Chapter 149 — More Than a Name on a Banner

I drew an oval for the stadium, then a larger shape around it. Fudge watched my pen until I tapped the space between the two and asked what was planned for it.

‘The entrances?’ He leaned closer, apparently granting my drawing more precision than it deserved.

‘Where people go before taking their seats,’ I said. ‘Food, stalls, things to do while they’re waiting. Which parts have already been promised to someone?’

Fudge described the arrangements under consideration. I asked him to distinguish those from commitments already made, and marked the available spaces while Dumbledore listened. There was more detail in the answer than the funding sheet had suggested he could provide.

‘I’d want the right to organise the official trading area,’ I said. ‘For agreed dates, within an agreed boundary. The stalls, the food and any performances around them.’

‘An exclusive concession.’ Fudge looked from the marks to my face. ‘You would expect to retain the proceeds.’

‘After paying the people doing the work and the cost of putting it there.’ I turned the notebook towards him. ‘Other businesses could supply us or operate under agreements with us. I don’t intend to move all my shops into a field.’

His gaze returned to the drawing. I had seen the attention a crowd could bring to an ordinary stall, but also the queues which made people leave without buying anything. A useful arrangement here would need more than my name hung above it.

‘A banner won’t pay for the sponsorship,’ I said. ‘A place where your visitors want to spend time might.’

‘The Ministry would retain its requirements,’ Fudge replied. He put his own sheet beside the sketch. ‘Access, inspections, clear routes. The usual charges would apply.’

‘Include them in what you send us. I don’t want a different arrangement discovered after we’ve built the stalls.’ I added a note about existing traders, so nobody could later claim I had agreed to displace people whose places were already settled.

Fudge smiled with considerably less effort than before. He wanted a commitment soon enough to keep the preparations moving; I wanted the costs checked before any promise became a payment. Between those positions, we began finding questions which somebody else would have to answer.

Deliveries, available space, responsibility for the site and the advance if the promised area could not be supplied all went into my notebook. I had to ask Fudge to repeat the name of one department, which spoiled any impression that I knew exactly how this worked.

‘If the figures hold up, we could consider some additional facilities,’ I said. ‘But I need to know what we’re agreeing to build first.’

Fudge looked pleased enough that Dumbledore placed a finger beside the drawing. ‘The conditions matter, Cornelius,’ he said. The Minister assured him they would be considered, and I kept my pen on the word “if” until he looked back at it.

By the time Fudge left, we had a proposal to pursue and a short deadline for supplying the details. No money had changed hands. Emma and the administrators would examine the written terms with me before we agreed to that part.

The Minister shook my hand again, lingering over it as though the morning had given him a better reason to remember me. I waited until the door closed before looking down at my oval.

‘I expected to ask where we could buy tickets,’ I said. ‘This seems to have gone rather further.’

Dumbledore laughed, and I poured him another cup of tea. When I offered him the remaining pastries without conditions, he took one and asked whether I had expected to be interested in Fudge’s proposal.

‘I’m still not certain the figures will work.’ I tapped the total left on the table. ‘It would use most of the Galleons I can spare. I hope nobody thinks I’ll do it again next month.’

‘Then make that clear in the discussions,’ he said. He waited while I wrote it down, which I appreciated more than a reassurance that the venture would succeed.

There was another question I wanted answered while we were alone. The histories Harry and I had found described interruptions to the competition, but Fudge spoke as though anything less than an enormous celebration would be a failure.

‘Why does it need to be this large?’ I asked. ‘I understand it’s the first Cup in years. Is that enough reason to spend money he hasn’t got?’

Dumbledore held the cup between his hands. ‘The last was held when your father and his friends had just left school. It was intended to follow a four-year cycle. The war interrupted it, and restoring the international arrangements took rather more work than announcing another date.’

I remembered the missing years occupying very little space on the library page. Ken had left school with people who later spent years hiding, fighting or imprisoned; the competition was hardly the only thing which had failed to resume on schedule.

‘Some of the practical work must be built up again,’ Dumbledore continued. ‘Cornelius also wants people to see a country capable of welcoming visitors and holding a successful event. Particularly now.’

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‘After everything at Hogwarts.’ I put the funding sheet down. Quirrell’s death, the diary and Pettigrew standing in front of us did not become less real because a crowd would soon be cheering in a stadium.

‘Among other reasons,’ Dumbledore said. A voice called to someone below the window, briefly carrying into the quiet room.

‘Then why not do both? Hold the event and deal with what we found.’ I reached for my pen again. ‘He’s got Snape’s account and Lupin’s. He can’t call all of it a rumour.’

‘He places considerable weight on the fact that Peter has not been brought before his investigators.’ Dumbledore’s cup remained untouched while I looked at him.

‘After refusing to wait when we asked.’ The nib pressed hard enough to leave a mark, and I set the pen down before damaging the page. ‘Wanting it to be over won’t make it happen.’

