Rémy had heard a few things about Miss Depardieu; the most common word in conversations about her was usually "cut-throat." "By the book" came in at a close second. Her reputation being what is was, he couldn't help wonder if maybe this was some kind of punishment; maybe one of the older Aurors had caught wind of his rule-bending, and selected an appropriate consequence to squash that rebellious streak out of him. Or maybe somebody just thought it would be funny to send the rule-skirting trainee over to help out the rule-loving lady Auror.

Whatever the case, they'd given him a stapler and a stack of files a foot high to take to her desk, and so here he was, lugging all this paperwork across the office to hand over to Daphne Depardieu. He had this ominous sense of foreboding as he approached her cubicle, either because she really was that scary or he was just working himself into a panic at the idea of having to communicate with her face-to-face.

As he rounded the corner, he peered over the top of her cubicle and found it....wonderfully empty. He glanced left and right, looking for her, but either he didn't know what she looked like or she really wasn't around. He breathed a sigh of relief. Alright, Rem, just leave the files on her desk and run along, tell them you offered to help with whatever she needed but she declined, and maybe you'll make it out alive.

Stepping inside the cubicle cautiously, he set down the stack of files and glanced around. Seemed like a pretty ordinary office; no plaques of rules nailed to the walls, no trophies of past conquests. Maybe the reputation wasn't all it was cracked up to be?

Or maybe her workspace was deceptively nondescript.

Daphne, as usual, was milling around the office in a whirlwind of dirty glances, skyscraper heels and general work-related stress. Her relationships with colleagues had fallen to an all-time freeze; they rarely spoke, and the head honchos in charge understood that the Anglo-French transfer worked better alone. It wasn't that she was anti-social, but Daphne considered the Aurors to be exceptionally unprofessional. No decorum. No work ethic. Hangovers, pranks, arguments - nothing was taboo for that ragtag bunch. And Daphne stayed as clear as possible.

That being said, the new trainees were hardly astounding. Daphne had tried to sieve out the bright sparks, those with talent that she could take under her wing - of course, Hippogriffs could giggle. None of them were up to her standard, not yet anyway. They usually scuttled out of her way, the girls a little terrified and the boys a little intimidated by the blonde femme fatale. Daphne clutched a quill in one hand as said trainees put their heads down. She simply ignored them. Level Two were beneath pleasantries: hell, they couldn't even behave like normal wizards, so Daphne had no intention of treating them as such.

Stepping around the corner into her cubicle, Daphne crossed her arms, frowning immediately. Who was that sorry looking individual admiring her beautifully neat, regimented, ordered, chronological/alphabetically-arranged office? And more importantly, why were they there?

"Can I help?" she snapped. Her voice was anything but helpful, however. "Or are you waiting for the Knight Bus?" The frown didn't fade, and a woman like Daphne expected answers almost instantaneously.

From behind him, a woman's voice snapped, and Rémy jerked up sharply from his examination of the papers on the desk. Frantically, he spun around to face her, accidentally knocking the stapler off the desk in the process. Cursing under his breath, he ducked down to grab it, hit his head on the edge of the desk with a painful thud as he hurried to stand back up, and ended up looking even more of a mess than he had when she'd appeared.

"Miss Depardieu," he greeted enthusiastically, trying his best to look as though nothing particularly clumsy had happened. He swallowed a nervous lump in his throat and straightened his tie; either he was already in trouble, or he was about to be. "I was just, ah...bringing some files." Indicating the stack of manila folders on the desk, he set the stapler back on top of them. Then, cautiously, he attempted to escape the cramped cubicle, skirting around the lady Auror in a bid for the exit. "If you'll excuse me, I....need to go catch the bus before it leaves," he joked, trying to lighten the nerve-wracking pall that had descended on the conversation.