Aspen Sunlight - A Summer Like None Other

Harry shuddered. "That's awful. Don't say that."

Draco bared his teeth. "Well, would you rather hear me talk about how I'm supposed to be meeting Rhiannon right about now? She's going to think I stood her up, and on her opening night, too!"

"As I was saying, " said Snape, raising his voice, "we have more important matters at hand. Draco, your petite amie will survive the disappointment, and if she truly loves you, she will forgive your failure to celebrate her new opera." He leaned forward in his chair. "Harry, please floo up to the headmaster's office. If he's returned, ask him to join us here."

Draco huffed, but threw himself into a chair, his features brooding.

Dumbledore was indeed back from the Burrow, and as soon as he saw Harry, he nodded and stepped through the fire to join them in the dungeons. He took a seat without being invited, his blue eyes looking about as worn and tired as Harry had ever seen. For a long moment, he just sat and stared at the hearth. Then, he shook his head back and forth, his beard weakly swaying.

"Headmaster?"

"Yes, Severus, yes," murmured Dumbledore, looking like he was coming out of a disorientation spell. "You've checked the wards here?"

"Yes, straight away. All is well." Snape hesitated. "You've been to the Ministry?"

Dumbledore sighed. "What remains of it."

That had Harry sitting up a little straighter. "It wasn't completely destroyed?"

"Very nearly. The Atrium and all levels above have been utterly annihilated."

It took a moment for Harry to absorb the implications of that. It was one thing to hear that "the whole Ministry" had been wiped out. When he thought about it level by level, even if the lowest portions had survived, the scope of the destruction seemed much larger. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the Department for Magical Games and Sports, the Department of International Magical Cooperation, the Apparition Test Centre . . .

Harry swallowed, feeling a bit guilty when the next thought that struck him was how he wouldn't be able to get his Apparition license, now.

"The Department of Mysteries was slightly damaged, but survived the worst of the explosions. Level Ten appears undamaged," Dumbledore went on.

Just his luck, Harry thought. If anything had to be destroyed, he'd have put that horrible courtroom at the top of the list.

"You said explosions, plural," said Snape in a careful tone. "You have certain information?"

Dumbledore sighed. "Oh, yes. Bill Weasley has set to work using his curse-breaking skills to uncover the root source of the damage. By his reckoning, at least twelve separate but simultaneous explosions caused it. He suspects magical incendiary devices."

Harry blinked. "You mean bombs?"

"After a fashion."

"But why would Voldemort need bombs?"

"He's hardly omnipotent, Harry," said Snape. "The public tends to regard him that way, but the Order, and you, must not."

"I know. It's just . . . bombs ?"

"You haven't heard from Lupin, I take it," said Snape dryly.

"Not as of yet." Dumbledore sighed.

Harry felt his heart stutter, and then seem to freeze over. "Oh, my God. Has he been killed? I mean, as a spy? Because obviously Voldemort had big plans for today, and his sending off his Death Eaters was a feint!"

"The Dark Lord might have thought somebody else a spy," said Draco, his teeth chattering.

Harry knew what was causing that: Draco was afraid of what might happen to his mother if "Lucius Malfoy" was found out as a traitor. Somehow, though, that didn't stop the wave of anger that suddenly swept through Harry. "Will you stop calling him that? He's not a lord! He's nothing like a lord! He's a cowardly arsehole who kills hundreds of people at a time--"

"Harry," said Snape. He stopped after that one word, but it was enough to make Harry draw a breath before he spoke again.

"Percy's gone, I know," he said in a choked voice. Not that he'd ever much liked Percy, but he hadn't deserved to die. "Was there . . . did Bill find him, I mean? And who else was killed?"

"There's nothing left of those who were killed," said Dumbledore in a gentle voice. "Magical incendiaries leave no remains, Harry. And as to the list of those who are missing . . ." Dumbledore paused. "Like Hogwarts does for students, the Ministry keeps a self-updating roster of employees. A roster which was destroyed, of course. But there was a duplicate in the Ministry vault at Gringotts, and as there is some question at present as to where ultimate magical authority lies, the goblins kindly consented to my request that a copy of it be owled to me. Percy's name . . . does not appear."

Harry cleared his throat. "I . . . yeah, I knew that. I mean . . . the clock." He waved a hand, trying to move past it. "Who else, then?"

"Difficult to say, as I don't have a full list of who was currently employed earlier today. But of those I know to have been Ministry workers . . . many are missing. Amelia Bones. Dirk Cresswell. Arnold Peasegood. Dolores Umbridge. Amos Diggory--"

"Albus," said Snape. "I really do think that's enough, for the moment. Harry has a report to make."

Harry was caught between wildly swinging emotions, feeling horribly sorry about Mr Diggory, and not so sorry about Umbridge, but his father's last comment brought him out of it and reminded him of his own responsibilities to the Order. "Yes," he said, sitting up straighter as he tried to organise his thoughts. His father knew some of this already, but the headmaster didn't, so Harry turned to face Dumbledore. "Voldemort's responsible. I mean, of course he is, who else would do something like this, but he . . . uh, told me so."

"He broke through your Occlumency?"

Harry winced. This was the part he'd rather not mention, but the Order might need to know the full truth, so he swallowed back his reluctance. "No, Headmaster. I dropped my wall of fire for a moment. I'm sorry."

Snape leaned forward in his chair. "Sorry?"

He didn't sound sarcastic or snide, but merely concerned, which only made Harry feel worse. "Well, I shouldn't have--"

"It would seem not," said Snape dryly. "I would much rather that you had not had to hear Voldemort taunting you. But the fact that he did, that does not make the catastrophe at the Ministry your fault. A series of magical incendiaries such as the headmaster describes is not assembled at a moment's notice. This attack was planned in advance."

"For my birthday present," muttered Harry. "Look, I didn't say it was my fault. I'm not mental enough to think I'm responsible for what Voldemort takes it into his head to do. But it was creepy, the way he said, 'Happy Birthday, Harry,' to me, just a couple of minutes before the wireless started reporting on the Ministry."

Snape leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingertips together. "Perhaps we should have heeded your instincts earlier, and attacked."

"Ha," said Harry. "For all we know, that was a trap. He might have had his bombs ready to blow us up the minute we arrived."

Snape nodded, his dark gaze remaining focussed on Harry. "I am most gratified to see that you are not blaming yourself, this time."

"Yeah, well . . . " Harry sighed. "Hard not to feel a little bit of that. He did pick my birthday, after all."

"He picked a month-end night," corrected Dumbledore. "A time when, as Bill Weasley has heard from the few survivors, security goes home as usual at shift's end, but some workers in each department stay on into the wee hours. The perfect time to cause maximum loss of life with minimal chance of being stopped."

"Not omnipotent," said Snape softly.

Harry gnashed his teeth. So, Ministry workers had been put in harm's way by an asinine policy! "Fudge really is an idiot."