‘No,’ said Fudge gently. ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not. Look.’
And he had turned the Prime Minister’s teacup into a gerbil.
‘But,’ said the Prime Minister breathlessly, watching his teacup chewing on the corner of his next speech, ‘but why – why has nobody told me —?’
‘The Minister for Magic only reveals him or herself to the Muggle Prime Minister of the day,’ said Fudge, poking his wand back inside his jacket. ‘We find it the best way to maintain secrecy.’
‘But then,’ bleated the Prime Minister, ‘why hasn’t a former Prime Minister warned me —?’
At this, Fudge had actually laughed.
‘My dear Prime Minister, are you ever going to tell anybody?’
Still chortling, Fudge had thrown some powder into the fireplace, stepped into the emerald flames and vanished with a whooshing sound. The Prime Minister had stood there, quite motionless, and realised that he would never, as long as he lived, dare mention this encounter to a living soul, for who in the wide world would believe him?
The shock had taken a little while to wear off. For a time he had tried to convince himself that Fudge had indeed been a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep during his gruelling election campaign. In a vain attempt to rid himself of all reminders of this uncomfortable encounter, he had given the gerbil to his delighted niece and instructed his Private Secretary to take down the portrait of the ugly little man who had announced Fudge’s arrival. To the Prime Minister’s dismay, however, the portrait had proved impossible to remove. When several carpenters, a builder or two, an art historian and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had all tried unsuccessfully to prise it from the wall, the Prime Minister had abandoned the attempt and simply resolved to hope that the thing remained motionless and silent for the rest of his term in office. Occasionally he could have sworn he saw out of the corner of his eye the occupant of the painting yawning, or else scratching his nose; even, once or twice, simply walking out of his frame and leaving nothing but a stretch of muddy-brown canvas behind. However, he had trained himself not to look at the picture very much, and always to tell himself firmly that his eyes were playing tricks on him when anything like this happened.
Then, three years ago, on a night very like tonight, the Prime Minister had been alone in his office when the portrait had once again announced the imminent arrival of Fudge, who had burst out of the fireplace, sopping wet and in a state of considerable panic. Before the Prime Minister could ask why he was dripping all over the Axminster, Fudge had started ranting about a prison the Prime Minister had never heard of, a man named ‘Serious’ Black, something that sounded like Hogwarts and a boy called Harry Potter, none of which made the remotest sense to the Prime Minister.
‘… I’ve just come from Azkaban,’ Fudge had panted, tipping a large amount of water out of the rim of his bowler hat into his pocket. ‘Middle of the North Sea, you know, nasty flight … the Dementors are in uproar —’ he shuddered ‘– they’ve never had a breakout before. Anyway, I had to come to you, Prime Minister. Black’s a known Muggle killer and may be planning to rejoin You-Know-Who … but of course, you don’t even know who You-Know-Who is!’ He had gazed hopelessly at the Prime Minister for a moment, then said, ‘Well, sit down, sit down, I’d better fill you in … have a whisky …’
The Prime Minister had rather resented being told to sit down in his own office, let alone offered his own whisky, but he sat nevertheless. Fudge had pulled out his wand, conjured two large glasses full of amber liquid out of thin air, pushed one of them into the Prime Minister’s hand and drawn up a chair.
Fudge had talked for over an hour. At one point, he had refused to say a certain name aloud, and wrote it instead on a piece of parchment, which he had thrust into the Prime Minister’s whisky-free hand. When at last Fudge had stood up to leave, the Prime Minister had stood up too.
‘So you think that …’ he had squinted down at the name in his left hand, ‘Lord Vol—’
‘He Who Must Not Be Named!’ snarled Fudge.
‘I’m sorry … you think that He Who Must Not Be Named is still alive, then?’
‘Well, Dumbledore says he is,’ said Fudge, as he had fastened his pinstriped cloak under his chin, ‘but we’ve never found him. If you ask me, he’s not dangerous unless he’s got support, so it’s Black we ought to be worrying about. You’ll put out that warning, then? Excellent. Well, I hope we don’t see each other again, Prime Minister! Goodnight.’
But they had seen each other again. Less than a year later a harassed-looking Fudge had appeared out of thin air in the Cabinet Room to inform the Prime Minister that there had been a spot of bother at the Kwidditch (or that was what it had sounded like) World Cup and that several Muggles had been ‘involved’, but that the Prime Minister was not to worry, the fact that You-Know-Who’s Mark had been seen again meant nothing; Fudge was sure it was an isolated incident and the Muggle Liaison Office was dealing with all memory modifications as they spoke.
‘Oh, and I almost forgot,’ Fudge had added. ‘We’re importing three foreign dragons and a sphinx for the Triwizard Tournament, quite routine, but the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures tells me that it’s down in the rulebook that we have to notify you if we’re bringing highly dangerous creatures into the country.’
‘I – what – dragons?’ spluttered the Prime Minister.
‘Yes, three,’ said Fudge. ‘And a sphinx. Well, good day to you.’
The Prime Minister had hoped beyond hope that dragons and sphinxes would be the worst of it, but no. Less than two years later, Fudge had erupted out of the fire yet again, this time with the news that there had been a mass breakout from Azkaban.
‘A mass breakout?’ the Prime Minister had repeated hoarsely.
‘No need to worry, no need to worry!’ Fudge had shouted, already with one foot in the flames. ‘We’ll have them rounded up in no time – just thought you ought to know!’
And before the Prime Minister had been able to shout, ‘Now, wait just one moment!’ Fudge had vanished in a shower of green sparks.
Whatever the press and the opposition might say, the Prime Minister was not a foolish man. It had not escaped his notice that, despite Fudge’s assurances at their first meeting, they were now seeing rather a lot of each other, nor that Fudge was becoming more flustered with each visit. Little though he liked to think about the Minister for Magic (or, as he always called Fudge in his head, the Other Minister), the Prime Minister could not help but fear that the next time Fudge appeared it would be with graver news still. The sight, therefore, of Fudge stepping out of the fire once more, looking dishevelled and fretful and sternly surprised that the Prime Minister did not know exactly why he was there, was about the worst thing that had happened in the course of this extremely gloomy week.
‘How should I know what’s going on in the – er – wizarding community?’ snapped the Prime Minister now. ‘I have a country to run and quite enough concerns at the moment without —’
‘We have the same concerns,’ Fudge interrupted. ‘The Brockdale bridge didn’t wear out. That wasn’t really a hurricane. Those murders were not the work of Muggles. And Herbert Chorley’s family would be safer without him. We are currently making arrangements to have him transferred to St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The move should be effected tonight.’
‘What do you … I’m afraid I … what?’ blustered the Prime Minister.
Fudge took a great, deep breath and said, ‘Prime Minister, I am very sorry to have to tell you that he’s back. He Who Must Not Be Named is back.’
‘Back? When you say “back” … he’s alive? I mean —’
The Prime Minister groped in his memory for the details of that horrible conversation of three years previously, when Fudge had told him about the wizard who was feared above all others, the wizard