Muggles were a very strange lot.
Kingsley stumbled onto this fact on his third revolution of the large, outdoor market. He had been there for... three hours? With another five to go. Sighing heavily, he decided to take a brief respite before his feet decided to give out. Eyeing a small shop that appeared to be serving pastries and snacks, Kinglsey ambled over, hoping against hope that there was something extremely sugary there.
He rejoiced in their fine selection of sticky buns, bought more than he knew he really should, and settled down to indulge his sweet tooth. As he began to maul his way through the box, he considered the sheer irritation that came with Auror training.
All Aurors had to spend at least a third of their time gaining 'field experience', which included going out and about in Muggle-intensive areas and learning to blend in. He frowned at his pants... jeans, they called them, and his shirt. He was so used to loosely-fitting robes. He decided that whomever had invented t-shirts did so out of pure malice and hate for all humanity, as he was sure he was going to suffocate from the neckline.
Halfway through his third bun, he felt something warm and wet on his knee. Cursing to himself, sure he'd spilled something all over his pants, he put his hand down on his knee, only to have it collide with something warm, large, and decidedly not wet. He looked down.
A small Muggle girl was crying quietly, her tears falling all over his knee. Carefully setting down the treasured pastry-treat, he bent down for a closer inspection. Kingsley had almost no operating knowledge of children, being an only child who had always acted older than his age; he only knew that they were small and capable of alarming amounts of sound and messes, which he heard leaked from ALL ends.
The girl was short, and probably no older than six. Her dark hair was in a neat braid, and she was immaculately dressed. She was also red-faced, and Kingsley estimated that she was somewhere between scared and terrified witless.
"Hey," said Kingsley, trying not to be gruffy. "Hey. Kid. Are you alright?"
The little girl squeaked quietly, but nodded her head bravely. "I jus-just lost my daddy," she mumbled, wiping her cheeks. "I'm s-sorry, I didn't mean to bother you, I'm just very sc-scared."
Kingsley was at a loss. 36 hour training sessions? Check. Battling against the most hardened veterans in the Auror field? No sweat. Going head-to-head with Dark Wizards? Not a problem.
Dealing with weeping, barely coherent children? Kingsley started praying for something to strike him down with lightning.
As the Gods didn't appear to be cooperating with his wishes that day, he chose instead to hunch down so he could look the little girl in the face.
"It'll be okay," he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice.
"No it won't," cried the girl, and she began to give out a high-pitched howl that Kingsley was sure was disturbing flight patterns of Canadian geese.
"Shhh," he said hurriedly, clapping a hand over the girl's mouth. "It's going to be okay! I'll- I'll- I'll help you look for your father, alright?"
The girl immediately shut up and nodded, her waterfall of tears subsiding for a moment. Kingsley breathed a sigh of relief, nodded, then stood up. He looked regretfully at his sweets, put them back in the box, and took off at a hurried pace.
He began looking right and left, trying to narrow down the possible suspects. He launched himself through the crowd, trying to find a man who appeared to have lost his noise-maker. He was three blocks away from the shop when a shrill call caught his ear.
"Hey!" shouted the small voice, and he turned around to see the girl running towards him, waving her arm frantically. "Hey, mister! Wait up!"
He stopped, realising that he had been walking fairly fast, and waited for the child to catch up to him. She did so with a nice bang, running right into one of his legs.
"Oof! Sorry," she said, hastily getting to her feet. "Didn't mean to run into you, mister... what's your name?"
Frantically, Kingsley tried to remember the protocol for when Muggles asked for his name. Deciding that a child probably wasn't going to press charges against him for bodily assault, he decided to give her his real name.
"Shacklebolt," he said, offering her his hand.
"Well, Mister Shacklebolt," she panted, "you walk very, very fast."
"I suppose I did," he murmured, making sure to keep a firm grip on the girl's hand before setting off again. The girl pumped her legs to keep up with him.
"What do you do for a living, Mister Shacklebolt?" she asked politely, after they had circled the area once.
"I'm a bobby," he said absentmindedly, opening his box of treats up and diving in.
"Oh!" she said excitedly, flapping her hands. "That's what I want to be when I grow up? What's it like?"
"You want to be a bobby?" he asked sceptically, eyeing the rather chubby child. The girl nodded, chewing on her lips.
"Yes!" she declared, nodding her head furiously as she primly sat in an adjacent chair, hands folded neatly. "I want to help people, you see, and catching bad people is helpful, right?"
"Yes," he answered, polishing off another pastry. "Yes, it is, but it's very dangerous."
"Isn't everything?"
Kingsley stopped in mid-chew, staring at the girl, who was suddenly very interested in her toes.
"What do you mean," started Kingsley slowly, "isn't everything?"
The girl looked away, propping her rounded chin in one small, chubby hand. "I mean, everything is dangerous in some way, isn't it? You wake up, and you might fall out of bed and break your ankle. You drink water, and it could go down into your lungs. Walk out your door, and a plane could fall on you, or you could get run over by a car, or wild chipmunks could eat your ankles."
Kingsley snorted into his hand, but nodded. "That's one way of looking at it," he agreed, wiping his hands on his pants.
"Do you have a toothbrush?" the girl asked. "You'll get loads of cavities at home if you don't brush your teeth."
"Er, sure," Kingsley mumbled, assaulted with the mental picture of himself cleaning his mouth out with a Cleansweep. The girl nodded in satisfaction.
