About 6pm
“Your ah…your mentee owled.” Bruce Ballentyne was propped in the doorway to a meeting room on Level 4. She smiled down at Adrestia Gamp. “Can’t make it. Family catastrophe.” A roll of her blue eyes later, and Bruce stood up against her cane and stepped into the room. She had a few sheets of parchment in her left hand, which she dropped onto the small table before sitting on the edge of it and propping her cane against a nearby chair.

“She couldn’t spell catastrophe so that’s what I’m guessing she meant, anyway.” She smirked and tilted her head to the side. “Or she’d got a trophy stuck to her cat’s ass.”

Since her return to Level 4 a few weeks prior, Bruce hadn’t made any effort to speak to Miss Gamp. Fortunately, the werewolf mentor wasn’t a full-time employee and therefore kept hours to work around her full-time job. For this, Bruce had been grateful. Just over three years ago, after her attack, in order to receive her monthly pay-out from the ministry for falling in the line of duty, Bruce had had to jump through the odd hoop. One of those hoops had been attending a mentoring session. It had been Level 4’s attempt at showing they were looking after their former staff. Having worked with werewolves for 22 years preceding the event, Bruce had found the entire process patronising.

Poor Adrestia Gamp had had the displeasure of being expected to coach Bruce through the life changing metamorphosis. Not surprisingly, Bruce hadn’t wanted coaching, and had instead informed Gamp that they would spend the time discussing far more interesting matters and then writing a few fake notes to get paid.

“Happy New Year, Gamp.”

Tia was amongst the many werewolf wing staff members who'd been surprised by Ballentyne's appointment as head of their division. On the other hand, her reasons had been different from most: Bruce was one of her former mentees, from back when the program was still on wobbly legs and she didn't have many werewolves under her belt. Basically when she had been more naive.

Bruce hadn't talked about her werewolf issues, had blatantly refused. This wasn't unusual, Adrestia knew that now, but it had saddened her a bit at the time. So when she looked up at the relatively cheerful older witch, the surprise was written on her in large letters.

            “Happy New Year, Gamp.”

It quickly dissolved into a smile. "Happy new year!" she pushed her chair back from the meeting table and took a good look at Bruce. She looked good. In a better place, on better terms with herself than before. "I was wondering if I'd see you one of these days. How's it been so far?"

Guiltily, Tia had reverted to her usual line of greeting. Checking on the welfare of another werewolf was second nature. She hadn't sought out Bruce over the last few weeks but she hadn't been avoiding her either.

Iona could answer a couple of questions, but she wasn’t going to allow her quick pop in to turn into a mentoring session. Tia had always seemed like a nice witch, one who wanted to help, that was good. Bruce had never wanted help and still didn’t; not in that way, anyway. It was why she hadn’t taken a seat, but a perch on the desk instead. Quicker escape route, and it didn’t give the wrong message.

How had it been? Bruce thought briefly about the howlers that had come in when news of her hiring had made the Daily Prophet before Christmas. She thought of the meeting a couple of days ago that she’d basically tanked. Chairing meetings and talking with large groups of people had never been a prerequisite of leading the Werewolf Capture Unit. Orders were given and people followed those orders because it got the job done and would hopefully keep them alive. This job, she was quickly finding out, was completely different.

“Busy.” Bruce stated with a lopsided smile and a shrug. “But not a good busy, either. It turns out I don’t do public speaking. Wrestle a wolf or have a duel? I’m your gal. Stick me in a room with a few Department Heads and some aurors, and I choke. Figured I’d be done finding out things about myself by now.”

But they didn’t need to discuss Iona’s failures. She grinned, a kind of strained, forced grin.
“Anyhow, you’re still here. Doing your…talking thing.”