There was a reason, Jonas thought, why everyone hated the witches and wizards who worked for Magical Accidents and Catastrophe.  They were inefficient.  Imbecilic.  Obsessed with paperwork.  They had the charisma of a snail and the unfortunate dogged persistency to match.  And they always seemed to pick the worst time and place.  If he could have blasted the idiot clerk who was insisting on taking up his time all the way back down to Level Three with a mere wave in his wand, he would have -- come to think of it, he probably could, which was not the best realization to be coming to when his nerves were so shot and he was already in the running for Level Three's Least Favorite Auror. 

"Look."  Jonas forced the word out through gritted teeth.  He stood with his shoulders braced, his posture tense, his jaw aching from clenching it so hard.  How Adon went about like this all the bloody time, he didn't know.  It was probably lucky that his partner had only come in briefly that morning -- had checked in before leaving with Raizel to get on with inventorying the Eleor family vault -- because if Adon had had to put up with this current state of nonsensical, vacuous idiocy, there would have already been a hole blasted in the floor and probably another arrest warrant or accusation of improper magic use to deal with.

Hexing the clerk standing in front of him was still tempting.  So unbelievably tempting.  The red-haired Auror glared icily at the other wizard, his fingers twitching dangerously close to his wand.  But that would mean wasting political capitol that he didn't have right now -- not when he was already riding Rosier, not when he was relying on Tamis's good will to keep this investigation running.  Not when he was the only one besides Akiva who hadn't managed to get arrested in the past week.  Jonas's nostrils flared.

Not even Pratt could probably get away with hexing someone inside the office.  Not even if they were from the least popular floor in the Ministry.  Jonas would have to settle for yelling.  "I don't care what bloody paperwork you think I need to fill out!" he barked.  "I don't have time right now!  So it can goddamned well wait after all!"

The Catastrophes clerk looked momentarily taken aback; after a beat, Jonas realized that the chatter in the office had gone oddly quiet, like it usually did when all of the Aurors were intent on eavesdropping on something they shouldn't.  Great.  Jonas could feel his face heating up.  Snarling, he swiped angrily at the pile of parchments that had been steadily growing on his desk.

"I should have your whole bloody floor locked away for obstruction of justice," he growled at the clerk, grabbing his chair and dropping angrily into it.  His knee banged against the edge of the desk on the way down -- it hurt, which only made the Auror's expression twist with pain.  "Just leave it, would you?" he forced out through newly clenched teeth.  "I'll get to it when I bloody well get to it."

Admete had been finishing up a pair of reports when the yelling started. At first she'd somewhat tuned it out; yelling wasn't completely unknown and there hadn't been a shortage of frayed nerves about. And then it kept going.

She was out of her chair and halfway towards the noise, which had suddenly become the only noise in the entire office. A sudden clarity came with that, both enough to mark the voice as belong to Jonas Trevelyan-who had received no shortage of things to make him irritable recently, and to make the thunk of bone against desk distinguishable.

Both of which made her rush her way over to his desk. There were some things she didn't want to have to smooth over, and heavily hexed Level 3 employee was one of them. Even if said employee fell into her mental category of people who get sent over to the Aurors because their own offices didn't wish to deal with them. His name was mentally filed somewhere, but that, well, she had other priorities.

"Every time you yell, they just add more paperwork," she said, leaning on the edge of a cubicle as she looked over the scene. "Which means there's probably two entire sheets in that pile that are actually needed."  This was followed by a glare at the chastised wizard, one which managed to combine you have the worst timing ever with if you shut up and go away I'll bloody deal with it. Which he responded to by nodding and scurrying away. Apparently he had a sense of self-preservation after all.

There were times when he could understand why Adon made such a show out of everything.  Throttling someone, throwing a chair, even bellowing angrily in Hebrew would have made him feel better than what he had to do -- which was not throttle, not shout, and instead settle for angrily picking up a pen and jamming it into the pen cup, which somehow did not convey the same dramatic intent.

Leave it to an Auror to appear out of nowhere right when he was trying to recreate a Shakespearean death scene with office supplies.  It was a trick that every witch or wizard in scarlet seemed to have mastered as surely as if it was included in Level Two's extensive training.  Jonas had pulled it enough himself when a coworker was in a fit of temper -- usually Adon or Eddie -- but despite it all, he did not like having the favor returned.  Particularly not when it was someone like Admete Brown, whom he would have felt far more guilty continuing to shout at.

"That wasn't yelling," he informed Brown sourly, leaning over partway to rub at his knee.  The throbbing pain had yet to recede; he set his jaw, teeth clenched, and took a short, jerky breath, forcing the air out again.

Sometimes the policies and routines in the Auror Office were overwhelming.  Endless procedure was crushing; it forced the life right out of him, drove the will to do this from his chest, made him yearn for the days when there had been no paperwork to complete and no reports to file, aside from what haphazard notes he'd decided to keep on file for himself.  The life of a private detective was more tempting than ever at times like these. 

But he couldn't simply shout at a lot of people, turn in his badge, and go scurrying back to hide in his office.  Jonas breathed in again, slower and more controlled this time, and then gave Brown a curt nod.

"Yeah, well, the world's a different place if we all just ask for what we need, innit?" he replied, each word clipped and short.  Swallowing hard, he quickly took a visual survey of immediate damages.  Level Three minion: departed.  Knee: still aching, but the pain would eventually start to recede.  Desk: covered in paperwork.  The last made Jonas want to groan.  Wearily, he reached for the nearest stack so that he could begin shuffling it into some sort of order, if only cosmetically. 

