1645 hours


After having left the Auror training room an utter mess when she was letting off steam from last week's Witch Weekly affair, Raine was not in Pratt's good books. She had cleaned up of course but the purpose of the room was not for the gratification of angry witches, much as they might need it. This meant a lot of paperwork and dull things to do, instead of more exciting forms of training. She had taken over one of the desks that the trainees shared to rifle through parchment or what not, curls tied up in fiery knot.

"You too?" Raine glanced up when she spotted Briar joining her on the other side of the desk. "Did you piss off Pratt or are you doing actual paperwork?" she smiled dryly at her old housemate.

It was weird, that the pair of them had kind of drifted apart in the last months at Hogwarts. She'd been busy dealing with all that... Ira stuff, and exams, and Zel. But they had still shared a common room, so the rift wasn't from lack of opportunity to socialise. Raine had felt like Briar was purposely ignoring her.

But then they'd all started training and the frigid silence between them kind of softened as time passed. The redhead couldn't pinpoint exactly why. So much stuff had been going on in her life that it could have been any number of things.

Being related to a sociopathic murderer? Befriending Abby? Dating Zel? Hexing Figaro? Featuring in Witch Weekly? It was too exhausting to think about and she just missed her old friend, really.

Raine cleared the other side of the desk for Briar to use, sliding over one of the ink pots with a quill sticking out of it.

Briar dropped down a stack of folders that made a loud THWACK! as it hit the desk where Raine had cleared a space for her, "Paperwork," She said with a well accentuated eye roll, "Berkeley thinks it builds characters." She spoke in a voice obviously mocking her timid older sister. Entering the Auror Trainee program was so surreal for her, it had been what so many had expected of her, something she had never really wanted for herself but now felt drawn to. Though the extra time spent with her sister just enhanced the surreal sensation. Berkeley was Nine years older than her, it wasn't as if they grew up together. She had already been living at Hogwarts when their Mother died and once she graduated she had moved out and joined the Auror Corps leaving Briar all on her own. Taking orders from the eldest Cavanaugh was going to take some getting used to.

She smirked at Raine, "How long do you think Pratt's going to be punishing you?" She had heard of Raine's blowing off steam incident but hadn't been there to see Pratt's reaction.

Sitting side by side with the red head, writing out reports reminded her so much of the years they spent at Hogwarts it was almost painful. They had spent seven years living in the same dorm room, taking so many of the same classes. Raine and the other girls of Gryffindor were more like sisters to her than her own blood. It had been hard to ignore her and push her away in their final year but she just couldn't bring herself to be okay with Raine dating a werewolf. Then all the stuff happened with her Grandfather, a time when she could have really used such a friend and she still couldn't do it. It wasn't until the pair were in training together and Briar had learned about her breaking up with the beast that she finally let herself come around again.

"I heard he can be a total hard ass."

              "Berkeley thinks it builds characters."

Raine laughed, wrinkling her nose. Briar's sister was admirable for many reasons and probably had a good point. The thing was ... nobody liked paperwork. Not unless your name was Solomon Carstairs. At least, today, it meant she wouldn't be stranded at this desk all on her own. Misery loves company.

"I don't know," the redhead replied with a shrug. "I'm sure someone else will mess up and he'll move on to the next flavour of the month when it happens."

There could only be so many people that Pratt despised at one time, right? She wasn't his biggest fan - not since ambush training[1] with Fauna in July - but that didn't means she wanted to be a constant on his shit list. Raine liked their Head Auror for his enthusiasm and commitment to the job.

"You know, I bet Pratt's a real softie when he's off the clock. I've seen his kids." Raine raised her eyebrows at Briar as she closed the folder she'd been working on and reached for another one from the stack at her elbow. "Crybabies," she muttered. The kind of behaviour that would not have passed in her parents' (or aunt's!) household. Maybe that wasn't a bad thing, though.

Raine opened the new folder, scanning it to get a sense of what needed to be filled out before it could be filed away in the records office. "We're just his older, more rebellious kids," she glanced up with a smile and picked up her quill. "The ones he can yell at without worrying we'll burst into tears."

Give or take some of the more emotional trainees, anyway.

1.	What We Can Control is Our Readiness - 12th July

Briar's eyes were glued to the case file she was working on, her quill scribbling along but she gave a soft chuckle, "feel sorry for whoever pisses him off next." She chanced a quick glance at the other girl. She was painfully reminded of how much she had missed this sort of thing. She was thankful that Raine hadn't rejected her and that perhaps she could make up for all the lost time between them.

Briar shook her head, her ponytail bobbing behind her, "Pratt has kids? Now that, I never would have guessed." Having kids as an Auror always seemed like such risky business. She had no intention of breeding herself, she had seen too many families ripped apart when the Auror life went south - her own included.

