Don't talk to strangers.

Mum said it every time Magnus stepped foot outside alone, even at the age of fourteen, and each time she'd receive a grunt or sigh in response. This time was no different. He finally convinced his parents to let him go school supply shopping without them. Mum, of course would not allow him to leave without first lecturing her dear son on the dangers of of speaking to strangers and accepting anything from anyone he encountered on the street. It was the same old spiel he'd heard countless times before and one sigh and eye roll later, Magnus was on his way to Diagon Alley.

He was already very familiar with the area so it wasn't long before all the necessary books and supplies were purchased. Magnus enjoyed being out on his own and dreaded the thought of running home to his mother so quickly, so he decided to spend an hour or so getting acquainted with the new charms textbook, while sipping on a pint of butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron. It was during this time that a man approached him. He was an ordinary looking man; very well dressed and good looking. Magnus didn't notice anything particularly strange about him. The gentleman introduced himself as Tim and claimed to have something a studious boy like Magnus would find useful. Magnus was of course, suspicious, but agreed to see it. He was presented with a potion and apparently it was made for lads who love to read. It was supposed to significantly  increase the speed at which one reads. There were no harmful side effects, according to Tim, and he even offered to sell one vial to Magnus at a discounted price because he was a student. Magnus was not a gullible person and if not for the very official looking Ministry badge shown to him as proof of Tim's good intentions, he would not have accepted the man's offer. Tim was the head of the Department of Educational Enhancement at the Ministry. Magnus had never heard of such a position or department for that matter, but the badge was proof enough for him, and he bought one vial. Such a nice guy, that Tim

The next several moments were perhaps the worst in all his life. Almost immediately after drinking the nameless potion, Magnus began to feel sick to his stomach, and his head felt as though it would implode. There was suddenly a most horrible taste in his mouth and as he reached to grasp the tall glass of butterbeer, he screamed. The reflection in the glass was not his, but a giant rat head. He felt around his body frantically for more oddities, but there were none. It then dawned on Magnus that he had been taken for a fool, and a fool he was indeed.

Several hours later, he found himself cubicle after cubicle, in search of the person appointed to him by a very masculine looking woman at the front desk. It was difficult to ignore the stares and giiggles encountered on the way, but he had no choice but to keep his head down and keep going. The sooner it was all over with, the better. He stopped after a few feet, and looked up.

Absinthe Barrister

He knocked. "Excuse me, Ms. Barrister?"

Ignoring the giggles coming from adjoining cubicles, Absinthe slogged on. She wasn't sure what it was this time, a new edition of Witches' Weekly, idle gossip, or some off color joke being passed around, but she didn't care much. It was unreasonably warm today, and the cooling charms weren't cutting it. Fanning herself with one of her forms, she looked down at the rest of the papers in front of her, frowning. Those old codgers in Creatures division, Transportation, or where ever loved to slip some of their work onto her already heavy load. "Yes, Miss Barrister, it was a fall from a hippogriff...but it was accidental, so of course it falls in your department. You wouldn't want to let it get around that you neglect your duties, would you, dear?" Creeps. The unspoken words, 'lazy like a muggleborn' rang through their cheesy smarmy smiles all the same, despite how polite and condescending their words were.

She poked the stack resentfully, as if it were personally to blame for her lousy day. She figured on the way out to lunch she could probably slip some of it back into the Creatures division unnoticed, and some of it into Muggle Relations. That should cut her workload by a third and give her more time to work on her own personal projects. She heard someone calling her name though, and it broke through her inner whinefest. She didn't think too much about it, simply turned around... and screamed like a B-movie queen.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

She jumped back from her seat, her wand in one arm held up in the air, her other clutching the flimsy wall of her cubicle. She had knocked her chair over and had kind of slid back, and continued to slide, as the partition she clung to wasn't all that sturdy, and her balance was off to begin with.

