Late Sunday afternoon, December 13th, 1981

Holly and ivy adorned the beams above the bar in the Leaky Cauldron, glittering with charmed frost in the lamplight. As December days were short, night had already drawn in before it had felt past mid-fternoon. As the Diagon shops closed for Sunday evening, the Leaky Cauldron’s fires were raging warmly to keep out the winter chill. In one corner a duo of lute and voice were singing Christmas carols in a downbeat tempo. The nearby tables appreciated the entertainment, sat with their Christmas shopping around their feet at nearby tables.

Lawrence, in his comfortable leather jacket and jeans, sat with his back to the bar, legs looped in the stool, pint in hand. He was listening thoughtfully to the live music and resting up after his discharge from St Mungo’s yesterday. One might say aurors were catapulted into the action, but yesterday in Trafalgar Square, a giant[1] had catapulted Lawrence. He’d been carted off to St Mungo’s to be pieced back together on his 19th birthday. It would be the most memorable one in some decades to come, he could feel it. The bones were mended but the bruises and his pride would take a while.

As the pretty singer eased through the last verse of Silent Night, a face caught Lawrence’s attention as it entered the pub’s main bar. Speaking of pretty witches, he thought inwardly, wetting his lips in anticipation of conversation. Pint in his left, Lawrence raised his right hand in a polite half wave, half signal to field healer Quill Som. She was a very recent acquaintance, as recent as yesterday as she’d dragged him out of a fountain and tended to his bewildered state. As pulling techniques went, that was his least conventional. Though, he had to admit he didn’t try to pull every witch he encountered at work. He did owe Som a drink though.

“We meet again,” Lawrence spoke as they came into close proximity, smiling brightly at the healer. “Once, twice, three time’s a charm?” He joked lightly, hazel eyes kind beneath his mop of brown curls. “Gin was it?”

1.	Impressive

Ah, there he was. He was waving at her from the bar.

Quill weaved her way through the tables back from the Diagon-side entrance after having paused to scan the room. It hadn't taken much convincing to join her former patient - the young Auror Musgrave - for a drink, but then she'd been a little too distracted to turn him down. What with a giant and cross-spellfire and screaming muggles. See, Quill wasn't exactly extroverted and spent most of her free time (what little she allowed herself) at home. But, her healer training was over, she'd met a nice wizard, and she thought she'd do him the courtesy of accepting his gesture of gratitude: a gin.

 "Lawrence. Yes. With mint," she said, remembering to smile.

She shed her coat and levitated it across to the coat hooks near the hearth. "You look better! Not as damp as I remember. Well fit."

“… with mint.” Lawrence’s brown eyebrows lifted in acknowledgement of this extra information, and he twisted gingerly to put his pint back down on the bar, making to catch the eye of a figure behind the bar.
“A gin please,” Lawrence requested, as nonchalantly as a nineteen year old could when joined by an attractive lady, “with mint.”

When he moved back, Quill had shed her coat, and Lawrence gave her a friendly smile, not really sure what this was. Whether this was just a thanks, or if this was a drink, drink, so to say. He was still finding his adult feet a little, socially. It was like being a first year at Hogwarts all over again. Luckily the healer filled what felt like a chasm of silence between them.

“You look better! Not as damp as I remember.” Lawrence’s face lit up with humour, and he laughed in amusement at her observation.

“...Well fit.”

“Ah, oh, thank you,” Lawrence’s mouth grappled with moving quickly from friendly laughter to taking that additional response more seriously. It would be wrong to laugh such a forward two word compliment from a witch. They were few and far between (though Lawrence might suggest otherwise). “You look lovely also.”

It felt so wooden in return, especially in his inexperience. He hated the almost nasal quality his voice took on when he was nervous. And he was only nervous because historically forward witches he’d encountered who might say something positive about him were the sort who’d set a trap, like Andy Carter. Quill Som seemed too pleasant for that, but he could be under-estimating her. He’d like to under-estimate her, if that wasn’t the most administrative way to consider a potential new friendship.

The glass of gin, adorned with sprig of mint, landed on the bar between them with impeccable timing. It broke Lawrence out of his self-conscious daze long enough to fumble in his pockets and then pass over the correct coins.

