8:30 pm
Meeting room on level one, after a long financial meeting

Quill, in loose grey robes, removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. The meeting had gone long, and even the stalwart, procedural master could only talk of requisitions, bottom lines, and tiered allocations for so long. Under Zephyr and continued under Glass, more and more interdepartmental collaboration was going on but it had become rough terrain for bookkeepers. Which department paid for which part of the endeavor, who was having to assign how much staff away from regular department to assist other departments and how was that affecting hours and budgets?

Her own Department, Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, was deep in that melee. On a regular day, they ran joint operations for Law Enforcement and Creatures, sometimes Transport and even Games and Sport needed Obliviators from time to time.

She waved her head gently about her temple to dispel any further thought on the matter. The meeting had ended, but she'd lingered behind to clear her head. The room emptied and only after a moment or two of silence did she notice that she wasn't the only one who'd kept their seat.

"Edwin," she greeted with a smile that was tired enough to border on smirk.

“Quill.” The Minister replied with an exhausted smile. They were both still there at the end of a longer than average Tuesday. He was beginning to wonder if Level 9 was extending them for gain, only financial meetings never differed. As a Department Head they were long debates and red ink with nobody leaving until it was right, and woe betide the one of them who brought wrong data to the table. Now, as Minister, he had to take a lead on balancing the books overall. Where Edwin had run a tight ship as a Department Head, managing a whole government tested his abilities and then some.

Flash Lockhart had taken the news that his budget was further squeezed with thigh slapping and moustache twiddling. Edwin didn’t doubt the sporting head was irritated at the news, but Humphrey was a good man and couldn’t argue the reasons once explained. When it came to keeping the public safe from dementors, one was inclined not to be tight for human life. Movement on finding a long term answer remained pedestrian, though Edwin had hope for the St Mungo’s team now that they had a worthy lab rat.

“It feels like forever and a day since we last had a conversation that wasn’t on record or for procedure.” He leaned back in his chair, contemplating remaining company and a strong drink, and stretched his legs beneath the meeting room table. “How are things with you? How’s your mother?”

Quill reflected the Minister of Magic's posture, Edwin still but different, and settled back in her chair. She let out a sigh, releasing a fraction of the tension she'd held inside since, well, the Second War.

He asked after his mother. That was kind.

"She's well. Has more of a social life than I do. She has a cards group." This seemed to amuse Quill.

Quill's mother had moved to London with her when her husband, Quill's father, passed. That was in 1990 - ages ago. It seemed natural to them both they go it together. Quill had a nice flat, too big, so it worked - that, and they'd become happy friends. Quill didn't talk about it much, but she'd enjoyed very much getting to know her mother as a peer, a complicated faceted witch.

Then, she turned away innocently to glance at him sideways.

"I didn't hear that you met with Witch Weekly, did I?"

“Ohh…” The Minister rested his head back, “you probably did.” He laced his fingers over his belly, which if anything was retreating since his promotion through the stress. “Falls into the positive PR bucket, though I ignored them for as long as I dared. Helps me to be more relatable to the middle aged witch, according to the chaps on Level One.” He chuckled at himself. “They were concerned for my loveless lifestyle, the perpetual preoccupation of the people over the lack of a Mrs Glass.” He shrugged.

He had been preoccupied with it once too, not to any surprise of female colleagues he propositioned over the decades. His private drinks with Genevieve Gamp had only highlighted how lonely it was at the top. That and moments like this, where he realised how long it had been since he’d had a social conversation with Quill that hadn’t been about their jobs or the state of the nation.

“Being unmarried doesn’t make you any better or worse at the job, does it?” He asked Quill rhetorically. They’d both done admirably leading Three for years and then now each a rung higher. “To suggest it for a witch is anti-feminist, though, isn’t it?” He asked. 

A requirement that the Minister of Magic meet with a ladies' magazine to ameliorate the public tension of a bachelor in office, it was an absolute horror show. Her face showed as much.