"You...what? You...GIANT BLOODY RAT HEAD!", she stuttered, while she gathered herself. Rats were one of the few things that really repulsed her. Clowns were another. But rats...well they actually occurred in nature and were horrifying and disgusting to her. The beady eyes, the thin hair, the long pointy snouts with the tiny pink noses, the long sharp yellow teeth, the bald tails. They were one of the most frightening things she could think of off the top of her head. Practically hyperventilating, her vision had started to grey out at the edges, and recognizing it for what it was, she took one last deep breath and held it before trying to regain control of herself. Her knees were knocking and she grabbed the chair and set it upright, keeping it between her and Ratboy.

"Ok...sorry about that...I wasn't expecting you. Yes...I'm Absinthe...Before we get started, if you haven't filled out any forms at the front desk, there's some right here in this pile, and a quill, you'll need to start those first. If you already have, I'll need you to--" she was going to say 'hand them over' but if he had rat paws she'd start screaming again. She couldn't even bring herself to look down at his hands.

"--just put them right there...on my desk...", she gestured at the stack of papers furthest from where she was standing.

The entire office had gone dead silent and if he dared look up, he was sure all eyes were probably on him and the woman. He thought having to walk through the streets of London with a pink beaded shawl wrapped over his head ( that he snatched from an old woman) was the most humiliating thing to happen to him, but he was so very wrong. Magnus really did not expect the woman to scream; gasp and jump from her seat maybe, but not scream as if she was being murdered. Now that he thought about it, no one had actually done more than point and laugh or stare at him since he stepped through the doors of the Ministry. There was the one bloke who offered him some cheese, but that was the only exception. He suspected 'the kid with a rat's head' was by far the least of their worries and even more of a common occurrence for those who worked for the accidents and catastrophes division.

She has to be new.

For crying out loud, he was feeling bad enough without this woman making him out to be some freak. He was tempted to bare his teeth and growl, and really give her something to scream about, but it became unnecessary once she was able to regain her composure. That, and she had a wand pointed directly at him.

He had completely forgotten about the forms handed to him by the woman at the front desk. As they were already filled out to the best of his ability, Magnus did as he was instructed and placed them on the desk.

"It wasn't my fault, REALLY. He said it would make me read faster and I'm really not so easily fooled, but he said he worked for the Ministry and even showed me his badge and well, I trusted him." Once again Magnus averted his eyes. He was now realizing how right his mother was all along when it came to strangers. "Are you going to help me, ma'am?" he asked, gulping back tears, his gaze never leaving the floor.

Stifled giggling coming from the edges of the department, along with the look the boy gave her (and how did he manage that--making her feel like she was the one who needed educating, conveying that look with his beady, black eyes, when he was the one that got suckered and now needed saving?) helped Abby pull herself together. She ran a hand through her completely disassembled ponytail, and picked up the papers he had laid down, frowning as she read. She stopped only for a moment to reach around and snare a chair from an empty cubicle, and pulled it over, saying "Sit, this might be a while," before retaking her own seat and pulling out a quill. She circled a few items and pulled out a form of her own, annoyed with how the boy had been brought over.  It was more of a potions accident and he should have been referred directly to St. Mungo's, but the circumstances were beginning to become familiar to her and a few others who had been discussing similar instances.

"Git about so tall", she measured with her wand, not waiting for him to acknowledge her, "dark hair, has a bit of a lisp, speaks very quietly, and smells like feta cheese?" she shook her head and made more notes, copying a few things onto a blank paper and folding it intricately, watching it swoop off to another division.

"Right, last month he was calling himself Daniel, only he was wearing glasses and a hat, and carried a cane. Well, it looks like he's still pulling the same trick, so don't feel too bad, you're not the first one this month to be gotten over. I can try a few things, but it's all a bit experimental unless you have the bottle with you...You didn't throw it out, did you?" she asked hopefully.

