Chapter Text
Clarissa Edgecombe was not having a good summer so far. Her job was becoming increasingly stressful with rumours and speculation and suspicion running rampant in the Ministry. Everyone was on edge there, from higher ups to the lowest janitors, everyone had to tread carefully and keep eyes on the back of their heads – because you never knew who was saying what about you behind your back.
And now her daughter, finally back from Hogwarts, was withdrawn and strange, refusing to confide in her.
People were saying such horrible things too. That You-Know-Who was back, that Dumbledore was a liar, that the Ministry was corrupt - that Harry Potter had gone somehow... wrong. Every day there were some new rumour going about, this one worse than the one that came before it, and no one knew what to believe anymore. And that ministry woman at Hogwarts and what she'd done to that girl...
It seemed like bit by bit everything was going wrong. People were being promoted at the Ministry and others were being fired – just the other they they'd heard about Edgar, a wizard who'd worked in the cafeteria for the better part if fifty years, so long that he was practically part of Ministry woodwork now… about how he got fired. Why? No one new. There'd been some complaints, apparently.
Clarissa was pretty certain it was because he was muggleborn.
Lot of muggleborns were being fired at the Ministry. And if they showed certain... sympathy for Dumbledore and Hogwarts - or Harry Potter - well. They got fired faster. And try as they might, no one could pretend it wasn't exactly what it looked like. It wasn't as if there were that many muggleborns working in the Ministry in the first place, so when one just got replaced by a pureblood or halfblood, well. It was hard to not notice it. Hard to not draw conclusions.
It was a nervous time for them all.
"So, how was school year?" Clarissa asked her suddenly sullen and short-spoken daughter. Marietta had grown so much – at least a whole inch – and there was something different about it. She carried herself differently. If she wasn't a witch and Hogwarts student, Clarissa would've assumed she had started doing sports. Clarissa cleared her throat. "Did you... did you stay in that after school club?"
Marietta looked at her with an unreadable expression. "School was fine," she said after a moment and nothing else.
Clarissa waited for her to continue but Marietta just continued eating. She cleared her throat again. "Is Cho in the club?" she asked.
Marietta didn't answer, turning her eyes to the food. The silence stretched awkwardly for a moment before she did speak. "How's work?"
There was something pointed about the way she asked it, that made Clarissa frown a little. When Marietta glanced up again, the look in her eyes was knowing – and maybe even a bit judgemental.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Clarissa asked, leaning back a little.
"Nothing," Marietta answered. "I've just heard some wonderful things about it."
"Like what?" Had she heard something from her school friends – or from the former undersecretary?
Marietta poked her food with a fork. "Just stuff," she said, shrugging and watching her. "You know the Weasleys, right?"
Clarissa stilled at that. The Weasleys. She didn't have much to do with the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office, but she'd heard about it. Arthur Weasley getting attacked – almost killed – in ministry. No one knew how, but apparently he'd still not come back to work. They'd given his job to someone else.
A pureblood she was pretty sure she'd seen once with Lucius Malfoy.
Clarissa composed herself. "Are they in that club with you, the Weasleys?" She asked. "There's what, three of them in Hogwarts?"
"Two – the twins graduated," Marietta answered and tilted her head. "Heard about their dad?"
The elder witch forced a smile. "I'm sure he will be fine, dear," she said. "What happened was just an accident and I don't work anywhere near the Muggle Affairs and –"
"They had to suspend him in stasis to keep him alive – he's still there," Marietta cut in. "He's like in this bubble where time doesn't pass for him, because couple more seconds and he dies. Because he's poisoned and they can't heal his wounds. So he's been a stasis bubble it since Christmas."
Clarissa stared at her, surprised. "Wha – how on Earth do you –"
Marietta shrugged. "So you know. Heard some stuff," she said and looked down at her plate. "I'm not really hungry and I have some homework I should get on with. Can I go?"
"I, uh – yes –" Clarissa stuttered and then watched as Marietta all but bolted off the table. Left alone, she stared at her plate, still full, and Marietta's plate, half finished, and wondered what on earth was happening to her life.
The next day at work, she very carefully asked if anyone knew about Arthur Weasley. Everyone knew about the attack, of course, but did really know what had happened. Because some sort of strange accident with muggle technology – something she had never bought anyway, not unless someone had brought a bomb in – was very different from being poisoned. It had a whole different, sinister, implications.