"As one of the target demographic I can assure you my economic anxiety has little to do with your coupling, sir." Quill tried to imagine herself in his position and how short her tenure in office would be as a result. No thank you.

It had been a long time since Quill had been on a date. She thought about it from time to time, but mostly the adventure of it made her tired. Could she skip to the end?

"Being unmarried doesn’t make you any better or worse at the job, does it? ... To suggest it for a witch is anti-feminist, though, isn’t it?”

"Certainly would take on a different tone, if it were a witch; I can't recall any articles about Minister Zephyr's lack of a husband, least not in anything I read. Perhaps match-making a wizard is more of a paper dolls game then it would be for righting a spinster?"

Quill tended to cut right to it.

"A vapid distraction either way. Unfair really." Then she felt as if she should say something comforting. "You're doing a perfectly good job."

“As one of the target demographic…”

Never! Quill was never ‘middle aged’. Edwin declined to acknowledge such from his friend and dear colleague. They had known each other so long and through thick and thin (apart from when Quill had departed, for the sake of protecting her family, for which Edwin admired though went about in a different manner). He was honest with Quill, to a point, obviously. He appreciated her sage advice, her careful hand on the tiller when chaos happened and he could be a little too wrapped up in enjoying the mayhem.

“Us wizards fertile until older age,” he suggested with a shrug. He was sixty-one, almost twenty years Zephyr’s senior, who hadn’t yet reached fifty.

“You’re doing a perfectly good job.”

“Thank you, Quill, that is most kind of you to say. And their preoccupation of my marital status is a reflection of this, I feel. They’ve nothing more political to debate of me, or pick fault at.” He looked ever so slightly smug at this, given Quill’s comparison to his predecessor. Edwin had picked fault in Zephyr, but he’d been strategic and generally diplomatic with it to ensure progress where it mattered.

“We must have dinner sometime,” he suggested, “I haven’t cooked for anyone in what feels like years.” He smiled and and then realised how that might sound in the context, “an offer unrelated to the previous topic, forgive me,” he raised a hand to her in apology for the implication. Not that he wouldn’t consider Quill Som in that manner - she was a perfectly intelligent, beautiful witch, but one of the few who had always put Edwin in his place. It was part of the reason they had worked so well leading Three, and he had every confidence in her now.

"Huh!" Quill chirped at the sudden transition to a meal together, but calmed herself when Edwin explained.  A come-on would have been so outlandishly counter to all their years together that she should have immediately understood it to be a non sequitur.

"Yes..." she nodded with a very little smile, "yes that would be acceptable. Although I do work all the time..."

She seemed to find any excuse to stay in the office, and it was not difficult. It simply wasn't possible to ever catch up. There was always more to do. Quill thought fondly of her start in Catastrophes, right out of the rigor of St. Mungo's, it was actually a little less hectic.  That reminded her.

"I did take a break the other day, made up some lie to escape to the stacks," the seemingly endless archives of files, "and found myself in 1983..."

Quill looked at him with a flat sort of expectant expression.  Edwin had always been a half dozen years ahead of her, and he was fully credentialed when she arrived from Mungo's with round cheeks and feathered fringe. Nineteen eighty-three... would he remember? So many years on, different things stuck with different people, didn't they.

I'm just improvising. :wink:

“… Although I do work all the time…”
“Likewise.” Edwin echoed with warmth of camaraderie.

“I did take a break the other day, made up some lie to escape to the stacks, and found myself in 1983…”

“Oh?” asked Edwin. “1983,” she was leading him into remembering something. Quill very well knew that Edwin had a good memory, especially for people. 1983 was almost thirty years ago, but to those who had lived through it, it felt a lot closer. He licked his lips, laced his fingers and raised his eyes to the ceiling of the meeting room. His thoughts wandered, considering what he had been doing in 83.

