After the War

Chapter 25

Monday, September 6

The atrium at the Ministry looked the exact same as last time, except that it was now the height of rush hour. Witches and wizards hurried along the dark wooden floor towards the lifts where a large queue was already assembled. After they found their way out of the fireplaces, Harry and Ron joined the swarm into the lifts. Harry didn't bother to keep his gaze averted or hide his scar behind his bangs, but did do his best not to care if anyone recognized him considering that he was working there now. And luckily, the vast majority were too enraptured with their own to-do lists to care. Those that did happen to notice, only murmured to their colleagues beside them and Ron and Harry shared a knowing glance while moving along with the crowd.

"I'm still so nervous," Ron admitted quietly at the back of a lift as he fidgeted with the sleeves of his robes.

"It's Kingsley. It'll be fine," Harry replied in what he hoped was a confident voice. In reality, he couldn't stop his own hands from fidgeting within his pockets. A tall wizard at the front of the lift turned sharply at the use of the Minister's first name. But, the moment he recognized the two young wizards who were talking, his face turned beet red and he hastily turned to face the front again before hurrying out of the gate without the two noticing.

"Yeah, but he wants us to totally reorganize the whole program! How in Merlin's beard are we supposed to do that?" Ron whispered fervently into Harry's ear.

"We'll figure it out," Harry said evenly and waited for the lift to announce their arrival at level 1. With a deep calming breath, Ron led the way out of the empty lift, towards the first door on the right and knocked decisively before entering.

"Good morning," Kingsley greeted from behind his desk. "Please, have a seat." They did so and sank into the two chairs he had left for them on the opposite side of his desk. As per polite conventions, they exchanged the typical pleasantries before Kingsley got straight to the point.

"So, to put it simply, the auror department needs to be restructured. It got severely distorted under the Ministry takeover last year so that now, it runs off a system that praises each auror on high numbers of marked kills. Only one person was in charge with no ranks or levels of authority whatsoever, so that the more experienced aurors were equal to those that just finished training. And the training that the Death Eater's put in place is obviously no longer appropriate either, but we do still have the old training officer who's been reworking that." Kingsley took out a list from somewhere on his desk and turned it to face Ron and Harry.

"Here are the remaining aurors in the program. Moody used to be the head of the department and I was his second, along with another witch who died in the war. One other excellent auror moved departments and the other more experienced aurors retired once the Ministry was taken over last year. A few others either died or turned out to be spies for Voldemort, so we are critically understaffed as well. Tom Zhang has been running the department temporarily this past summer, but since he's in charge of auror training, he needs to get back to focusing on training."

"How many aurors are there usually?" Ron asked, peering at the relatively short list in front of him.

"We typically try to have somewhere around twenty-five, but now there are only fifteen, including the two of you."

"Are there any in training?"

"We had two in training, but one was obviously a Death Eater in the making, and the other joined during the Ministry takeover and has since disappeared." Kingsley looked up from the list to see Harry's stony expression and Ron still looking over the list curiously. "Hopefully now you see why you were the best options to lead the department. All of the remaining aurors are relatively inexperienced, none show terrific leadership qualities, and they are all very, very confused. I was hoping that you could give me a run-down on your general plan for the department sometime next week and I am completely open to your ideas. That's one of the reasons as to why I hired you, after all." Ron and Harry's eyes both opened as wide as galleons, but Kingsley pressed on, making his way through the general information that they needed.