The Weasleys were the biggest known muggle sympathisers there were, and obviously close friends with Albus Dumbledore – and wasn't their boy best friends with Harry Potter? Arthur Weasley's accident had been long before they started firing people at the Ministry too. Just… how long had this whole thing been happening?
No one knew much about Arthur Weasley though. "I hear he's still recovering," Tessa from Transportation said with a shrug. "He was in St. Mungos for a long time, wasn't he?" Jarod, a clerk in the Accidents and Catastrophes said, but even he didn't know anything else. "It was some muggle doohikey, wasn't it?" said Diana in Creatures department.
No one really knew anything, and no one much cared. Clarissa didn't really know much about the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office, she'd carefully avoided making any contact with it because even before it was a damn good way to be demoted in the Ministry – she didn't know anyone who worked there, or what they thought. She was tempted to try and ask, but…
With things being what they were, it was probably bad that she was asking at all.
"You know, I hear they're going to fire Allison," Diana muttered her just as she was about to leave. "Just… watch yourself Clarissa."
Allison Heath, who worked in the central department had had for about twenty years – a good and efficient office manager. No one had ever had any complaints about her, except that she was maybe a little too efficient. Never took breaks, and as far as Clarissa knew, she never got sick either.
She was also a muggleborn.
Clarissa bowed her head and headed back to her desk, and spent the rest of the day worrying and jumping at every unusual noise in her office. It was another tense and stressful day.
They were all starting to be like that.
"Marietta," Clarissa started, a little awkward but determined. "Next year, you will quit that club, alright?"
Marietta looked up from the Daily Prophet, staring at her with disbelief for a moment. Then she leaned back. "How about you quit your job."
"Don't even start. Your little after school club doesn't bring the food on the table. My job does and it's hard enough without you making me suspect at the ministry," Clarissa snapped and then quickly composed herself. "Things are a little tense right now, dear," she tried again. "And what's happening at Hogwarts, it's just making me so worried. Hogwarts always been so political and I'd hate you to get stuck in the middle of it."
Her daughter just harrumphed at that and stood up, stalking off. Clarissa stared after her in astonishment and then stood to follow. "Marietta, don't you even dare – this is serious and –"
Marietta peeked in her room, and then came out and before her mother had the chance to walk around the coffee table, the daughter slapped something on the table's wooden surface. It made a heavy, resounding thump as it landed.
Clarissa stared at the item for a moment, uncomprehending. Then her eyes widened.
"Turn that to food on the table," Marietta said and straightened up, folding her arms.
"Marietta – what –" Clarissa started and then quickly straightened up. "Is this a joke?" she asked.
"No," Marietta said with a slight snort. "It's gold."
It looked like gold. A solid, unmarked bar of pure gold, it's lines and corners so sharp that Clarissa got the impression she could've cut herself with them. And it looked so real too, it shone like she'd always assumed real gold did. She couldn't help but reach out and touch it – it was hard and cool and very heavy in her hand. A solid single kilogram block of metal.
"Did you make this?" Clarissa asked, half laughing. "Marietta, you can't just transfigure something golden colour and think it's gold – that's not how it works."
"It's not transfigured. It's real gold," Marietta said. "Don't believe me, take it to the goblins. They'll verify it."
The elder witch frowned, testing the weight of the supposedly-gold-ingot in her hand. It felt so real. And more than that, she knew what her daughter looked like when she lied. This wasn't Marietta pulling a joke, this was a tense, annoyed Marietta who was telling the truth and expecting not to be believed, and being all the more annoyed for it.
Puberty and rebellion might've hit her daughter hard, but Clarissa still knew her baby girl.
"Where did you get this?" she asked quietly, setting the gold bar down.
Marietta shrugged.
"Did you – " Clarissa stopped, trying to figure out how to ask. "Did you take this from someone?"
"I didn't steal it – and I'm pretty sure wizards don't even keep gold like this," Marietta said and looked at the thing. "I actually wasn't sure why they made them like this before Granger explained that it was how muggles keep gold – and no, I didn't steal it from muggles either. It's was… a gift, I guess. We all got them."
"All who?"
"All the members of my after school club," Marietta said.
Clarissa's hand shook and she quickly rested the block of metal on the table. "And who did you get it from?" she asked.
Marietta didn't answer.
The gold bar sat on their living room table for two days, glinting in the light, before Clarissa mustered up the strength of will to deal with it. When she took it in hand, it was with every intention of just getting rid of it – after which she would, somehow, try and talk sense to her daughter. Whoever had put such weird, fantastical notions to her daughter's head didn't even matter – somehow, they'd gotten Marietta to believe this nonsense and it was Clarissa's job to make it right.