Bri smirked at her crybabies remark. She had spent most of her later childhood with Arathorn, he wasn't as strict on her as he was some of her cousins, though he likely wouldn't have stood by that behaviour either. The man had been too proud and had instilled a lot of his more stoic (and perhaps unemotional) traits in Briar herself. It was hard not to be a little hardened when no one seemed interested in comforting you.

Briar let out a wry laugh, "I bet he's still managed to make at least one of the trainees cry" It wasn't that Pratt was an imposing guy but some people just couldn't handle being yelled at, "My money's on Blake."

            "Pratt has kids? Now that, I never would have guessed."

Raine laughed, keeping her eyes on the folder she was carefully filling up - couldn't risk accidentally misspelling a name. That sort of oversight is what led to cases being dragged on for longer than they should at trial. And Aurors had better things to do than spend all day in formal attire, giving testimony.

"It's odd, picturing any of them as parents," she remarked and thought of Auror Pinn; it wasn't difficult to see why Ariadne didn't rave about her mum. "But Merlin knows what any of us get up to when we're off the clock."

Everyone had a another life, she guessed. Pratt was a softie father, Warrington had distant adventures, Fauna baked colourful cupcakes for sleepovers. Speaking of Fauna.

"Just one? I'm sure he's made more than one of us cry," Raine snorted as she closed her folder and reached for another. "It takes all sorts, doesn't it? And I suppose even tears are a kind of instrument, or a weapon. Just not against Pratt," she glanced up from the next form to smile dryly at Briar.

Briar wasn't sensitive like Fauna. They had different strengths - Raine couldn't imagine her old housemate being assigned to a case that required a lot of empathy. But then again, they were all here to learn different things.

"If you really want to get under his skin, I hear vampires will do it," the redhead raised her eyebrows suggestively. "Penelope Pickler," she shuddered. "I can't imagine going for diversity training more than once."

"Truer words . . ." She trailed off at the thought of what the rest of Level Two did when they weren't hunting down dark wizards and criminals. She imagined a lot of them had some sort of family. Not everyone was like Berkeley who had no life to speak of outside the office. It wasn't like Briar was any different these days. She may have been living with her sister now that Xavier took the deed to Wentworth Manor out from under her but that didn't mean the sisters were any closer. Briar spent most of her free time out drinking or seeing friends as often as she could. The Auror life could eat you alive if you didn't have other things to enjoy.

She chuckled again, "I bet Pratt keeps tabs. Probably tries to go for a record with each batch of trainees." Her eyes still on her case file she let a smirk curl her lips. She was ready to dare the training officer to try. Briar couldn't remember the last time she cried. It simply wasn't in her nature.

Briar let out a bark of laughter, "Sensitivty training, what a joke." She shook her head, closed her folder and moved onto the next one, "we're Aurors for Godric's sake. We catch the bad guys, they're the bad guys. Why should we learn to be sensitive to them?"

The idea of Pratt keeping a record list of trainees to bully was, she thought, both feasible and hilarious. Raine smirked and closed the folder she had been working on, setting it aside on the done pile. Miraculously, her to-do pile was shrinking in size. As much as she hated paperwork, it was satisfying to finish - as long as you didn't think about how it would start all over again next week.

"As long as I'm not breaking our ethical code," she agreed with Briar, "I don't see why we have to be nice to them. We catch Dark Wizards. They didn't accidentally become dark wizards!"

Raine tended to be less severe on people who were in for small crimes, because she wasn't a complete monster, but dark wizards were a completely different thing. Most of them went into it with eyes wide open. And the man who murdered her sister, he'd been a dark wizard.

"Anyway," Raine continued before licking the tip of her quill and dipping it into the inkpot. "Pratt got training because he insulted the consultant on level four, not a baddie. Used a bunch of slurs? Something like that," she opened a new folder, surveying its contents.

Vampires were the least of her problems. Especially ones that worked for the Ministry. "I guess it would have been different if Vaillancourt had been the one who sucked those muggles earlier this year."

Briar was thankful to hear that Raine's view on Dark Wizards wasn't far off from her own. She was completely right. Anyone that ended up in a cell was there because of some choice they had made themselves. It wasn't like when her parents were fighting the war, the whole "Imperio" defense just wasn't as feasible these days. For a moment she imagined the pair of them playing Bad and Badder Cop. Their seniors would likely blow a gasket.

"Valliancourt. Huh." Briar stared into her case file, scratching away with her quill and biting her tongue. She likely would have acted just like Pratt in that respect. She kept it to herself though. She wasn't sure Raine shared this view with her. After all, her former roommate had lowered herself enough to date that disgusting albino fleabag. She likely felt the same about bloodsuckers. Probably even donated to the blood drive they had set up a few months back. She sneered for a moment thinking about it.

She glanced over and decided to test the waters a little, "Did you hear who they had brought in for that? Matty Amherst." She remembered Berkeley talking about it. Matty had been a few years ahead of them and in Hufflepuff but his very public proposal to Addie in the Great Hall had nearly the whole school taking notice.

She shook her head, "I thought he was dead . . ."