the sweeter the fruit ~ Harm

Tuesday, August 16th 1921
10:25 am
The Minister's Secretary's office
♥︎

Sat at her desk, Harper flipped through the neatly stacked and meticulously organized letters and memos until she found the one she was looking for. Behind her, through the wall separating her from Merrow's office, she could hear the muffled, indistinct voices of the two men in eager conversation.

It had been a last-minute insertion. The Head of Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had been insistent it couldn't wait.

The man had appeared in her office ten minutes ago, dabbing a handkerchief against his shiny forehead, huffing and puffing before he finally managed to catch his breath enough to speak. Evidently, he had run the long hallway leading back to the government officials' offices and evidently he had lost his composure on the way.

Only sheer will had kept the revulsion from showing on her face.

Apparently the floo in some parts of Britain had collapsed, trapping witches and wizards in endless loops, unable to exit or enter. After she had announced the issue to Merrow, a thoughtful hum the only answer, Harper had admitted the distraught HoD to the minister's office. Her best guess at interpretation had been to show the man in, it was a gamble most times.

Merrow loved not giving clear answers and Harper wanted to throttle him every damn time.

But her guess must have been good because thus far neither of them had emerged.

Which didn't bode well for his actual appointment, set for ten thirty.

A knock on the door announced James' punctual arrival, emitting him into the room a moment later.

Harper looked up from the parchment in her hands, smiling wryly. "He's in an emergency meeting," she said by way of greeting. "Could take a while from the looks of it. Tea?" A flick of her wand and the parchment soared off towards one of the filing cabinets, its drawer opening and shutting as it filed itself away.

A meeting with Wylder Merrow was akin to slowly yanking one's own fingernails from their beds, one after another. Such was the enthusiasm and engagement the sitting Minister provided to each and every one of the meetings James had been bestowed with over the last eighteen months. In his many years working as a lobbyist and advocate for pureblood families, Merrow was by far the hardest nut to crack in one direction or another.

The man gave few tells and even fewer words, often offering a hum or thoughtful stare to every issue presented to him. For a man like James who thrived on conservation and negotiation it was mind-numbing and intolerable. Some likened it to the Minister being some sort of genius of few words.

James mused he had few words because he had nothing to say. How could he when he was so sorely out of his depth in the role he'd stumbled into? Silence wasn't always an indicator of intelligence, evidenced by the dominos that were being stacked against him, one-by-one without Merrow catching a single whiff.

This morning's meeting had to do with a proposed revision to inheritance and land-holding tax schedules, a bill already through committee and inching its way toward final reading with all the quiet inevitability of rot.

James had come, formally and within his remit, to request a delay. Not an objection - yet anyway. Merely time for impact reviews, for testimony.

For the Wizengamot to do its due diligence and take care of Merrow before a policy with a century’s reach was rammed through on the back of public sentiment and half-understood arithmetic.

It was the sort of bill that never announced its targets. No house names. No bloodlines. Just numbers and thresholds calibrated to land squarely on families whose wealth was old, land-bound, and difficult to liquidate without consequence.

Families like James’s. Like many seated beside him in the chamber.

Merrow, halfblood and unburdened by inheritance beyond his own skin, would see it as a correction. James saw it as attrition.

"He's in an emergency meeting."

Of course he was. Wylder Merrow always seemed to be in the middle of whatever fire he hadn't anticipated at any given moment. James could almost predict how unpredictably the Minister's schedule seemed to fluctuate minute by minute.

"Could take a while from the looks of it. Tea?"

His eyes shifted from the door of Merrow's office to the woman grinning up at him from her neatly organized desk. "What seems to have the house burning this morning?" he asked, leaning against her desk, reaching over to edge her cup of quills slightly to the left. Merlin-forbid everything wasn't in perfect order in Harper Knightley's world.

"If I'm going to be kept waiting, tea is the least you can do." He grinned, his eyes shining with mirth. "I'd have brought something stronger had I known." A strong bourbon was likely needed anyway to get him through the monotonous meeting that was surely awaiting him.

"What seems to have the house burning this morning?"

Harper waved a dismissive hand. "The floo. It's looping again in places." By now one would expect the people responsible to have their shit in order, keeping a system their entire community relied on running smooth and responsibly. To be able to fix it themselves as well.

And yet, the issue kept on reoccurring.

And yet, they kept on running to their minister for help like a child that had dropped its favourite toy and needed daddy to fix the mess.

