For Arthur, going to work was like pulling teeth these days.
It was awful. Something that used to give him a lot of joy—tinkering around with muggle doodads, spending his days cataloging all the various artifacts that came in and learning all sorts of new things along the way should have been the perfect job for him. Instead, he had people breathing down his neck at all times, calling him blood traitor and making fun of the way he was enamored with muggle items. The only thing that kept him safe was his connection, if distant, with the Black family—despite being a blood traitor, spilling Arthur’s pure blood was not on the Death Eater agenda.
The only thing that kept him at that job was knowing that Molly and the boys depended on that income. Arthur couldn’t imagine himself doing anything else, and being second-in-command (even if it was a department of only two) meant that he was paid enough to put food on the table and shoes on his sons’ feet. That was all that mattered to him. Especially now that they had the baby on the way, the Weasley clan had to make every penny count.
Arthur was out on a routine inspection of recently seized goods, and while it was mind-numbingly boring, he made sure to do his job with vigor. “So, these are…” He paused, leaning down and squinting into the box of strange, brightly colored coils. “Enchanted slinkies?”