“Well, cheers,” Lawrence proposed, lifting his two-thirds full pint towards the gin and smiling, “thank you for coming to my rescue yesterday. Here’s to hoping there's no more giant incidents.” He let his glass meet hers and managed to hold her gaze a fraction longer before he blinked and hoped to Merlin he wasn’t blushing. He tried to drink down the rising blood.

“They say I’ll be right as rain in a couple of days, no lasting damage,” Lawrence added, trying to subtly wipe beer foam from his top lip which wasn’t there to begin with. “All owed to your quick assistance.” Well, maybe they hadn’t said exactly that, but he was absolutely sure it helped. He might have drowned otherwise.

"There will be," Quill said. "More giant attacks, I mean. They're pushing them out of populated areas and there will be more retaliation if the reports from Level Four are the be believed."

She set herself up on the bar stool, and it creaked with age.

The supposed demise of He Who Must Not Be Named had lifted a dark fog from the land, but there was a great deal of clean-up. His followers had to be rounded up and tried for their crimes. His beastly minions must be placated, wrangled, and secured.

"But you probably know that," she said with a smile, realizing she might be coming off condescending. Of course he knew. "I'll bet the Aurors have all the best reconnaissance. I feel like Catastrophes doesn't know what's going on until it's on top of us."

She drank some of her gin. It was cold, sharp, and wintery. The unity of the drink matching the weather felt tidy and reassuring.

Oh golly he’d been trying to put a little celebration in. Som was keen to set him straight on the likelihood of more giant incidents. He felt somewhat deflated at the thought. Still, she took a stool beside him. All was not lost.

“But you probably know that, I’ll bet the Aurors have all the best reconnaissance. I feel like Catastrophes doesn’t know what’s going on until it’s on top of us.”

Lawrence had only been an auror a few months now, and in training, but early on they had been warned about fishing for comments. Loose lips give enemies tips, and all the other sayings respun from World War II.
“I couldn’t say,” Lawrence replied, as politely and lightly as his just 19 year old self could, as tempting as it was to tell Quill to endear her to him. “If you only hear when it’s on top of you, then you do a fine job.” There was a terrible suggestive pun opportunities in there but he was steering clear and playing straight with the genuine compliments.

“Have you been out to giants before?” He asked, “that was my first one, which was probably obvious.” The colour returned to his cheeks. “Any tips for next time on staying alive?”

Oh dear, she'd missed something. Lawrence seemed to wilt slightly and Quill knew she'd been obtuse. This was supposed to be fun. Why did she have to be so morose? The war was over. This was the denouement.

She felt a little aware of her age just now. Five years wasn't much in the grand scheme but when they were both so early in their careers, it could be rather a chasm.

"Oh! No. That was my first giant. I've only been in the field about a month."  She leaned forward, worried that what she was about to say might be overheard.

"Honestly, they should have us in the field earlier. Field Healers are different than those staying at Mungo's. And we should have better combat training." 

She leaned back. "You did great, though. Aiming for the fountain? Good strategy."

“Oh! No. That was my first giant.” Quill’s explanation made Lawrence feel a hundred times better. Being a trainee he was always on the back foot, learning how to play catch-up on procedure, law, and now giants. Suddenly they felt like they were on more of a level pegging, despite the small age difference.

“Aiming for the fountain? Good strategy.”

Lawrence laughed, not sarcastically, but genuinely. Quill was altogether one of the nice ones, from the impression she was giving him. Nice was too plainer a word, but it was a good start. They were both young and still finding their way as proper adults. He had over estimated Quill perhaps? But for someone new to the field she was more put together than he felt, or she came across as.

“An even better one if I’d been conscious,” Lawrence admitted, chuckling, “thank Merlin there was a brilliant field healer nearby.” He lifted his pint glass and toasted her. “Thank you, lifesaver.” He gave her one of his best smiles, genuinely humbled by the fact she’d picked him out of freezing December fountain water and put him back together.

“You’ve only been in the field a month?” Lawrence queried, curious about what field healers did. He’d encountered them here and there but not to talk to. “Sorry, I don’t really know how your job works, apart from you’re there to patch up people. You looked like the real deal to me.”

Quill grinned. "Oh dear." 

She took a big sip of her gin and touched her mouth with her sleeve. "I just try to act the way a totally competent Healer would act. This job's some percentage acting. Staying calm when everyone else is losing their mind, delivering bad news gently, and apparently coming off as a Giant Rampage Veteran."