Woe betide the poor soul in charge should this ever happen to her.

James reached out to move her cup of quills -- Harper extended an arm to push it right back to its proper place, where it should be. She cast him a flat look without missing a beat. "Head of Magical Accidents is in there right now. If he didn't keel over yet. Looked about ready to have a heart attack."

She stood, straightening her skirt with a brisk swipe of her hands. "Milk?", she asked with mock sweetness. "Sugar?" Serving tea shouldn't be anything she had to do, whoever it was that stood before her. Unfortunately for her, it was a thing of mildly common occurrence. Much too many appointments showed up too soon, long enough to require her generous offer to pass the wait.

Much too many took up said offer.

With a few steps Harper had crossed the space between her desk and the tea station to one side, giving the kettle a tap of her wand. James' second comment had her cast a glance over her shoulder, soft grin on her lips.

Crouching, Harper opened the door of a cabinet to her right, retrieving a small flask from the very back of it. She straightened again and placed the simple silver container on the sideboard, next to the kettle still heating up.

Harper didn't drink at the job. Never. But it didn't hurt to have a bit of strong whiskey close by, just in case. You never knew who might need a little courage or calming down, and when it might help her. Small favours paid back just as well as bigger ones.

With a slight grin she turned, leaning against the edge, gesturing towards the small amount of whiskey she had procured.

"In case of emergencies," she offered, lifting a brow.

Ah, the seemingly endless issues with the Floo Network. Certainly not something James was concerned with at the moment. Between portkeys and apparation and the occasional muggle car - it was the one muggle convenience the Laurences enjoyed - he had little use for a system so temperamental it bordered on farce. Unreliable infrastructure was a symptom of weak stewardship.

One he fully intended to correct, once authority properly rested in his hands. Those incapable of managing their posts, and the responsibilities attached to them, would find themselves swiftly reacquainted with unemployment.

"Head of Magical Accidents is in there right now. If he didn't keel over yet. Looked about ready to have a heart attack."

"Sounds gruesome," he quipped, his grin widening as he moved her cup of quills out of place again. She could give him all the unimpressed looks she liked; they'd certainly never dissuaded the man before. He watched her silently as she stood from her desk, shaking his head slightly at her offer of condiments for his tea. His eyes followed her as she knelt down, only briefly before flicking back to the Minister's office door.

He sighed with exasperation, checking his watch before drumming his hand slightly on her desk in thought. Normally he'd reschedule, not one who liked to be kept waiting, but this particular issue couldn't be put off another day. James would wait.

And suffer the long silences and theatrical groans as the price of it.

He wondered at times if Wylder Merrow’s inability to sustain even a basic exchange was a casualty of the war, or simply a long-standing deficiency in social manners.

"In case of emergencies."

Hmm? James was pulled from his thoughts at Harper's beckoning, his own eyebrow raising at the whiskey she'd set up for him. An angel in devil's clothes, that's what she was. He tsked slightly, pushing off her desk and closing the gap between them. "Harper Knightley," he teased, reaching for the small flask and unscrewing it with a flick of his thumb. "Whatever would I do without you and all your wiles?" A quick sip, letting the burn coat his throat, before he set the container back down.

"You could poison a man that way." He studied her for a moment, appreciating the woman who had become his partner-in-crime, "But I'm sure the idea's already occurred to you."

Her smile deepened in satisfaction as she watched James saunter over. She sure liked the look he got when she got him surprised, that gleam in his eyes, the appreciation settling over his features. It satiated a deep, dark well in the very core of her being.

For multiple reasons.

"Whatever would I do without you and all your wiles?"

A soft chuckle lifted the corners of her lips. "Succumb," she offered archly, reaching for the flask he'd set down to re-screw the lid.

Of course he wouldn't, thinking so would be ludicrous, but there was no denying he needed her for what he wanted to achieve. Harper held leverage where he didn't, her blood and gender providing approaches that a pureblood man simply didn't have. For one, she was well-integrated in the high-class halfblood circles, respected, trusted. While perhaps admired and envied, James didn't hold influence with her people the same way she did. Harper's ability to sway an opinion or vote would be crucial when the time came.

Secondly, being a woman and knowing how to use that to her advantage instead of bemoaning its downsides was power in itself. One just needed to know how to wield it like a weapon without losing one's own dignity.

Manipulation was an art and Harper had honed it to perfection.

"You could poison a man that way. But I'm sure the idea's already occurred to you."

