Ginny Weasley sat in Gawain Robards’s office one November day, waiting for the Head of Aurors to make an appearance at a meeting they were to be having. She was quite frustrated with Gawain at the moment, considering they were supposed to have been done with the meeting at least a half hour ago. And she was late for dinner with Harry (David was out of town on business for the Ministry).

Gawain, tall and middle aged, with silver white hair already, stepped into his office, completely out of breath. His forehead was glistening with sweat and he couldn’t seem to keep his glasses from falling to the edge of his nose. He turned round and jumped at the sight of Ginny.

“Weasley!” he said surprised.

“You’re like an hour late Mr. Robards,” she said, pointing at the clock on the wall.

“Oh, yes, please forgive me. I got caught up at a lunch,” he apologized.

“Oh.”

“I was with your brother actually,” he told her, sitting down at his desk. He took out a cloth and started cleaning his glasses.

“Which brother?”

“Percy.”

“Why?” Ginny asked disgustedly.

“Well I like to keep up with the other departments within the Ministry.”

“Oh.”

“And he told me uh…that…well, this special task force thing that I’ve got you on…well, that we should stop doing it.”

“Why? It’s perfectly legal.”

“Yes, it is. But we don’t have the documents to prove it,” Gawain told her.

“What?”

“We don’t have them!”

“Mr. Robards, I’ve been risking my neck digging up information on high ranking Ministry officials that include the Minister himself, Edward Frisby, Cornelius Fudge, my brother, their families, the Wizengamot court members and their families and you’re telling me we don’t have the documents to prove that we’re allowed to do this!”

“Ginny, when this force was created, it was 1979. You weren’t even born yet, were you?”

“I was born in ‘81.”

“So see, it was a long time ago. And…well, what happened was the Aurors at the time wanted to make sure no corruption ever happened within the Ministry ever again. So, the people who created it had an in with the Minister at the time, so passing the legislation was no big deal. It allowed the Aurors to conduct investigations like these without Ministry consent. The only problem is, none of the Aurors that verified the existence of the legislation are either dead or indisposed.”

“What about the former Minister who passed it?”

“It’s Frank Longbottom the III. He was killed by Death Eaters not even a month before Voldemort disappeared.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The official paper is missing. Your brother just told me. He noticed that he’s been followed a lot and--”

“I haven’t been following him.”
“Well whoever it was obviously wasn’t doing that good of a job.”

“Okay. So what do we do?”

“We try and find a carbon copy of that legislation. It had the Minister’s signature on it as well as four Aurors who witnessed the passing of it. And Dumbledore’s signature as a Court member to witness it.”

“Who was there?”

“Frank Longbottom, that’s the indisposed one.”

“Who else?”

“Kiera Michaels. Dead. Natalia Myers. Dead. Lily Potter-- who would‘ve been Evans at the time. Dead.”

“Harry might have a carbon copy of it somewhere,” Ginny surmised out loud.

Mr. Robards’s eyes widened with excitement. “Do you ever see him?”

“Sometimes,” Ginny lied.

“So it wouldn’t be a problem if you went and got it,” Mr. Robards asked hopefully.

“No. Probably not. I mean, I don’t know if he has it, but--”
“It’s worth a shot,” Mr. Robards said, getting up to help Ginny from her chair. “Listen to me, if I don’t get that paper by the end of the day, I am dead. Do you understand me?”

“Yes sir,” Ginny answered.

“And if that happens, if I die, I want you to find out who did it, and start investigating.”

“Yes sir.”

“I told you that I was part of a task force, didn’t I?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, my job is to investigate high ranking Ministry officials and their families to see if there is any suspicious activity with Death Eaters. The only thing is, usually when Aurors conduct investigations like this, the Ministry has to approve. But, in 1979, your mother was present when the Minister approved a piece of legislation that would let the Aurors conduct investigations like these without Ministry consent.”

“But why is this suddenly a problem?”

“Percy realized someone was following him one night and then did some digging of his own I guess. He just threatened to have my boss killed unless he came up with the proper documents. So here I am, looking for the proper documents.”

James Potter’s office was very organized. It was small, but the man had nearly everything filed in alphabetical order and by date.

Ginny opened one of the drawers and pulled out a file folder and started looking at the documents. “What is all this stuff Harry?”

“Oh, he was a speech writer for the Minister of Magic after he graduated school and then he became an Auror. Those are probably just some of the speeches,” Harry shrugged. Ginny nodded and put the file folder back in place.

“You’re sure it was ‘79?”

“Yes,” Ginny replied.

Harry nodded and kept looking through his folder.

“Why would it be in your dad’s office though?” Ginny asked him.

“He supposedly kept everything according to Lupin. His things and my mum‘s.”

“What if we just did a direction spell?” Ginny suggested, getting frustrated with all the paper cuts that she would undoubtedly have by the end of the day.

