At the doorway of her new office, Tulojow stepped down from the levitating skateboard and set the box she was carrying onto the hovering board.  The board had been a going away gift from her flock of great nieces and nephews back in North Dakota; they'd put a collective effort into painting it and removing the wheels.  With the addition of a simple levitation charm, the board proved to be a convenient alternative to her cane.  Especially for some of the longer corridors around the Ministry.  With a nudge of her foot, she guided the board and box into the office ahead of her but was about to follow when movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. 

A young auror trainee was hurrying down the corridor on some important mission.  Tulojow suspected she recognized the youngster but, before she could confirm, the figure turned a corner and rushed out of sight.  She took a moment and leaned against the office door frame and watched the comings and goings of the citizens of Level 2.  Caving to a moment of nostalgia, Tulojow could remember walking down these corridors for the first time as a new trainee.  It was remarkable how little had changed.  The building itself had changed very little; maybe some updates to the flooring and walls.  Style, and perhaps the ever-present dull ache in her knee, seemed to be the only indications that it wasn't 1962. 

Almost fifty years ago.  That was enough to make only anyone feel old. 

After an unfortunate incident with a Yeti cut Tulojow's assignment in Tibet - and Auror career - short, Tulojow had assumed her time here was done.  But, here she was.  At the door of her office with a box of supplies and personal items.  Tulojow took a deep breath and nodded to a passing Auror before walking into her office, leaving the door open behind her.  In her mind, she was there for Healing support - just as at Hogwarts, that included care for the body as well as the mind. 

The office was bare, save a desk and a pair of generic office chairs.  A small treatment room with the usual assortment of Healer-oriented items lay just beyond the main office.  There was no way the Ministry office would assume the level of homeliness that Tulojow preferred, but she'd do her best to narrow the gap.  With a flick of her wand, the box coughed and a bright, woven rug squeezed its way out and fluttered, lazily, onto the floor.  Another two coughs and a pair of comfortable armchairs wiggled out of the box and took their place in the corner.  A potted, fragrant meyer's lemon tree followed suite and settled itself in the corner by the window. 

Tulojow had turned her attention to setting up the smaller knick knacks: primarily pictures of and drawings by family.  After arranging the first few, she became aware of a figure standing in the doorway.  She set the items in her hand down on an empty bookshelf and turned to the visitor. 

"Jonas!" Tulojow greeted brightly, stepping over to greet the young man with a broad smile and a warm hug.  She'd only been a way a year from wizarding England, but it felt like ages.  "How wonderful it is to see you.  Did you come to help me unpack?"

The redheaded Auror flashed her a bright smile as he returned the hug. 

"Doesn't look like you entirely need the help," he replied good-naturedly, inclining his head to the partially arranged room behind her.  "Still, I figured it couldn't hurt to check in, yeah?"

Word had spread quickly amongst Level Two that the infamous former Auror was making her return to their halls.  Once upon a time, Tulojow Nagde had been both pride and bane of the more by-the-book employees of the Department of Law Enforcement.  During his first stint with the Ministry of Magic, Jonas had crossed paths with her a few times, although her assignments had mostly taken her overseas.  He'd liked the elder Auror then, with her worldly adventures and her relaxed point of view.  Encountering her again at Hogwarts after he'd returned had been a pleasant surprise.

And now, after a long absence, she'd rejoined their numbers once more, albeit in a modified role.  For many of them, it was a bright spot in an otherwise trying month.  There were many among the younger Aurors and trainees who had grown up under Tulojow's tutelage at Hogwarts, and many more of the older generation who remembered her camaraderie from before the war.

Already, the Healer's small office was beginning to take on the same feeling of home that she'd brought to the former Hospital Hut at the school.  Jonas glanced about, trying to assess if there was any tasks that truly needed his help.

"I'd heard you'd been dropping in and out, but I hadn't managed to catch you about yet."  He flashed the Healer a crooked smile.  "Reckon I owe you a welcome to the Reinstatement Club," he said cheerfully.  "Have to say, I'm a bit jealous of the office.  They didn't give me one of these when I came back."

"Well, did you ask for an office?"  The smile Tulojow countered with was bright and just a touch cheeky.  She'd be surprised if the answer was anything but the obvious.  It would take a cocky, newly-qualified Auror who thought themselves the bees knees of Level 2 to consider, seriously, asking for an office.  Jonas was a well-accomplished Auror and more then capable, but Tulojow had never known him to be cocky.  But, that didn't mean she didn't have room to give Jonas Trevelyan a hard time.  "If you didn't ask for one, I can't rightly feel bad that you weren't gifted with one." 

Tulojow retrieved a quintet of framed pictures from the box and set them out on the desk.  The collection had been another project-gift from family; some showed wide-angle vistas of the sweeping grassy plains and bald, rugged badlands of North Dakota while others contained a motley assortment of young cousins and great-great nieces and nephews.  "Mind helping me with some synchronized levitating and sticking?" Tulojow asked, gesturing with her wand towards the expanse of empty wall opposite the desk.