Harper's smile sharpened as she pushed off the sideboard's edge. "The idea occurred to you only a moment too late." Her eyes twinkled at him in amusement, holding his gaze for a moment before turning to face the tea station, setting the flask of whiskey aside.

Not that there was any poison in that flask. She still needed him.

"If I wanted someone poisoned," she added casually, setting two empty cups on their saucers, "no one would know it had been me in the first place." She idly looked around at James, flicking her wand again as the kettle began to whistle. On its own, the lid rose to allow the infuser to sink into the boiling water, clinking shut again a beat later. "It wouldn't be in the whiskey stored in my own office," she whispered, leaning in slightly and smiling mischievously.

Murder wasn't her first choice when it came to removing someone standing in the way but it certainly wasn't an impossibility either.

She allowed her smile to widen a fraction. "And it wouldn't be me giving it to you."

"Succumb."

"No doubt," he answered dryly. James was well aware of the spaces Harper moved through with such ease. Rooms he could enter if he wished, but rarely did. Halfblood salons, social gatherings where influence was traded in glances and insinuation rather than lineage and title. Useful circles. Active ones. Just not his.

His world sat higher, colder. Power exercised at a distance, where names carried weight long before a person ever entered the room. Harper’s influence worked differently. Closer, quieter, far more adaptable. It helped that she was a woman.

Julia wielded her sexuality in the same way Harper did. Women, when trained or innately knowing how to use it, were dangerous creatures in the game, and he was under no illusions that Harper wasn't using hers on him. He didn't have a problem with it. As long as they both knew where they stood, who was he to tell her not to look at him in certain ways?

“If I were the sort of man inclined to drink recklessly,” he went on, eyes flicking briefly to the flask she’d set aside, “I might find that alarming.” Amusement shown in his eyes and the dimples that had appeared on his cheeks.

His gaze lifted to hers again, studying her carefully. “Fortunately, I don’t mistake clever women for careless ones.” He paused, taking a moment to brush a wayward strand of hair from her face and tuck it neatly behind her ear.

“And if I ever did require removing,” he added mildly, as though discussing a political rival rather than himself, “I would expect it to be done with far more imagination than something as crude as poison.” He let the knuckle of his index finger travel from her ear to her jawline, watching the light trail he made.

“Disgrace lasts longer.” And he would expect nothing less from the likes of Ms. Knightley. He sighed, dropping his hand and moving back towards her desk, letting her linger in the little moment they'd had.

"By the way," he mentioned, his voice picking up in its casual lightness, "Your betrothed has asked to meet with you soon." He glanced over his shoulder, perking up his eyebrow. "How about dinner at my place this weekend? You can't avoid him forever."

And as easily as that, they slid back into this subliminal teasing, induced by lightly spoken words and winding itself towards no more than one brief but deliberate touch, fleeting but lingering. An occurrence reserved for the brief moment between a door closing and another opening.

Like now, with the Minister on one side of the wall, and the bustling hallway of the Ministry on the other. His fingers were a gentle brush against the shell of her ear, the trail of his knuckle featherlight as it travelled towards her jaw. The forbidden and the threat of someone noticing only added to the lure.

Harper kept her mischievous smile, the twinkle of amusement in her eye as he walked back to her desk and she turned to face him, leaned against the sideboard.

She couldn't deny she enjoyed their little flirts, the way those brief moments rippled underneath her skin like a pleasant tingle that only a man like him could draw forth. Maybe if she were capable of love, he would be someone her heart could fall for.

Alas, she didn't and never mourned that fact. Love -- from what she had observed -- created weaknesses and liabilities, nothing to be grieved and not what she thought of when she looked at James.

Admiration perhaps. Power, even.

No, she didn't feel any inclination towards murder, nor disgrace.

"By the way. Your betrothed has asked to meet with you soon. How about dinner at my place this weekend? You can't avoid him forever."

Harper sighed through her nose, the moment of intimacy dispersed like smoke on a phantom wind as the professional demeanour trickled back in.

"I know," she agreed, pushing upright. It would be her duty and she was willing to face it head-on, even if the thought of it still grated against her spine.

"Will Saturday work?", she asked as she made her way to her desk as well, coming to stand on the opposite side of James, hands already leafing through her calendar. "There's a gathering on Sunday that I can't miss. Mother's hosting again." Looking up, Harper gave James a meaningful look.

It was no rare occurrence that her mother threw these kind of events, expecting attendance for a reason that still eluded her.