Magnus thanked her and pulled the chair over closer so he could sit, keeping a good few feet between them in case she went bonkers again and decided to off him. He prayed for the whole thing to be over with in less than an hour, about the time Mum would be expecting him back home from school shopping. Magnus knew his mother very well. If he didn't make it home on time, she would be at the Prime Minister's door in the blink of an eye, demanding  a massive organized manhunt to track down her son's kidnapper. He'd have to come up with some kind of excuse as to why he was late, and it had to be damned good because there was absolutely no way his parents could ever know the truth. The second it becomes known that Magnus was naive enough to drink an unknown potion offered to him by a random stranger, his life would be over. Mum was bound to fasten a leash around him, just like he witnessed a Muggle do to her toddler once, only his mother would never let go.

As the barrister woman described the man he knew as Tim, Magnus started feeling less sorry for himself and more angry at the dirtbag who tricked him. What kind of person makes a career out of taking advantage of people? He couldn't fathom how anyone could live that way with a clear conscience. Magnus was sure of one thing though, there was a special place in Hell awaiting that guy.

Bottle....? "Oh, the vial!" he recalled stuffing it in the pocket of his robes right after drinking the potion, and handed it over immediately. "Um...my Mum and Dad don't have to know about this, do they?"

Absinthe unstopped the bottle and took a long whiff, then wrinkled her nose. She grabbed a text from on of her drawers and began flipping through it while Magnus was asking her something. It took a moment for it to sink in, and she answered him absently while her quill moved quickly over some notes scribbled in the margins.

"Your parents? Hm. Well I'm not going to go out of my way to tell them, but then it's not my place. If they were going to find out, one of the front desk staff would already sent the owl out."

She thought she found what she was looking for, but took another whiff to make sure, then rubbed her finger along the inside of the vial's opening before licking the drop off. The taste matched the smell, and confirmed that it must have gone bad in the heat. Magnus was probably lucky he got away with just a rat's head, instead of some kind of poisoning. "Vile stuff. I'm not sure which has me more surprised - that it did anything, or that you actually finished the dose."

She bagged the bottle up for evidence, and faced Magnus with a solemn expression. This wasn't technically a requirement of her job. It was more of a perk, really. She kept her eyes on the book she picked up again, opened to traditional remedies. She dared not look at him or she'd start laughing like a hyena and ruin it.

"Magnus...I have good news for you. There is a procedure which will have you cured before you even leave the building...you just might not like it...." 

Magnus sighed. The woman at the front desk didn't seem all that friendly, and made it perfectly clear that whatever circumstances resulted in his current state, was most likely due to mischief on his part. That may have been the case for all the other folks who came in with horrible accidents and such, but certainly was not the case for Magnus. Nevertheless, there was no doubt in his mind that an owl was being sent over to his house that very moment, and he was screwed.

He paid little little attention to Absinthe as she examined the contents of the vile, as he was so lost in his own thoughts and on the verge of a panic attack. He snapped right out of it when there was mention of a cure, however, and was so overcome with relief he wanted to hug her; but of course he did no such thing.

"Oh I don't mind that. Whatever it is, I'll do it!  As long as I'm back to normal, I don't care."

Abby looked at Magnus and felt defeated. At fourteen he still had the helpless hangdog expression that most boys lost by their second year. A sort of 'woe is me', mixed with 'aren't I so cute and helpless, and please sir may I have some more?' that she found hard to resist. She sighed and shoved the book into the bottom drawer of her desk, along with the blindfold and other odd items she would have liked to use on him as a bit of a goof, but it was pointless. Fate had beaten her to it.

A wry grin tugged on the corners of her mouth, and she held out a different vial this time, one that she kept nearby after the last incident.

"Here. I doubt this will taste much better than what you've already had, but it should be fairly painless, and fast. You should be back to normal before you get downstairs...If you have any dizziness, or swelling, or itching or breakout in a rash anywhere you head straight to St. Mungos with that vial...so DON'T throw it out for a couple of days, whatever you do."

Magnus had to be the luckiest guy on Earth. Not only was he spared from spending the rest of his life as a hideous freak, but he was also going to be home in time to make curfew. He had to wonder, though, why the Ministry woman didn't just hand him over the potion and send him on his way sooner.

He tucked the vial in the secure pocket of his robes and thanked her graciously before heading off in search of the nearest restroom, where he could consume the potion without everyone gawking during his transformation.