Except then the gold bar was in her hand, heavy and real. And what if…
What if it was real?
Clarissa didn't actually know how much pure gold was worth in the Wizarding World. Galleons were supposedly gold, but the exchange rate to muggle money was so low. She knew a man once who'd done the calculation – if galleon was actually pure gold, you could get about two hundred pounds from it, by selling it just as gold to a muggle. But no one ever had. Why? Because it probably wasn't actually gold – or it wasn't as much gold as it seemed to be.
So how much was actual pure gold worth in galleons?
She teetered on the edge of indecision for a while, staring at the gold bar. Then, steeling herself to… to whatever this even was, she dropped the gold bar into her handbag. She knew entertaining this charade was ridiculous and yet the suspicion sat there, in the back of her mind – along with the increasing danger of what if it was real? Because if it was, if someone had given her daughter a solid one kilo of gold then, oh god…
What did they want with her daughter, and what had she promised to them in exchange of the thing?
She'd be an idiot not to make sure, in any case. So, with the bar heavy in her bag and shoulders squared with determination, she head off to Diagon Alley with every intention of getting to the bottom of this.
There, it got worse.
"One of these," the goblin clerk said, accepting the bar and glancing it over with a jeweller' loupe. As Clarissa stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, wondering what sort of punishment there was for bringing fake gold to Gringotts was, the goblin set the bar down. "The conversion rate is be four thousand five hundred and eighty nine galleons. Would you like the funds transferred directly to your vault?"
Clarissa stared. "What?"
The goblin scowled at her. "Four thousand five hundred and eighty nine galleons," he repeated slowly. "I know the conversion rate was higher a week ago, but that was before people brought us forty of these things – the price of gold has dropped and it will continue dropping as more gold is brought in."
"I – there's been others?" Clarissa asked. "And they're all real? A-all of them?"
The goblin was extremely unamused by her. "Yes, yes, it is the purest we've had, and yes, it very fine quality but that doesn't change the fact that exchange rates vary according to demand and supply. If you're not happy with the conversion rate, you're free to take your gold somewhere else –"
Clarissa let out a choking noise. "H-how much was it?
"Four thousand five hundred and eighty nine galleons," the goblin said through gritted teeth. "Ask me again and I will deduct a fee for wasted time. Now do you want the money transferred to your vault?"
Four thousand and five hundred and – and – and that was three times her yearly salary – and Marietta had just given –
"No, I'm sorry," Clarissa said, coming to her senses. "I just wanted it verified."
"Very well," the goblin groused and handed the bar of pure gold back to her. "The price of valuing will be five galleons – Gringotts can automatically deduct the sum from your vault or you can pay here and now. What will it be?"
"Take it from my vault. I uh – thank you for your time."
And then the gold bar was sitting on their living room table again. Or it was until the realisation that an actual gold bar was just sitting on their living room table caught up with Clarissa and then, ridiculously, she threw a table cloth over it as if to hide it.
She stared at the lump under the cloth for a moment and then started to laugh hysterically.
Marietta snuck up into the room then, watching her cautiously from the doorway. "Mum?" she asked.
Clarissa laughed and laughed and then she was sobbing. "I – I didn't go to work?" she realised. "I was – I was supposed to head to work, I just stopped by at Gringotts to – to set this whole ridiculous nonsense straight and then – then – I didn't go to work at all. I didn't even – I just came back home."
"Um," Marietta answered, her eyes a little wide as she slowly came closer and sat next to her. "Mum, what did you do?"
"I – I had that thing," Clarissa pointed at the gold bar under the table cloth – and oh, she'd hidden it under a table cloth like that actually did anything! "I had it verified with the goblins. Four thousand five hundred and eighty nine galleons, Marietta."
Marietta didn't say anything to that, shifting where she sat awkwardly, and Clarissa turned her eyes on her. "Who gave it to you, Marietta? What do they want from you? What did you promise them?!"
"I didn't – just, listen," Marietta said, fiddling with her hands, biting her lips – and Clarissa knew that look. It was Marietta at her most serious and most conflicted, when she believed she was in the right and knew her mother wouldn't believe a word of it, and so was trying to look the best way to word it.
"Just tell me," Clarissa demanded and grabbed her hand. "What do they want from you? Do they want me to spy on the ministry, do they –"
"No, no, of course not!" Marietta said quickly. "I mean – sure I actually asked Captain about it, I told him about your job, and he offered, or sort of implied but it's actually happening now but –"
"What?" Clarissa asked, desperate and wide eyed. "Captain who?"