"Let's go look again," she said, getting up and wrapping her fingers around Kingsley's hand. He stood up, gathered his box of pastries, and they set off again, searching for the girl's father. They walked in silence for a while, before Kingsley noticed that she was beginning to tire, stumbling as they walked back and forth ceaselessly.
"Want a lift?" he asked the girl, and she nodded. He scooped her up into his arms, and she rested her head against his as they continued on. One hand curled around his neck, the other resting on his arm, they looked around.
"Why are you a bobby?" she asked suddenly, on their now-seventh trip around the area.
"Hmmm," rumbled Kingsley, mentally scratching his head. "You know, I think it was for the same reason as you- to help people."
"But why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you want to help people?"
Kingsley considered the question as he shifted the girl to his other arm, thinking deeply on the subject.
"I think," he began slowly, trying to sort his thoughts, "I think most people want to be helpful. I think there's a part of most people, good people, who want to try to make things different."
"Do you really make a difference?" she asked, and Kingsley read the river of honesty and compassion in her dark eyes as she looked at him.
"I think so," he said. "I hope so."
"How?" she asked, and Kingsley was at a loss.
"I don't do anything special," he muttered, trying to answer a question he wasn't sure of himself. "Most of us don't. But, you know, sometimes doing something small turns into something huge. Sometimes doing the right thing, or the nice thing, no matter how unimportant it is at the time, grows like a seed in the ground, and it can turn into something beautiful. Change the world, even."
"Like you helping me?" the girl questioned, and Kingsley nodded.
The girl nodded in satisfaction and grinned, smiling beatifically at him. He grinned back, and Kingsley decided that perhaps children were not as strange as he once thought.
The girl turned her head, looking around, then suddenly screamed.
"Daddy!" she shouted. "Daddy, over here!"
A short, slim man with brown hair turned around, searching for the girl. Kingsley raised his arm into the air to get his attention, lifting the girl higher until the top of her head was visible.
The father ran towards them, scooping the child out of Kingsley's arms and peppering her face with kisses.
"Thank you, sir," he wheezed, holding onto to the girl tightly. "We got separated in the crowd, and I didn't notice it until later."
"It's quite alright, sir," Kingsley smiled, patting the girl's head. "we just had a nice conversation while looking for you."
"Thank you," beamed the girl, reaching out from her father's arms and hugging as much of Kingsley's chest as her short arms would allow.
"Not a problem," Kingsley assured her. He nodded to her father, patted her head once more, and left, clutching his box of sweet goods under one arm.
Only two hours left before he got to go home. He pulled a pastry out and started his rounds again.
Kingsley sat in a small stone cellar below the hideout of a Death Eater cell. Sharing his cramped space was Harry Potter and his two best friends, Hermione and Ron.
"Why are we here?" asked Ron for what Kingsley estimated was the 27th time in as many minutes.
"Because some of Dumbledore's letters are here," said Harry calmly, stretching his legs out. Hermione perched on top of a table, hands holding her head up.
"Is there anything important there?" Ron asked, looking up at the ceiling.
"McGonagall wants them back," Hermione said matter-of-factly, lacing her fingers together. "They might be important, they might not, who knows?"
"Then why are we getting them?" Ron demanded, looking to Kingsley for an answer. Kingsley rolled his large shoulders, not knowing. He was tired, and wasn't entirely sure himself why he was here. He only knew that the kids were here at Hermione's insistence.
He was rather in awe of Hermione. The girl had more energy than a hinkypunk wired on Muggle caffine; she was like a giant machine, implacable and calmly steam-rolling over anything in her path stupid enough to oppose her. It was common knowledge amoung Order members that, had Harry not befriended Hermione, he would have been dead several times over. Sometimes it seemed that it was her sheer stubborness that kept Harry and Ron aloft, and he oftentimes wondered where she got her determination to keep going when the world turned dark. Her motivation to help people seemed boundless.
"This is stupid," Ron grumped, kicking a pole.
"No it's not," said Hermione, a look of steely determination in her eyes.
"Why not?" muttered Ron, leaning against a wall. "We don't know why they're important, or even if they are!"
"Because," sighed Hermione, looking up at the ceiling. She clenched her fists. "Because sometimes doing something small turns into something huge. Sometimes doing the right thing, or the nice thing, no matter how unimportant it is at the time, grows like a seed in the ground, and it can turn into something beautiful. Change the world, even."
Kingsley's head whipped around so quickly that he was sure he had whiplash. Unbidden, the taste of honey and sugar filled his mouth, and for a moment, he felt a weight in his arms, warm tears on his knee.
"Who told you that?" asked Harry with interest. Hermione shrugged and continued her search of the ceiling.
"I don't know who he was," she answered, "only that he saved me and helped me find my father when I was very, very little, and that he had an unusual name. But I do remember him telling me that, and I think I always will. It really made me realise what I wanted to do with my life, and that doing the right thing was what I was supposed to do."
Hermione stood up and started poking the ceiling, smiling in triumph when a board proved loose. "Excellent," she said.
"He taught you all that?" asked Kingsley suddenly, curious.
Hermione looked at him, beaming. "Oh, yes," she said, a tinge of happiness colouring her voice. "Yes. I don't know who he was, but I'll be forever grateful to him." She tilted her head, and her eyes shone. "He made me believe that who I was, was okay, and even good. I'll always keep that in my mind, you know."
With a grunt, she managed to get the board loosened enough to let light in.
"Keep what in mind, exactly?"
She turned her head upwards, towards the sky, and said,
"You know. That the smallest thing we do, the smallest things we say, can change the destiny of a world."