Waltz

3. Waltz

“Whee, I’m a cowboy.”

Cho was waving her flaming marshmallow in the air.

I had arrived unfashionably early at her flat for lunch, but she had taken it in stride and suggested we go to my beach house in Ireland since any place with a longhorn over the fireplace had to have a barbeque pit in the garden. When I had said I hadn’t noticed, she had evinced disappointment followed by understanding compassion. That had hurt. My efforts to preserve the true wizard heritage had cost me dearly, and my wife had left me, but I had always prided myself on being a stalwart Malfoy beyond any need for sympathy.

After verifying the house had a barbeque pit, we had gone to the store for sausages and buns. While I was looking wistfully at the caviar and aged cheese, Cho had been waving a package of white puffy cubes. What a find. She had found some barbeque sauce which she insisted I try. Lord, have mercy.

Later, I was ready to continue our examination of the pilfered manuscripts when Cho said, “The Archive Department has an entire basement full of stuff.”

“I thought they only considered documents,” I said.

It turned out that since her group dealt with antique material, the removal team brought the entire contents from an abandoned estate to them, not knowing what else to do with it. Once, in the early days, the group had carefully researched and priced the goods from an estate, but once that had been done, the Artifacts Department had claimed that since these articles were now on the market, they were contemporary and belonged under their jurisdiction. The sale brought in a lot of money and the people in the Artifacts Department received bonuses and promotions. The Artifacts Department was not interested in the stored items because they were antique, not contemporary.

I recalled that Kafka had been an Eastern European civil servant. It must have been an enlightening experience.

“Assessing and extracting any valuable items will be difficult,” I said, knowing the Archive people would be jealous of their department’s possessions even though they had no use for them.

“A real adventure,” said Cho.

It’s the barbeque sauce, I thought.

Her plan was that I visit a friend who worked in the government and afterwards make my way down to the storeroom. It was unguarded, and I could go anywhere undisturbed in an administration if I was carrying a piece of paper with a seal stamped on it. The trick was to act as if getting that piece of paper from point A to point B was the most important task in the world. She would meet me there, and she had a bag spelled to pass undetected through the checkpoints. She gave me a winning smile.

Then, her mood changed.

“Is everything fleeting?” asked Cho.

I was processing that when she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t burden you with what I’m thinking.”

“No burden,” I said. “I was giving it some thought. I had only got as far as ‘fleeting with respect to a human lifetime or the age of the earth.’”

“Ah, perspective,” she said. “We can dismiss everything we do on a geologic scale, but it’s still important to us.”

Thinking I would learn more if I let her talk than I would if questioning her, I said, “I hope some things are fleeting. I’m spending my days in the diplomatic corps strutting around like a peacock and trying to keep our distinguished visitors from getting into too much trouble.”

Cho brightened. “You want to change too.”

She paused. “I took the position in the Archives Department because it offered me a chance to withdraw from the world.”

“That can be the right thing to do,” I said.

I took a chance and added, “For a while.”

Cho nodded. “I may have typed myself as a dull, bookish girl. It’s difficult to move to another department. It occurred to me that getting rich might be exciting.”

“Is that why you want to locate these old artifacts?” I asked.

“The hardest part of getting rich seems to be accumulating enough to make a start,” she said.

“My ancestors, my long ago ancestors, were adventurers,” I said.

“You’re very understanding,” said Cho.

I asked why she wanted to be rich. She said she wasn’t interested in being rich, but getting rich looked exciting. Wasn’t it was boring and bothersome sitting on all those Galleons? I searched my soul and was able to honestly state that I wasn’t feeling any acute discomfort.

Her mood changed again.

We had to take a broom ride in the remaining winter light followed by a trip to the store for shish kabob ingredients in honor of those cowboys of the burning sands although I’m not certain they finished with marshmallows the way Cho said the cowboys of the Old West did. That evening, we fired up the fireplace and sampled the American’s collection of vintage videos. She had a hard time choosing between ‘Son of the Sheik’ and ‘Destry Rides Again,’ but once the movie was under way, she snuggled against me. Okay, I can put up with marshmallows. After she left, the house seemed empty.

Monday morning found me carrying an important piece of paper down to the Archive’s storeroom where Cho soon joined me and we begin our search. I was selecting objects of obvious value when I noticed Cho examining a silver globe. She tapped it with her wand. Colors began to appear. Fairy lights performed a stately dance around the shiny sphere.

“We’ve got to take it,” she said. “I know it’s not worth much, but think how much it would brighten the life of some lonely lady.”

On our way out with a full bag of loot, we took a wrong turn. We were about to backtrack when a Dementor floated out of the woodwork.

“Quick, get behind me,” I said.

To my horror, Cho stepped forward and gave a mighty yell. Out popped a swan.

A swan? I thought. One of those peaceful creatures of nurturing with that graceful figure and elegantly curved neck? What the fuck!?

The marshmallow bird leaped onto whatever passed for a face on a Dementor, beat the holy crap out of it with its wings, and industriously beaked out the eyeball region. I didn’t know a Dementor could whimper.

Barbeque sauce.

As the creature fled, Cho grabbed my arm. “I know you could have done much better,” she said, “but your spell is probably so powerful that it would have blasted a crater in the floor, and people would have become suspicious.”

“Not quite that powerful,” I said.

“Oh, you’re so modest. You’re wonderful,” said Cho, throwing her arms around me.

A little while later, thoughts began to trickle into my brain. Where was I? What was I doing? Oh, right, this lady and I had a sack full of stolen goods, and we should be escaping before anyone discovered what we were doing. I suggested that to Cho.

Everything was going well until we reached the checkpoint and Cho’s musical sphere began playing.

I turned on the guard. “I’m paying you good tax money to man your station, not spend your day listening to pretty music. Give me your name and the name of your supervisor. I shall report this.”

As he was protesting his innocence, we made our way out of the building, into the sun light, and on to the beach house where we sorted our haul.

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From MuseAmusant: Crater, fairy lights, sausages.

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Author’s Note: Writing this couple got out of hand.