As soon as he'd picked up the paper that morning, he should have known it was going to be a long day.

Granted, he'd been having plenty of long days himself lately.  Jonas Trevelyan had not been his normal, cheery self when he'd come into the Ministry that morning; he'd looked tired and grim, and had altered his normal routine of coffee and a friendly chat in the break room in favor of heading directly for his desk.  Once there, he'd buried himself in paperwork, but anyone walking by might have noticed that the red-haired Auror was spending a great deal more time staring into space than he was actively shuffling through the parchment pages.

Even so, the office was bustling with activity that morning.  The random Dementor attack had very quickly turned into a plague of attacks, and Minister Zephyr had called on the entire Ministry to take action.  On his way in to work, he'd very briefly wondered what that was going to look like.

It hadn't taken long for his question to be answered.  Level Two had been mobilized in a way that Jonas hadn't seen since the last war.  Ministry memos in the shape of paper airplanes buzzing everywhere; Hitwizards and Aurors being organized into seeming patrols.  The energy and efficiency put even the reaction to Macduff's attacks almost a year ago to shame.  The whole thing reminded him so strongly of the last time he'd seen action like this that Jonas felt sick to his stomach, which was the other reason that he'd immediately made a beeline for his desk.

Of course, it didn't take the action long to find him, either.

The memo came racing into his cubicle, nearly hitting him in the back of the head in its enthusiasm to unfold itself neatly on his desk.  Jonas picked it up, read it, and groaned.  Aurors Trevelyan and O'Neal, it was addressed.  At your earliest convenience, please report to...

He crumbled it frustratedly into a ball, and then struggled to his feet.

Ainsley O'Neal had been one of the additions to the Auror Office during his time away, although she'd only been a Trainee when he'd come back.  In his time working with her so far, Jonas had found her to be serious and thoughtful; her final promotion to full Auror status had seemed long overdue.  The general sense was that she'd be a great asset to the Corps, especially with her background as a Healer.

Jonas found her right where he thought he would -- at her desk, with her own nose seemingly buried in paperwork.  He cleared his throat to announce his arrival, knocking lightly on the wall of her cubicle.  Once she turned around, he arched an eyebrow at her, and then held up the severely crumpled memo between two fingers.  "You get one of these too, then, O'Neal?"

It was a day that was nearly as far from the last full moon as it was to the next, so the old bear of a Wizengamot Elder was in fine form and cheer this morning.  He had come to make the most of days like this and come in very early.  He'd already had meetings with the Head of Level Two, the Chief Auror and someone from Departments & Catastrophes.  He was keen to be involved in the fight against Dementors, as well as being in a teaching role again.  He'd hoped that's why he'd been approached, despite it being somewhat outside of his formal job duties.

But everyone had to pitch in where they might and he was early to Level Two.  Those manning the front desk at Level Two directed him to where he might find Aurors Trevelyan and O'Neal.  He was acquainted with the first, and had no recollection of the second so he presumed she must never have been his student while he was at Hogwarts. 

His large form made its way down the narrow corridors between cubicles on the main Auror floor until he caught sight of the familiar red hair of Jonas Trevelyan.  He announced his presence in a booming baritone.

"My good Aurors, are you prepared? It's a beautiful day to save lives!"

Ainsley had almost been trampled when she first arrived at the headquarters that morning. She had read the paper and knew what had happened during the night, but the sight of all the Aurors milling about the place made her truly understand the gravity of the situation. Her stomach knotted in nerves; every available Auror would be pulled to help with the recent rash of Dementor attacks, and this was the first time Ainsley would be on a big case, without training wheels so to say.

She grabbed her morning cup of coffee and was on her way to her cubicle, when one of the flying memos almost took her eye out. She untangled the memo from her hair and walked the rest of the way, keeping an eye out for another one of the hazardous memos. When she was confined in the relative safety of her cubicle, she grabbed a blank piece of parchment, and started writing a report about her latest case, if it even qualified as one; the ministry had received a flimsy tip, and Ainsley and another Auror had been sent out to investigate, and had unsurprisingly come up unfructuous.