"My Captain – our Captain – just. Okay, just listen to me for a moment, okay?" Marietta said and grabbed her hand in return, serious and firm. "You know what Ministry did at Hogwarts, right? About that woman, Umbridge, the High Inquisitor?"
"Yes," Clarissa said, and her hands tightened on Marietta. She read the articles, about what the woman had done to the poor girl. "Did she do anything to -?"
"No, no, not me – that's not it at all. Just hear me out," Marietta said and took a breath. "That woman, and the Ministry they… they pretty much neutered the Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons. It was all theory, just theory, and not even theory it was just Ministry patting us on the head telling that there was no such thing as Dark Arts in the first place."
"Okay," Clarissa said, frowning a bit. She'd heard some about that – Marietta had complained about it. It had worried her a bit, but she wasn't sure what it had to do with this.
"So, we started our after school club," Marietta said. "The – uh – Defence Association. It was just about learning Defence Against the Dark Arts on our own, learning how to defend ourselves in case stuff happened – and with what's going on… well. We thought we could use it. Besides, no one wanted to fail our OWLs and NEWTs and that was what was going to happen with that woman. She wasn't going to teach us anything. So we were going to learn on our own."
Clarissa frowned. She hadn't even thought about that, though with things being as they were, it seemed so unimportant. "That doesn't sound safe, sweetheart," she said quietly. "Defence is taught by a trained teacher for a reason."
"Trained teacher, sure," Marietta muttered and shook her head. "We got better trained teacher than Umbridge anyway. We got Harry Potter."
Clarissa's hands clenched convulsively on her daughter's. "Marietta," she said hushed. "The things the papers are saying about him -!"
"Lies," Marietta said firmly. "I've never had a better Defence teacher, Mum. I swear, he's good, he's so much better than what the papers say. And besides – he cares. He just wants us to be safe. That's what he taught us. Shields and stuff. I can do Patronus now, Mum! A fully corporeal Patronus! Because he taught me – and Captain learned it at thirteen!"
Marietta shook her head before Clarissa could even try and think of something to say to that. "That's not it though," Marietta said. "We, the club, we… we discovered something. I can't just tell what, not yet, but… it's… huge. Bigger than all this stuff with the Ministry, bigger than You Know Who. Bigger than anything."
She reached for the table cloth and grabbed the gold bar, holding it up. "This is just the tip of the ice berg," she said and waved the bar. "I got six more of these, all of them exactly the same, all of them real. Everyone in the crew got them and they don't even really mean anything, we can get more any time we want."
Clarissa looked at the gold bar. She had six more? That was… that was an actual fortune. "But… how?" she asked. "Why? Harry Potter gave these do you for some reason, what was it?"
"Because he thought we could use them," Marietta shrugged. "I think he hoped we'd use them to bolster defences at home. Buy some wards and stuff, you know. Some in the crew, they cashed theirs in and they bought safe houses for their families, some of them out of country."
Clarissa stared at her, trying to keep up, but her mind was still stuck at the notion that Harry Potter had given her daughter, what… several tens of thousands of galleons worth of gold, just… because? No, there had to be a reason, an agenda, something he wanted from her – there had to be.
It was a lot of money, and just thinking abut it made her head spin. But the mentions of wards, safe houses… that was so tempting. It was enough money that she could just quit her job, couldn't she? They could buy a plot of land maybe, in some quiet muggle village out of sight, and live peacefully in hiding. They could hide away and no one would ever bother them again!
Except…
"This crew," Clarissa said slowly. "They want you to stay with them, don't they? You can't just take this and vanish, can you? You have to go back."
"No, not really," Marietta said. "I mean, I will. Because I want to. But I don't have to, if I don't. I think there's couple who won't – these muggleborn boys. Their parents are pulling them from Hogwarts and going out of country, they're moving to the United States I think."
"Maybe we could do that too," Clarissa said, though the whole idea seemed so utterly fantastical that she didn't believe it for a moment.
"You can, if you want to," Marietta said so earnestly that it broke Clarissa's heart. "You'd be safe from all the bollocks that's probably coming."
Clarissa stared at her daughter with a sort of desperate disbelief and shook her head. "No, no of course not," she said and ran a shaking hand over her forehead. "So, what… what is this crew of yours going to do?"
Marietta hesitated for a moment, looking down at the gold bar between them. "Mum," she then said. "If you don't want to run and hide, um… I might have a job for you."
