A Meeting Neither Pleasant nor Desired

Jon was not exactly idle when Hogwarts was on holiday.

Or rather, the closer it got to the holidays, the busier he became. He had to handle some of the Order of the Phoenix's preparations, oversee the laboratory, and with Grindelwald due to leave in just over a year, the laboratory's next generation of researchers had yet to be trained. So he had to take on some work there as well.

Fortunately, all of it remained within his capacity.

By comparison, another man who had suddenly suffered a blow was far less fortunate.

It was nearly midnight. The Prime Minister sat alone in his office, reading a long memorandum, but his mind was blank, and he had no idea what any of it meant.

He was waiting for a call from the president of a distant country.

On the one hand, he wondered whether the unfortunate fellow would call at all. On the other, he was suppressing numerous unpleasant memories from the long, exhausting week, leaving little room in his mind for anything else.

The harder he tried to focus on the words on the paper before him, the more clearly he saw the smug face of one of his political rivals.

That opponent had appeared on the news that day, not only listing every terrible accident from the previous week one by one—as though anyone needed reminding—but also offering a well-reasoned analysis of how each disaster had resulted from the government's failures.

The Prime Minister's pulse quickened whenever he thought of those accusations, because they were deeply unfair and completely untrue.

How could his government possibly have prevented that bridge from collapsing?

Someone had actually claimed that the government had not invested enough in bridge construction. It was intolerable.

The bridge had been completed less than ten years ago,