Her drink was nearly done, but she didn't make any of the usual moves to leave.  Instead, she turned in the stool to sit more comfortably at the bar.

"You're not much like other Aurors." She meant it as a compliment. Aurors were all very brave and useful, but they did tend to take themselves rather seriously.

“… Giant Rampage Veteran.”

Lawrence laughed with her, amused at the title she’d given herself.
“You should get it on a t-shirt, might make a good band name.” He had made an assumption, but one that put her in a very positive light, he hoped. She seemed to settle herself at the bar, and he got the impression she might stay for another if he asked. The rate at which the first gin had gone down suggested she’d been thirsty. He glanced down to his own pint which was on the last inch.

“You’re not much like the other aurors.” Quill said, as he was finding words to ask if she’d like another, and he lowered the pint glass from his lips, abandoning the attempt to neck the last bit for conversation’s sake.
“I’m younger, less jaded and crack fewer chauvinist jokes?” He asked tentatively. “I’ve not been an auror long enough to know if I’m like the others. But I hope I’ll be a good one.” He shrugged, wincing internally, and gestured to her glass. “Would you like another?”

Please want another, he thought, looking for her response before he ordered. He hadn’t much to compare for Quill, but he hoped that all the healers he met were as capable and lovely in person. Then he had his old schoolmates, Andy Carter and Sandy Misslethorpe, who’d gone to train at St Mungo’s while he’d gone to Level 2. He’d prefer to buy Quill a drink, if anyone asked.

“Why, what are aurors and healers meant to be like?” Lawrence asked, genuinely interested. “What’s your day like?”

Quill hesitated when Lawrence offered to buy her another, only because she didn't want to put him off by insisting she pay this time. He didn't seem like the kind of wizard who'd get ruffled about that, but they were having a nice time. But on the other hand, it felt a little too... typical witch/wizard to let him pay for everything. After a moment she resolved.

"Yes, but let me get this one." Her silver was in a handy pouch on her belt, so it was on the counter quicker than he'd be able to protest too much. "Hot cider with whiskey?" she said catching the bartender on his way by. Then, a questioning look to Lawrence for whatever he wanted.

Drinks on their way, she remembered what he'd been asking her.

"Ah, well, I don't know that anyone is meant to be a certain way or another..." she began, well aware that answering an interesting question with 'it depends' was true, obvious, and annoying.  "I think Healers need a strong stomach and detachment, but I think any sort could manage that, if they wanted to. Or needed to."

She'd been sick on her shoes at her first splinching...

"All hands on deck, Som..." had joked her dry as bones Master Healer.

"Well, I don't have patients like hospital healers do. For us, it's all crisis and triage. If we're not being sent out in the field, we help in the clinic."

There was a little medical wing on the Accidents and Catastrophes floor to manage on-the-job bumps and spellburns of Ministry folk. If you could locomote upon your own volition, it was easier to stop by rather than get in the queue at St. Mungo's.   

"When I get in, I like to read the reports from the previous shift. They're all, well, in these little slots on the wall? Everyone's reports go directly there - no hoarding them in our desks. There's this funny little wizard, who's so protective of them! But he lets me peruse since I leave them tidier than I found them."

She was proud of that.

“Same,” Lawrence uttered, caught off-guard, “and thanks.” A genuine smile crossed his face and he pushed aside his pint glass so it could float away to be washed. Quill thought a little of his question, and put forward a reasoned answer.

“I’d agree with that,” Lawrence nodded, “especially the strong stomach.” The things they saw, the things magic could do to bodies! Worst of all, the smells. His classmates were good on the detachment, he reckoned, and certainly good on the smarts required. Lawrence, on the other hand, had different smarts, sharp reflexes, observational skills and a curious mind, which was why he’d become an auror.

He listened politely in silence as Quill recounted her usual routine at work. She had an endearing look on her face as she recounted the reports. Sometimes a good tidy up was all you needed to order your mind and feel things were back in control again. He could understand that. He was confined to his room in the house he’d grown up in, and by nature was a little rough around the edges, and a typical boy. His grown-up sister, also at home for the moment as neither of them could afford to move out, and his mother were much neater people. They chastised Lawrence and his father for mess in the house, especially when his mother was cutting client’s hair in their kitchen. His father had constructed a shed in the garden to escape, and some evenings Lawrence would hide there talking to his dad, who had become Director of the Knight Bus earlier that year, before he left for a nightshift.