There it was. Clarissa swallowed and her heart seemed to freeze, but… there it was. Other shoe, falling. "What do I have to do?" she asked, steeling herself for whatever ultimatums she had to fulfil, to keep her daughter safe.
Clarissa stared. Around her and her daughter, the general hubbub of Diagon Alley continued on merrily, people chatting and laughing and hurrying about as they got their shopping done. It was almost bizarrely normal.
In front of them there was a shop front – a brand new shop front. "ENTERPRISE," was written on a sign above the windows in strict font, sharp and slightly angled. And it really was a font, not just lettering – and it was a familiar font, too.
Worse yet, behind the word, ENTERPRISE, there was a symbol, a rune. Clarissa used runes a lot in her work at the ministry – they were used in the Ministry's filing system after all – so she recognised it easily. It was sort of rounded and lopsided but it was recognizably othila.
It had been a while, sure, but Clarissa still knew the classics of muggle pop culture. Or rather, it's sci-fi culture. ENTERPRISE in Star Trek font was unmistakeable and behind it the rune othila was stretched and angled obviously so that it looked like the Star Trek logo.
"What the…?" Clarissa asked, glancing at Marietta in helpless confusion.
Marietta arched her eyebrows and grinned and then stepped forward. Baffled, Clarissa followed.
The shop was surprisingly normal looking on the inside – albeit a little barren. There were shelves but there were nothing much on them – some items of cloth and few pairs of strange looking boots, but nothing else.
"We're not in business yet, so it's a little empty right now. We're still working out what we're actually going to sell here," a voice said and young wizard stepped out from seemingly nowhere. He had bright red hair and freckles all over his face – a Weasley if Clarissa had ever seen one. "Hi," the young man said and offered his hand. "Fred Weasley. You must be Clarissa Edgecombe."
"Hello," Clarissa answered faintly and shook his hand, frowning a little at the yellow gloves he was wearing. They felt like latex and leather at the same time. "I, uh… Marietta says you have a job for me?"
"Well, a job opportunity," Weasley said with a grin and looked at Marietta. "How much did you tell her?"
"As much as she could handle," Marietta said, shaking her head and looked at her mother. "This place is owned by our crew –"
"Specifically, me, my brother and Lee Jordan, the deed's on our name. It's the Captain who runs the show, though," Weasley interjected.
"Yes," Marietta agreed, rolling her eyes. "And we need someone to… work here."
"Work here," Clarissa said slowly.
"Uh-huh," Marietta nodded.
"We're all heading back with the crew," Weasley said. "Mind you, we who graduated, we'll popping in and out probably, but mostly we'll be out there. So we need someone to man the desk here. We're hoping that someone would be you."
"Uh…" Clarissa answered blankly. "You want me to… be a store clerk?"
"Uh-huh," Weasley said and rocked on the balls of his feet. "I mean, it's probably going to be pretty dull – right now we just need someone to be here and talk to people who come in. You noticed the sign, right? I mean, you're a muggleborn – Lee and Hermione assured us that pretty much every muggleborn would notice it."
"Yes, I am and I did – and about that," Clarissa said frowning. "Is it intentionally… like that?"
"Brilliant, it works," Weasley said grinning. "And yeah, it is. You could say we're aiming for a very specific target audience here. The sign is supposed to be the hook."
"But…" Clarissa hesitated, looking around them at the empty shelves. "What are you selling?"
"Adventure and excitement," Weasley said and grinned even wider.
"We're looking for certain type of people," Marietta said with a shrug. "People who will notice the sign and come here."
"And then what?" Clarissa asked, swallowing, as behind them the front door opened and someone stepped in.
"Then we'll see if they're looking for employment," a new voice said, and Clarissa turned around to see a brown haired girl step into the store. "Hello, Ms. Edgecombe," she said and offered her hand. "Hermione Granger. Sorry I'm late. I'm here to interview you for the job."
"Right, okay, nice to meet you," Clarissa answered faintly, glancing between her daughter who nodded encouragingly, and Weasley who threw Granger a sloppy salute before heading back to the back room. "And… you really want to hire me as a store clerk?" she asked, just to be sure.
"That's the idea," Granger said, smiling kindly and motioned her to follow. "There are rooms in the back, we can talk more comfortably there."
Clarissa followed, Marietta close at her heels, as they headed to the back rooms – which turned out to be pretty much the entire building. There was a long corridor with doors on each side, and it ended in a spacious office. It was decorated with surprising finesse – with furniture Clarissa could vaguely remember seeing in Hogwarts.