“Go for it,” Harry told her.

“Point me!” Ginny said forcefully with her wand. The wand spun around and around until it found a file cabinet in the corner. Then, the wand pointed to the last drawer on the cabinet. She and Harry walked over to it quickly and pulled out the cabinet to find all the folders with the name ‘Lily’ on it.

“’76, ‘77, ‘78, ‘79!” Ginny said excitedly, looking at all the different folders. She grabbed the folder that said 1979 on it and opened it quickly.

“Here!” Harry said, holding out a piece of paper with the signatures on it.

“That’s not it! Every single one of these documents has those same signatures on it!” Ginny exclaimed frustrated. There were at least two hundred documents for them to muddle through.

“Do you know what month it was?” Harry asked her.

“Well when were your parents married? That might help!”

“October of ‘79.”

Ginny proceeded to take her wand and eliminate all documents after October of 1979 with the signature of Potter on it.

“Anything else? Like--”

“Oh my gosh! Yes!” Harry exclaimed. “Lupin told me a story about the Aurors losing control to the Minister. This guy had been Minister already and he had had the new Minister killed so he could go back and be Minister again. But anyway, my mum and Frank Longbottom lost their jobs due to the corruption of the Ministry. That was early 1979...so maybe take out all the January ones. And when they figured out that the Minister had been behind all of it, Frank Longbottom the III took over as Minister!”

“So they probably created the legislation right away then, to prevent further corruption. So let’s go with stuff from February and March then?” Ginny suggested.

“Yeah. Good.”

Ginny began rifling through paper after paper, looking for the proper documents. Harry began sorting the papers from February and finally found a paper with all the correct signatures.

“This is it!” Harry exclaimed.

Ginny tore it out of his hands and started reading. “Yes! Thank you Harry!”

Instantly, before Harry could even say, “you’re welcome,” Ginny had Disapparated.

She Disapparated to the Auror training facilities where Gawain held his office in the basement of the building. He was the only person who held an office down there. It had become common practice that the Head of Aurors held their offices near the Minister’s office over the past few years. However, Gawain preferred to be alone in his office where the Minister would have to come to him if he needed anything from the Aurors.

Ginny headed down a long narrow and very dark corridor to find Gawain’s office. His office was dimly lit with a few candles. All she could see was the outline of his figure in the shadow near of the blinds. And then she saw another shadow, a taller, slender person. Suddenly, she saw the tall slender person’s wand extend, and within a flash, the figure of Gawain Robards had fallen after a flash of green light.

Ginny stopped in the middle of the hallway and didn’t move. However, she did muster up enough courage to place an anti-disapperation charm on the office. She merely watched as the other figure sulked around the office, undoubtedly looking for things.

“Ginny!” Ron’s voice called to her. She didn’t bother turning, she just couldn’t take her eyes off Gawain’s office. “Ginny, seriously, it’s kind of rude to not even look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Ron stopped right next to her and stared at the office with her.

“What are you doing?” he asked incredulously.

“Gawain’s dead. Whoever is in that office killed him.”

“What if it’s Frisby?”

“It’s not Frisby,” Ginny snapped at her brother impatiently.

“You never know. He could be under the Imperius Curse,” Ron shrugged.

Ginny ignored Ron and kept staring at the office, until she felt herself being drawn nearer to it. She started walking to the door, her wand at the ready with Ron behind her. She opened the door to the office quickly and peeked in with her brother at her side. But what the two saw, made them both so sick, they wished they had both never applied to be Aurors in the first place.

Standing in the middle of the office, looming over Gawain’s dead body, was Percy Weasley. He turned to his younger brother and sister and said, “I should’ve known it was you two.”

Neither one of them said anything to their estranged brother.

“I guess the Minister will be needing a new Head of Aurors. Ginny, what is that in your hand?”

Ginny looked down in her left hand and found that she still held the document that Gawain had needed hours ago in order not to be killed.

“Nothing,” she shrugged.

“So I assume you’re going to run to Dad and Mum and tell them what I’ve done here today.”

“What’re you talking about Percy? What did you do?” Ron shrugged, playing along.

“Exactly. He killed himself. Couldn’t handle the pressure,” Percy said. “Well, I have a dinner with a few important people this evening. Give my best to the family.”

With that Percy walked out of the office, putting his wand away as he did so.

“What did you say that for?” Ginny asked.

“Gin, he is a high ranking Ministry official. He can burry us. He can…do whatever he wants because he has the Minister on his side. The moment you accuse him of this murder, the questions will turn to you. What were you doing there? Why did you have that paper in your hands? Are you apart of some allegiance that is out to defame the Ministry? Yes, you are.”

“So how do we do this? How do we get rid of corruption in the Ministry when the highest ranking officials are those who are the corrupted?”

“We get rid of their resources,” Ron suggested.

“Resources?”