A sound made Ainsley turn around in her chair; a rather haggard looking Jonas Trevelyan stood in front of her. He had only returned to duty a year ago, during Ainsley’s final year of training, but because of their similar method of approach in the field and off, she quickly felt like she had found a confidant in him.

He held up what had once been a memo, but was now a crumpled ball, and asked if she had received one. She looked around her neat desk, as if she could have somehow missed a bright purple paper.

‘Um, not y-‘ she had not even finished talking before a memo zoomed through the air, crashed into the cubicle wall and landed wrinkled on her desk. ‘I guess it just got lost,’ she said, bending over to read the note.

A booming voice sounded behind Trevelyan. Ainsley had heard the voice before in passing, but the face eluded her. She tried simultaneously reading the memo and peer around Trevelyan.

The violently purple airplane went zooming by his head, and Jonas barely had time to flinch out of the way before it was crashing into the wall in front of O'Neal.  Before he could open his mouth, a booming voice had sounded and Jonas was being bombarded from all angles.

"My good Aurors, are you prepared?  It's a beautiful day to save lives!"

"Yeah, good on us it's not raining," Jonas said tiredly, pressing his fingers briefly to the bridge of his nose.  Knox Greyfrier, recognizable half an office away by the timbre of his voice, was a little more than he wanted to deal with right now.  The man's booming call made his head ache as if he were suffering from the worst parts of a hangover, without any of the benefit of overindulging the night before.  "Be awfully hard pressed to go about saving lives then, wouldn't we?  Might as well turn in early and hope for the best come morning."

This already felt ridiculous.  Leave it to the Ministry of Magic to bombard them with memos and regulations upon the slightest hint of an emergency, as if the best defense was a solid wall of paperwork stretching nearly to the ceiling.  Jonas gave a pained look to O'Neal, and then braced himself as he turned to face Greyfriar.

"Look, can we put this off to another time?" he asked unhappily.  "Because I've half a hundred things I ought to be doing, and whilst I appreciate that we'd all like to be involved in whichever emergency has us up in arms this time around, you must have plenty on your plate as well, Elder Greyfriar."

Knox's smile was positively indelible today and not even a pouting Auror could diminish his good cheer.  Not today. 

"My hands are tied," he said without any glumness.  He held them up to display imaginary shackles and shrugged.  "This came from the top."

Full of impatient energy, Knox looked around over the tops of the labyrinth of cubicles.  "So where are they? The trainees?"

He checked the time and found the lack of them clustered around like eagerly with skulls ready to be filled up with knowledge to be disappointing.  He looked at the two Aurors with an accusing Headmaster-like frown.  Did they not demand punctuality here? Had Raynor lost her touch? Had someone set all the clocks back?

The Auror HQ wasn't the only department running with amok clockwork this day as Gabrielle Murray was apologising most profusely in a hurried tone to the representative from Romania. Ushering them off on Hamilton with orders to take for tea-lunch and donning the Wizengamot robes whilst catching the lift was a spectacle for those watching the blonde witch. Fumbling with hair and buttons until her level arrived, Gabrielle was mumbling off about needing more minutes in the day.

Stepping off the lift and onward to the headquarters, her heels clicked against the polished, marbled floor with quickened steps until pushing herself through the doors to find Knox (with invisible shackles? ...Who knew.) as the only other member of the Wizengamot there. Nodding towards a few cubicles here and there, she stood at last at the end location. "Sorry for the delay. Again. I, ... I do hope I haven't arrived late?" Gabrielle apologised anew, smiling at the trainee, Jonas, and finally to Knox, giving the elder in age a smile for the ages.

After all, the last she had been in the same room as him had ended rather poorly indeed, had it not? "It's very good to work alongside you again, Elder Greyfriar."