"How did you…" she started to ask, staring at the familiar looking desk – thinking she'd seen McGonagall standing behind it – and the comfortable, worn armchairs – from Ravenclaw common room. Then she thought better of it.
Granger sat not behind the desk, but in one of the armchairs. Clarissa and Marietta sat in others. "So," Granger said, reaching out to take a sheaf of parchments from top of the desk. "Before we start, here. It's basically a magical confidentiality contract. If you want to work for us, you will be required to sign it – and if you reveal what you learn here for outsiders, there will be consequences to you."
"That's… quite the opening," Clarissa said faintly and reached for the parchments.
"I thought you'd appreciate the honesty," Granger shrugged. "Please, take your time reading it."
Clarissa did, even as Marietta shifted uneasily beside her and Granger took out a book and started writing something on it. The contract was fairly simple – and wholly confusing. In basic terms it just forbade her from sharing any sensitive information she learned while employed in the Enterprise. It covered the employees and the customers both, and everything else involved with something called the D.S.F.
"What is the D.S.F.?" Clarissa asked nervously.
Granger put her book away. "Acronym we decided covers the whole operation," Granger said and shrugged. "It stands for Defence Space Force. It's a bit b-movie sci-fi but it works."
Clarissa stared at her for a moment and then looked at Marietta who just shrugged. Then Clarissa looked back at the contract.
She'd thought… She'd thought many things, some of them horrible, all of them dangerous. But this sounded like had little to do with Ministry, or even… even You-Know-Who. It sounded a little like a Star Trek fan club, which was just ridiculous. She would've laughed, if it wasn't for the solid bar of gold in their house – that, and it's six brothers. So what was it, then?
Aliens, perhaps?
Clarissa almost laughed, but she couldn't, not with Granger – who had to be younger than Marietta – staring at her seriously, and Marietta sitting beside her, her back ramrod straight. Whatever it was, whatever it sounded like, it was still serious. It was possibly deadly serious. And Marietta was knee deep in it.
Clarissa sighed. "I'll sign it."
Granger eyed her silently for a moment, eyebrows climbing up. "Ms. Edgecombe, what do you think is going on here?" she asked curiously.
Clarissa hesitated, glancing at her daughter. "It's a recruitment office, isn't it?" she asked.
"… it is," Granger answered. "But I think you think it's for an army, don't you? You think we're staring some sort of… underground revolutionary militia here."
"Aren't you?" It would make sense – and it was brilliantly thought up too. A shop to attract muggleborns, and especially certainly minded muggleborns. Muggleborns who, Clarissa knew, had been slighted by the Ministry, especially so lately.
The ones with revolutionary new ideas got the worst of it, she'd seen it million times. The muggleborns who spoke of technology and computers and things like, well, space exploration. They got the axe the quickest in the magical world.
Ministry was waging a quiet war against people like them – and it had started to wage a war against Harry Potter too, though for different reasons. So, he was now starting to fight back, and his army would be made of the people Ministry had rejected. So they wanted Clarissa to man the recruitment office – put a nice former ministry employee on the front to make it nice and normal, while behind the scenes they attracted muggleborns and offered them the chance of future retribution.
There would be a civil war that would make You Know Who pale in comparison, and Marietta and Clarissa were right in middle of it!
"Ms. Edgecombe," Granger started to say and then stopped, thinking. Then she smiled wryly. "I won't say it's not bit like that. It is by necessity, because what we're doing here goes against everything the Ministry currently stands for. And yes, this is a recruitment office, but it's not one for an army. It's one for an organisation. We're looking for like minded employees, not soldiers."
"Employees to do what?" Clarissa asked.
Granger considered that, obviously looking for a way to word it without revealing anything. "To boldly go where no wizard has gone before," she then said and smiled.
Clarissa arched her eyebrows in disbelief at that.
Granger chuckled at her expression and then took something from between the pages of her book and handed it to her. It was a photograph of something very orange. It took Clarissa a moment to recognize it and when she did, her eyebrows went even higher.
It was a picture of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. A very, very clear and sharp picture, which was moving as she stared it – slowly, the Red Spot was turning under her eyes.
A magical photograph of Jupiter, taken as if from right on top of it.
Clarissa looked up again at Granger who just smiled and then at Marietta who was looking at her hopefully. Then she reached for the contract again. "Do you have a quill?" she asked, and her voice barely shook.