“A tidy person,” Lawrence added quietly. “Sounds so very peaceful and organised. Our offices are not even organised chaos.” He supposed Quill might be familiar with the aurors cubicles and the myriad of paper plane memos filling the air above them.

Their drinks landed between them, and Lawrence suddenly felt a little self conscious for agreeing to the same drink. His pint was now replaced with a shorter glass complete with sliced lemon, cinnamon stick, and star anise. His lips formed a little ‘oh’ in surprise, which he tried to cover to save face in front of Quill.

“Cheers,” Lawrence toasted, seizing the glass in his left, hoping it tasted alright with all the decoration. “I’ve always wondered if it gets tedious, fixing everyone’s mistakes in that Department.” He thought aloud. “You all do an amazing job, but don’t people begin to take you for granted?” He scratched  his chin with his right. “Would you prefer proper patients, in a hospital?”

"Oh, Merlin ,no!"

Quill waved her hand like she was fanning away a smell.  "Proper patients lay in bed and moan all day. What fun is that? No. Catastrophes is much more interesting. Between me and whoever got you at St. Mungo's, I certainly had the better day."

"I don't think anyone joins up for Level Three hoping for a quiet day, do they? But maybe I'm not jaded enough yet. Check back with me in twenty years." 

Quill successfully stopped herself mentioning that she was feeling a bit buzzy even after just one drink, although she suspected her cheeks were getting pink. 

"I mean, you get that, right? What if all the dark wizards stayed home? I think we both like fixing things and get a little bored if there's nothing else to do."

Quill’s reaction to his suggestion of normality, presumably, suggested to Lawrence she was definitely in the right Department.

“… check back with me in twenty years.”
“Alright, I will.” Lawrence replied with a bright smile, amused. “And I totally agree where you’re coming from. It’s one of the reasons I decided to apply to be an auror.”

“I think we both like fixing things and get a little bored if there’s nothing else to do.”

“Totally,” Lawrence agreed. “If I had wanted normality and tedium every day I’d have gone for Level One administration.” He put the cider down and his hands mimicked the leaflet folding dance he’d seen rows of people doing when he’d gone up there once.

“So I know you’ve only been in the game a bit, but it’s still longer than me. What have you seen, or have you been told any good stories?” They’d both experienced their first giant together, but there were other catastrophes of course. “Did you have to deal with Black blowing up that street?”[1] Lawrence had been absolutely amazed to see photographs of what had happened. “Twelve Muggles, gone.”

1.	Happened sometime soon after October 31st, 1981, Edwin was one obliviator despatched

It was nice to be treated like an expert by Lawrence. She didn't always feel like witches were given their due in the Ministry, and Lawrence was right that some took Level Three for granted. She made a little humblebrag shrug.  "Well."

But her expression turned a bit grim at the mention of the Black incident.  "Just barely. I think they had the more senior people on it because of so many muggles. Muggle Worth Excuse commandeered a travel agency and we used it as a field hospital. Wizarding folk who'd been in the blast got sent to us. And well, we handled it. Triage."

"I heard all that was left of that other one was his finger. I wonder where they have it..."

Lawrence gave Quill his full attention - not because he was morbidly interested in such facts, but because it was experience and she was a new friend. Or maybe more than friend. He wasn’t sure how to approach it. Rushing into things was really not working out for him right now, so he’d go for building a rapport. Gosh she was nice though - no nice wasn’t a worthy adjective. Admirable? Stoic? Patient? Lovely all the same. He wasn’t sure if it was his thoughts about Quill or the cider warming him from the inside.

“Pettrigrew?” Lawrence asked, seizing his opportunity to show a little knowledge, “Do they take those things to St Mungo’s? Like put it on ice?” He examined his right hand little finger with his dominant left, as if imagining what it might be like to lose a finger. Be weird to lose a bit of himself, he couldn’t imagine.

“Only a finger left to bury,” he shook his head and shivered. “Poor Mrs Pettigrew. They’re going to give him the Order of Merlin, well, his remaining finger, I guess.” There were accounts that suggested Black had drawn his wand and obliterated Pettigrew before he could even draw his in return. What a way to go.

“Sorry, that wasn’t a very happy topic of conversation,” Lawrence admitted with a blush, though in these times, there were plenty of horrible things passing before the Council of Magical Law. “I was asking you if you had any good stories and derailed things.”