‘No,’ Dumbledore said. ‘But Cornelius has relied for a long time on institutions which, in his experience, eventually settle matters. Accepting that those same institutions can fail to recognise a danger would require him to question rather more than one witness.’

‘Does he find that difficult, or prefer not to?’ I asked. Dumbledore said he suspected the two had become hard to separate, which offered very little comfort about either possibility.

A cart rattled past below. Someone laughed in the street, and I could smell the next batch of food being prepared downstairs. It was easy to want an ordinary summer to continue once you were sitting inside one.

‘What are we doing, then?’ I asked. ‘Apart from waiting for something else to happen.’

‘Following what can be followed. Speaking to people whose accounts may help, and preparing for the dangers we have reason to expect.’ He looked at my notebook. ‘The records you sent are part of that work.’

‘And if you need my help with something else?’ I kept my hand on the table, though I had an unpleasant impulse to hide the ink-stained fingers which had become so useful to people.

‘I should explain what I’m asking and why,’ he said. ‘You should understand the risk before answering.’

‘I want to help. That isn’t permission to use me up.’ I had meant to put it more carefully; once the words were out, I found I did not want to replace them.

Dumbledore’s expression grew still. ‘No, Oswald. It is not.’

‘Can you promise that?’ I asked. The question stayed between us while he set his cup down beside the unfinished pastry.

‘I can promise not to treat your willingness to help as permission for anything I later decide is necessary. I cannot promise that every danger will wait for either of us to agree to it.’ He spoke slowly, giving me time to hear both parts.

It was less comfortable than the answer I wanted. I could believe it, though, and told him I wanted to be able to refuse a request, not merely hear why I ought to accept it.

‘Yes,’ he said. He did not add what Ken would have wanted or ask whether I meant to disappoint him. When he turned to where the Ministry should send its papers, I realised I had been waiting for an argument he had chosen not to make.

Dumbledore left after thanking me for the tea. I stayed beside the window for a while, with the commercial proposal open in front of me and the other conversation less easily arranged into questions on a page.

Emma listened to the whole account that afternoon. Then she asked for the Ministry’s papers, and the next few days supplied rather more questions than the first meeting had answered.

The administrators examined the proposed costs against commitments already made. Daniel pointed out what happened when a crowd wanted food at the same time, and the Frozen staff asked about storage and serving space until one of my neat drawings looked embarrassingly optimistic.

I changed it while Daniel watched. He moved one line further across the page and asked where the people carrying fresh supplies would go if I put a queue there.

‘Through the customers,’ I admitted, shifting the line again. The next version took longer and looked considerably less impressive from a distance.

We protected the money needed for existing work before deciding what the event could have. The final sponsorship took a large share of the available Galleons. It did not require selling the businesses, and nobody reviewing the accounts promised that the stalls would earn the money back.

Only after the rights, dates and responsibilities were written down were the payments arranged. Fudge received the agreed funding, including the additional work we had chosen to undertake. We received the temporary trading area and the job of making it function, with a copy of the agreement kept beside the plans.

I wanted visitors to find food, somewhere to sit and something worth watching before the match. We worked out different menus and placed a small performance area far enough from the food stalls that its audience would not trap everyone queuing for dinner.

My memories of large events in Britain offered possibilities. They did not tell me which ones a wizarding crowd would enjoy, how long deliveries would take or whether rain would empty a space we had expected to fill. We asked performers what they needed and chose things the staff could actually prepare, leaving time to change what failed in rehearsal.

Luna came to look at the plans one afternoon. She followed the stage with her finger, then asked where somebody would go if they did not want to watch the performance.

I pointed to a gap beyond the stalls. She traced the way to it from the tables, stopping where two queues would meet.

‘Through here?’ she asked. I looked at the route, then found a fresh sheet instead of trying to persuade her that people would somehow pass through one another.

She sat beside me while I changed the path. When I put down the pen, she took my hand and rested it in her lap.

‘Are you finished for a little while?’ Her thumb brushed a fresh mark of ink, and I looked at the clock. It was the afternoon we had agreed to spend together.

‘Yes,’ I said, closing the notebook. We went out before I could decide that one more useful alteration would only take a moment.

Later, I visited the site with the people responsible for the work. A temporary staff Floo connection served the preparation area for appointments and deliveries; I asked about its use before assuming it would still be an entrance my friends could take on the day.

The ground was larger and less forgiving than the paper. I walked the routes with the people who would use them, checking where stock could stay dry and where a good position for a stall became a poor place for its customers to wait. By the time we finished, I had mud on my shoes and several changes to bring home.

I wrote to the Burrow about joining the family’s journey, sending Arthur the travel confirmation separately. In the letter for Ron and the others, I explained the sponsorship and invited them to use the meals and tent places we were arranging for our guests. I included the practical details, remembering the blank back of Ron’s first plan.

Luna already knew what I had taken on. When I sealed the letter for the others, I pictured Ron reaching the part about food and hoped he would keep reading long enough to find the arrangements beneath it.