"When do I get my club jacket?  Or pin?" she joked as she handed Jonas the first of the framed photos destined for the wall.   "Reinstatement club, mercy."  Such a phrase required, first, being around long enough and then being gone long enough to warrant such a designation.  Yet, Jonas was far from being that old.  In fact-

"Oh, I remember when you first came skipping in here like a little filly ready for her first race around the barrels.  All bright eyed and optimism.  That was twenty years ago, wasn't it?  I can't tell whether to say has it only been twenty years or can you imagine, twenty years."  When looking back at almost eight decades of life, time had the ability to both seem very long and startlingly short at the same time.  But, thanks to both fate and a small degree of her own willfulness, Tulojow had been in London through the first part of Jonas' training.  "I was squarely on the Ministry's naughty list then.  Serving time behind a desk for that Tiananmen Square business." 

Tulojow chuckled and shook her head.  "I never really thought I'd find my way back here," she admitted, mostly because she knew her current company could understand.  "I imagine you can relate, some.  But, local gossip.  Catch me up on who to keep an eye out for.  Or on."

Jonas laughed, giving a good-natured shrug as he took the first picture frame and moved to place it where she directed along the wall.  "No, I didn't ask for an office," he confirmed with a wink.  "Reckoned I was walking on thin enough ice as it was, what with Raynor deigning to bring me back.  Would've pushed me luck a bit too far if I'd tried to turn it into a negotiation."

Can you imagine, twenty years.  He hadn't realized it had been that long.  A whole group of them had entered the Corps right out of Hogwarts back in 1991, he and Tait and Dan Pratt.  Now, two decades later, he was the only one of the cohort left standing.  And even that was only true after a long forced absence.

Back then, Nagde had been their rebellious senior, pushing at limits and questioning protocols in ways that he'd been too green to understand.  These days, he felt a lot less willing to take the Ministry's decrees at face value, or to faithfully accept that those in power were always right, but it didn't always seem like he had too many allies in that. 

Yeah.  It was good to have Tulojow Nagde back again.

"Funny how life brings us back around again, innit?" he asked cheerfully. He glanced back at her, checking to make sure he had the picture positioned in the correct spot before applying a sticking charm.   

"Well, let's see," he said, reaching a hand out for the next frame.  "You must remember Carstairs -- he's the sort of Department Head who's got certain ideas about how to run things, but he's been less pushy than others recently.  Pratt does a proper job as Head Auror, as long as you don't let him fill out any of his own paperwork.  He likes to push at blokes he doesn't know, but he'll leave you be as long as you push back."

"That was your first mistake!"  Tulojow chided, good-naturedly.  Of course, her chiding didn't have any real backing behind it; even she wouldn't have dared ask about an office as a bright, young new Auror.  Especially given the months and years she spent metaphorically chained to desk work for various reasons here and there.  "Don't they always say, it never hurts to ask?  Clearly, whoever came up with that saying never asked the wrong questions.  Or, the right ones." 

Of course, at the time, she'd been very much an outsider.  A freshly-credentialed American Healer, straight out of the Ojibwe nation, trying to find her way in London in the early 60s.  The Beatles were just becoming a thing. 

"Funny how life brings us back around again, innit?"

Tulojow chuckled and nodded her head, both in agreement and approval of the picture's placement.  "Well, someone has got help these young, green faces learn how it's done."  It was a pleasure to see so many familiar faces around the Ministry - all the bright, promising young witches and wizards she'd watched coming into their own back at Hogwarts.  Being among them, again, had certainly been a part of the position's appeal.  "Or, perhaps, I just can't let go." 

"They both sound easy enough to negotiate," Tulojow concluded, after hearing of the office's two new administrators. 

"How about on the practical side of things?  Any larger cases in the works that's worth being aware of?"  Of course, Tulojow had meetings with the various powers-that-be to get much of the same information but she'd been in the field long enough to know the perspectives of those behind a desk and those out on the streets weren't always the same.  Getting another perspective on the matter, before speaking with them, would not only be informative as far as cases were concerned but also the functional dynamics within the office. 

He paused for a moment, considering the question, before raising his wand to stick the second picture in place on the wall.

It was never really quiet at the Ministry, not completely.  But since Lawrence Musgrave's arrest and Ira Almasy's death, it no longer seemed like a vast criminal underworld was toiling against them.  Tawse was still on the run, but no one had heard much from his lot in ages.  Aside from the pentrals and Dementors swarming the countryside, the magical world had been less tumultuous than he could remember for nearly all of his adulthood.

"Been a bit quiet since May, to be honest," he said, turning back to grab another frame.  This one showed a wide, grassy prairie, with golden-green landscape and a bright blue sky; quintessentially American, if anything ever was.  "Reckon the biggest thing's been the mess with the Lilly siblings.  They were kidnapping Squibs and practicing dark magic up in Keswick.  You must've read about it in the Prophet, yeah?"

Carstairs was still keeping most of the details about the pentrals out of the papers, for reasons that Jonas either didn't fully understand or didn't entirely agree with, but the general investigation into Lori and Lee Lilly had been reported.  The two siblings still seemed just as mysterious now as they had three weeks ago, when the red-haired Abby Reid had floo'd into the Ministry's atrium in a panic.  It didn't help that the dark magic seemed to have stirred up the Dementors again, right at the end of summer when the upcoming change in weather was due to start working against efforts to contain them.