Ainsley rose from her seat after she had read the memo. She fought to keep a smile off her face as Trevelyan looked at her like he would rather be shovelling dragon dung than be reporting to anyone at the moment. She understood his reluctance to deal with the dementor crisis, as he looked like a three-day bender had finally caught up to him.

She took a few short steps and stopped beside Trevelyan. She immediately recognized the Wizengamot Elder Knox Greyfriar, although she had never exchanged words with him, only seen him in passing. The man looked positively thrilled, in deep constrast to Trevelyan’s sombre look.

‘Elder Greyfriar,’ she said, stepping forward with an outstretched hand, ‘I’m Ainsley O’Neal.’ She had no idea if he knew who she was, but figured it was better to introduce herself.

Ainsley stepped back just as a new arrival appeared. She recognised another Wizengamot Elder, Gabrielle Murray, having met her briefly in the past. She doubted the encounter had left any impression on the Elder.

Zeke was relishing in the panicked state of the Head-Quarters. The Prophet article had been the first thing he'd seen this morning and it was all he'd thought about until he got to work early, even though it would seem like he was late by the sheer amount of people hustling and bustling about. Paper airplanes zipped by over Zeke's head and he was just wrapping up a report when he heard Elder Greyfriar's jovial thunder of a voice. Ezekiel took a sip of lukewarm (that's pushing it, more tepid than anything) coffee and peeked over the walls of his cubicle to take a look over at O'Neal's box.

Three people were surrounding her cubicle and Ainsley was putting out her hand to Elder Greyfriar. O'Neal was a sweet hard-working woman, and Zeke was once again glad to find another Auror that went to school with him, even if she had graduated a year before. She seemed a bit like him, logical, thoughtful, and good in a tight spot. Zeke would have loved to be working with her. He hadn't really talked to her, other than while she was in training, and it seemed a bit silly to approach the swarm of people around her desk in such a panicked state.

But he was feeling a bit silly this morning. Zeke pushed back from his desk to open a drawer underneath. He pulled out a french press and a bag of coffee grounds. He squeezed past scarlet robes and cubicle walls to get to the water cooler, he filled the press and returned to his cubicle. Once he was back at his desk with minimal spillage from the press, he heated the water with his wand and dropped in the coffee, quickly brewing coffee that would put hair on your chest.

With the press raised above his head, Zeke wiggled through the office until he got to O'Neal's cubicle. "Good Morning!" he said, maybe a little too chipper, "FullCity Roast anyone?"

Neville felt like he was fifteen again.

He looked like he had just woken up from a very uncomfortable sleep at his desk (which actually wasn't that far from the truth) His hair was disheveled and he was donned in an outfit that looked suspiciously like the one he had been wearing the previous day. He had been up late filing paperwork. He may have finally gotten a lead on his grandmothers case and had been out half the night tracking it down. It was still inconclusive but it had been enough to energize him to stay at his desk to work it out. Next thing he knew he was being awoken by a fellow Auror dropping the Prophet on his desk, "Oi, Longbottom, you've gotta see this." He had spent the rest of the morning surrounded by the increased hustle and bustle of the Auror Office just staring at the head line.

Memories had been swimming through his head all morning as he was trapped in his daze, late nights and coverts meetings working in the Room of Requirement to produce a patronus. At the time he hadn't been able to produce more than a bit of silvery mist while the others had full on animals dancing around the room. He finally managed to perfect the spell but hadn't been required to use it since his time at the Auror Academy. Now that the Dementors were back and on the attack he had a feeling he'd be using it a lot more.

Neville was snapped out of his daze when a booming voice echoed around the cubicles. Even with all the chaos that seemed to be happening there was no ignoring a voice like that. He jumped up from his chair and leaned over the side of his cubicle taking the scene in. He couldn't help his curiousity. What were two Wizengamot Elder's doing here? And with O'Neal and Trevelyan? Neville raised his own voice above the cacophony of HQ, "All right then Trevelyan?" He gave the seasoned Auror a look that let him know he'd be there in a flash, he just needed to say the word.