"Should I find you a trainee to not-yell at, then? Merlin knows they could use it." They'd have to figure out how to deal with angry and upset friends and family of victims eventually, let alone the generally irate. She shot a quick glance at his knee, with a slightly raised eyebrow. Somehow she didn't think that he'd appreciate fuss over that. Didn't look that bad anyways. Though she was going to anonymously get him one of those Muggle squishy balls for Christmas.

She leaned over a bit more to eye the paperwork. "Yeah, be a strange, confusing place then. Bet you I can ferret it out  from the pile they gave you, though. Do us all a favor." To say that her expression was resigned might be rather generous, there was no love of paperwork there. "At this rate, I'd have to start expecting Glass in here tomorrow raising a fuss." Not that she had anything against Glass-rather liked him, so far as such things went. Didn't prevent certain Aurors from being a thorn in his side.

"Rather risk the papercuts. Just finished up a mess anyways, they haven't thrown anything new at me yet." Catch this now, and maybe she'd spare her ears later. Jonas had a case to solve. No need for him to fight crushing piles of documents alongside it.

The red-haired Auror's temperament had been approaching the road to recovery, but at Brown's mention of the traditional Corps pastime of shouting at trainees, the tension immediately returned to his expression.  He and Adon had made it abundantly clear over the past few months that they Did Not Approve of abusing the new recruits.  While needless yelling or perpetual coffee runs certainly still took place, most in the office had learned to keep them out of sight and out of earshot from him and his partner.

But Brown was, in a roundabout way, offering to help.  Jonas managed to keep himself from making too displeased of a face, and waved a tired hand at her to give her permission to dive further into the paperwork.  If she was willing to sort through forms, then he wasn't going to turn down the assistance.

"When isn't Glass raising a bloody fuss?" he grumbled.  He'd encountered the Head of Catastrophes so many times as a disembodied, red-faced floating head huffing and puffing in Tamis's fireplace that it was disconcerting when he occasionally met the man in the presence of his body.  Glass making an appearance on Level Two to storm at him in person would be something new, though.  As far as Jonas knew, Edwin Glass didn't come.  He summoned.  "Reckon he'd be downright disappointed if we ever did things right and proper by his book; he'd have nothing left to bloody well complain about."

Well then. Admete raised an eyebrow at Jonas' reaction. Guess he had been yelling, then. Not the sort of mood where she'd push it, though. Would be just begging for trouble.

She started through the papers at his gesture, nodding in response to his grumblings about Glass. That wasn't a point that needed to be picked too fine, especially given what she was looking at there. "Merlin, you must have ruined someone's day. They gave you fifteen copies of the same form and what looks to be-" A very, very yellowed piece of parchment was pulled from the pile. "This has Leach's signature, of all things. Near as old as I am. Bet you half of this is junk from cleaning behind drawers."

The pile she set back on his desk was considerably smaller. Still paperwork, but smaller. "Maybe Glass can fuss at his own today. Doubt he needs them going off and tweaking our noses, even if it keeps him from getting bored." Wouldn't be the Auror office without a little grumbling, after all.

The suggestion that he'd ruined someone's day was at least somewhat soothing.  Jonas couldn't help feeling somewhat satisfied at that: his growing feud with Level Three was, as Tamis had a habit of putting it, Not Productive, but at least he could feel like he was usually on the winning end.  With the gravity of his current caseload, he hadn't had the time nor energy to plot ways to actively annoy them, so it was reassuring to know that he had accidentally achieved it.  Even if chances were that they were just unhappy at Adon's display in Jerusalem's Old City.

"Is it, then?"  He eyed the parchment warily, although he had to grant someone on Level Three some grudging respect.  Giving someone a fifty year old form was one he hadn't heard before.  He'd have to remember it, either for the next time that Pratt annoyed him or for when Adon was in a considerably better mood.

At least Brown had managed to reduce the collection of documents considerably.  Jonas gave her a quick, grateful nod, though he couldn't help letting out a sigh as he picked up the first piece of parchment. 

"Cheers," he allowed, managing to look resigned as he began to read over the faded writing.  "If Glass is bloody well bored, then I don't see why he should mind a little clean up," he put in sourly, adding a scrawled date to a line the top of the form.  "If that lot on Level Three doesn't have enough to do to keep things interesting, they can always come and run errands for us, then.  Better that than putting all of their time into being bloody impossible to work with."

"Apparently when they're bored they clean out desks. 'Less they have a hoard of old paperwork stuffed somewhere." Admete shook her head, staring at that archaic piece of paper. "Think they go to extra work just for you." She'd never had this much trouble, certainly. Maybe because the kind she got was mostly noise.

She leaned over a little, and shot a look back at her own desk. "Need anything else while I'm up? Might as well grab some tea or something before they saddle me with another case. Or even," she hesitated, face contorted in mock dread, "making me do diplomacy."

Some times it seemed like they needed committees just to keep track of their committees. As if that were efficient.

The pile of paperwork was not any more inviting than it had been a few minutes ago, but at least it had reduced considerably in size.  Jonas tossed an off-handed salute in Brown's direction, his head already bent over the parchments.  The thought of asking the other Auror for more help didn't really cross his mind; Dreogan's kidnapping case was so complicated that explaining the intricacies to anyone other than Adon, Archer, or Eddie seemed an unnecessary use of time.

"Naw, it's well," he replied, clearly already focused on the work.  "Cheers, Brown.  Enjoy your holiday whilst you can, yeah?"

End.