody with it. The minutes elapsed, and Judith wondered anxiously if she had been waiting more than two hours at the wrong spot. Maybe the look of the corridor, and the absence of people waiting, had been telltale signs that she was at the wrong place ? She started casting glances feverishly around her to see hopefully confirmation she had followed her father's instructions. Did the voice, when the lift stopped at this level, say 'Department of Control of Underage Sorcery' or something else ? She hadn't even paid attention. Or she had, but had forgotten shortly after, blissfully satisfied of having seemingly reached her destination. If she had made a mistake, several fuming officials were probably waiting for her far away from here, and they had already made a decision : why would you expect a teenager who didn't respect the time of the Ministry's workers to abide by 'strict conditions' ? The interview would be short, the atmosphere sinister and the remarks scathing. It was at that point that a wizard and a witch chatting merrily, each of them clasping files in their hands, closed in on Judith. When they were within one meter of Judith, the witch asked her :

Are you Miss Parry ?

Judith nodded. The wizard moved past Judith, pushed the door next to which she had been waiting, entered the room, and bewitched the lights on. The witch told Judith :

Come in, please

Judith entered the room, where the wizard had sat on a chair facing a desk, his files now lying in front of him on said desk. This was apparently a very basic meeting room. There were wooden tables along the walls, and chairs stacked on top of each other almost everywhere. And in the middle, a desk with two pairs of chairs, each pair facing the other at the opposite end of the desk. The desk was wide and large, which meant that, when Judith sat opposite the wizard, she was almost seven feet away from him. The witch was last to cross the threshold. She closed the door behind her, went to sit next to the wizard, and put her own files on the desk, as the wizard had done. She said :

I am Amantha Presty, and my colleague is Robert Irwinning

The interview could now begin. They asked a lot of questions, Mrs. Presty being mostly smiling, Mr. Irwinning being essentially expressionless. Apparently, they wanted to make sure that Judith had not acted on a whim, for example that she knew and understood the public elements of the case. They were also curious about Judith's personality, especially actions or traits which would help them categorise her as responsible or not. Here Judith's cautious nature was quite an asset. She of course stopped short of mentioning the three others, and the kind of things they had done together. Giving these very relevant pieces of information would have shown that Judith had started deviating from her usual careful self, even though it was just to follow the group in their more or less bold enterprises. At long last, after an hour or so of interrogation, they looked at each other briefly, apparently to make sure they agreed on the final decision. When they both turned around to face once again Judith, the witch enunciated the list of rules Judith would have to follow to get clearance : she shouldn't go to the place where the victim had disappeared, interview people from the Ministry, members of the Perklus family, or members of the victim's family, withhold any information that could be useful to the Aurors, do anything that could jeopardise the Ministry's investigation, nor obviously use dark magic. All of this restricted so much Judith's possibilities that, had she not had the Intuition Potion as a resource in reserve, she would have been prevented from doing anything helpful. But she had the potion's recipe. Therefore she smiled back at the witch and said :

That sounds fine to me

Something else brought her immediately back to reality, though, for the witch concluded :

We will have a contract ready in three full working days, thus you should go back Tuesday to sign it, get it stamped, and have it registered with the clerk at the Office of Magical Law Enforcement

Judith was reminded of what her father had once said

If manufacturing delays and procedures were a profitable business, the Ministry would not have to levy a single tax

Yet, Judith had made a lot of progress. She would have the Ministry's official approval the following week, and when she would go back there to have this contract signed, stamped and registered, she wouldn't need to wring her mind about the dress she had to wear. This one would be perfect.