“Let’s see,” Edwin began, brow creasing a little as he thought aloud, “I’d have been 33, eyes on Senior Obliviator. And,” he paused, hands twitching as if to count on his fingers but not needing to, “Bagnold in charge, so Thatcher as Prime Minister,” two women at the helm of the Muggle and Magical communities back then. Today another woman took that role for the Muggles, and she and Edwin didn’t particularly see eye to eye.[1]

“and you… you’d have been with Three a couple of years if not longer, am I right?” He looked back to Quill thoughtfully, wanting her to agree.

“Must have been a hell of a day to send you to that time, or you were on the search for newly trusted peace,” given Voldemort had disappeared just two years before at the Potter’s place, and the worst of the mop up was done by 83. “Or should I be remembering something?”

1.	AO timeline PMs have been vague, so can be alternative universe

Quill studied Edwin while he worked, as he pieced together their shared historical context in order to suss out the case she was conjuring. All he said was correct, and she told him so.

"Yes, just eighty-one. I was a field healer to start." He knew that.

"Must have been a hell of a day to send you to that time, or you were on the search for newly trusted peace," he'd prompted.

Quill looked down and half-smiled.  "I heard something."

She glanced up with a tiny touch of mischief, the mischief of something strange-but-true. "I heard a sound and I went to see who was with me. And there I was in nineteen eighty-three pulling a random case. I can still remember the official excuse. 'Rain mixed with sand from the Sahara'."

It was January, and the Auror corps were closing in on a band of vampires still loyal to Voldemort.  The pressure forced the vampires' hand and they released a curse, causing blood to rain from the skies all over the country. Level Three managed to dispel the curse to some extent, but the cleanup was still on a massive scale.

"Rain mixed with sand from the Sahara.  Can you believe we made that stick?"

“Ohhh yes,” Edwin exhaled, eyes closing up, the smile lines at the corners creasing. “Stick it did, in more ways that one.” Ruddy vampires - quite literally! “We all had to become meteorologists overnight, and the weather witches were working overtime to whip up winds to blow things out to sea and draw in real warm breezes from the desert. Such a smell.” He wrinkled his nose at the memory. Like smelling petrichor on the a butcher’s shop doorstep.

“Don’t give them any ideas to recycle, Quill, unless they can somehow replenish the blood bank with that method.” He wagged a finger in mock disdain, which Quill would know to only be jest. Edwin rarely wagged a finger unless he was beetroot red and shouting at a member of Level 2. He sent Kuester to do such things now on his behalf.

“What a peculiar case though. Be a good one to run through on paper with the latest intake, given the recent vampire issues.” He leaned forward on the conference table, fingers laced, palms together, and then stopped himself. He closed his eyes and drew his lips into a smile. “Forgive me, I lapsed into a Department Head a moment there.” Having held the post for many years, it was second nature.

“I wonder if it would stick these days?” He mused aloud. “They still happily go for unexploded World War II shells, gas leaks, farm chemicals, localised earthquakes, construction accidents, heavy drinking and such. I remember one time the committee went a little off script, with a young muggle born’s influence. I found myself modifying the memory of a young man - who was, in my opinion, a sandwich short of a picnic anyway - to believe he had been the subject of an alien abduction, rather than the accidental recipient of a portkey. I must have told you…”

It was Quill's turn to feign disappointment.

"You truthfully did not, and I see why," she said. Alien abduction! The goal was 'mundane and plausible' not further ostracize the village idiot! If she'd been at all involved with that excuse there'd probably be some official objection noted somewhere. Quill had went through an 'official objection' phase for an insufferable period, but quickly found out that a) it did little to change anyone's decision and b) almost no one went back and read old cases.

"Mundane and plausible," she said shaking her head. "We got a taste of that once. Two whole weeks and not a single incident. Crimp was in a snit trying to debug what was wrong with the traces and alerts. I had my money on Level Two engaged in some conspiracy. Properly eerie."

It had been! Quill and others in the Department had to come face to face with the reality that they needed a bit of chaos. And that if there wasn't enough, they'd have to cause their own.