From signing off on warrants to go to the Wizengamot to reading and finishing off reports for filing, Ed was finding himself drowning and losing the will this dreary November day. The day’s entertainment had come in the form of the 19-year-old Sellaphix kid who was being interviewed by 20-year-old puppy-eyed Flora Blake. In the observation room? Trainee Almasy desperate to take a stab at the kid they’d chosen to haul in. It had been a rather welcome accompaniment to his ham, cheese and mustard sandwich but his lunch break had ended a little too soon for Ed’s liking. It usually did because more work always called.

Now, hours on, the majority of the day shift had left to go home other that a few diligent Aurors finishing bits off or doing extra research. There were those on rota to work through the night, and in his office, Eddie Pratt trying to get his head around a complaint submitted by a member of the public in regards to Dean Bailey. Pratt still found it perplexing how he, Auror Pratt, got to deal with complaints written up about other aurors! There were enough on his record!

It was nearing 8pm when a memo fluttered in and landed on the parchment before him. Only one wizard who was hanging around at this time of the night would have the gall to send him a memo and Pratt knew full well before handling it that it was a summons.

Normally, Pratt would have made his boss wait. He had a habit of strolling in when he felt like it, not when the boss dictated it. Tonight? He was there within a few minutes, wandering past the suffering young assistant still there for her boss’ whim and into the office.

“Boss. Did you know that Auror Bailey hates goblins? Like, despises them? Yesterday, he called one a…” Ed paused, trying to recall the exact wording on the complaint. “wart nosed ass licking spawn of a growth stunted troll. Quite wordy for the Irishman.” Ed shrugged and dropped himself down into one of the seats in front of the desk. Most aurors would stand and be respectful to their boss’ boss. Ed didn’t see the point and it was after work hours. Plus, it was only Carstairs.

Tuesdays were categorically one of the worst days - not quite full of the pep of a weekday start, nor the satisfaction of the mid-week, nor the blissful close. Solomon was going through a thick folder of paperwork from level nine about their most recent projects and requests for either law enforcement officers or the odd auror. Most of the fold was filler - Morgenthau tried to lose any real facts in pools of useless ones.

             "Boss. Did you know that Auror Bailey hates goblins?"

Blinking in surprise, the old wizard glanced up from his work in time to watch his Head Auror occupy one of the seats across. Well! This was rather a surprise. A punctual Pratt. He wasn't expected for at least another twenty minutes or half hour.

Not wanting to ruin a good thing, Sol didn't draw any attention to this and simply raised his eyebrows at this recent complaint about the prolific auror Bailey.

"Another victim for Miss Pickler's sensitivity training course," he drawled and slid his folder aside - leaving it open to save the place for later. "Speaking of training. I came across Miss Blake and her charge earlier today, thought we were due a talk about the aurors-in-training."

Solomon pushed back his chair, rising wearily. "How are they doing, in general?" he approached his drinks cabinet, swinging the door open to observe its contents: gleaming glass bottles of liquor, crystal tumblers, the deceptively innocuous shades of peat or amber brown.

"Sellaphix looked like he was ready to bolt."

Something about seeing Fauna made him feel nostalgic for his own children[1] and the early years of their adulthood. Cynthia was becoming quite the lady but he always thought it a shame that Earnest never followed in his footsteps.

1.	Sol's legitimate children.

"Another victim for Miss Pickler's sensitivity training course," Carstairs doomed Bailey to a fate worse than shovelling dragon shit for 10 hours naked except for a pair of flip-flops. Yup, Pickler was that precociously prolific and painful.

But if anyone was to be doomed to such a horror, the best man for the job was Dean Bailey. He’d probably ask to sign himself up for more just to chat Pickler up.

Fortunately, that was that and Carstairs wanted to know about the trainees. A random reason to send a summons at this time of night.

Even odder? Carstairs got up and walked to a cabinet for something. Documents? Nope. He opened it to reveal booze. Lots of booze in sparkly crystal decanters. Sneaky bastard had a whole bar hiding in the bookshelf!

Ed’s eyebrows rose considerably. Was he getting one for himself? Would he just happily drink it in front of Ed, rudely not offering him one?

“Well he’s a kid who’s done nowt.” It was clear from just a minute watching that Figaro Sellaphix wasn’t clever enough to have done what Blake had brought him in for.

Sellaphix wasn’t the interest from the day, though. Not for the Head Auror and his immediate superior. Sellaphix was just a kid who’d been dragged into the investigation. Blake and Almasy and the other rookies were the real interest.
“They’re…lacking gut instinct and common sense.” They’d spent a day with this Sellaphix kid, after all. “All day, they’ve been terrorising this kid and there was a distinct absence of a likely suspect.”

He took down two glasses, balancing them on the ledge as he reached for the Firewhiskey.

"What, lacking both those things at once? It's usually one or the other." Solomon poured himself two fingers and then another two for the younger wizard. "I saw the case file. Looks straightforward at first glance." He returned to the desk with the drinks - handing one over to Pratt before assuming his seat once more. The office was a comfortable mess, the kind that inevitably 'happened' at the end of a long day. Solomon considered his head auror for a second.

Pratt was also a father. He had a good handle on the young trainees, good enough to see through their nonsense or procrastination. Or their tempers - law enforcement had a knack for attracting people with overzealous personalities.

"But then again, first glances can be deceptive. We're experiencing a rise[1] in burglaries." Sol raised his whisky into the air, a silent toast of sorts. "They know each other from school, don't they?" he changed tack and sipped on the drink. "Makes things rather tricky when you're friends with someone you have to bring in. Or worse, enemies."

Merlin knew he had his share of awkward arrests at the height of the wizarding wars. They were painful. Many had felt like utter betrayals but at the end of the day, every interview had yielded a valuable lesson.

"You know," he laughed lightly. "I can't imagine Fauna Blake terrorising a Niffler, much less a grown wizard."

1.	Ward Your Doors! - 6th Nov

There was a drink for him! Ed tried to not look too surprised when he took the tumbler with a mutter of thanks. The wizards had been colleagues for almost fourteen years. For 6 months, Pratt had been Carstairs’ boss only for that to change last November when Carstairs sharpened his quill and shot straight to Head of Department. He’d now been in the office a year. In all of those thirteen years, the wizards had never been friends or even anything resembling liking one another. They’d certainly never sat together after work to have drinks from sparkly crystal tumblers.

“Well Almasy clearly hates the kid.” Ed muttered and lifted his tumbler to his lips for a swig. He never drank at work, but he was hardly going to turn down one from the boss. “But it’s not like we’ve never had an awkward interrogation.” Ed remembered distinctly sitting in on some horrendous ones as a trainee after the war. He’d sat staring across a table at colleagues about to go to Azkaban. A couple of years ago, Ed’s younger cousin Frank had been held in their cells after the direwolf attacks. He understood the lines between family, friends and work, even if they’d blurred painfully when his own family were threatened.

Carstairs couldn’t imagine Blake terrorising a niffler. Pratt laughed out loud.
“Put 18-year-old me in a cell and I’d have bin’ shittin’ meself, Boss. Even if it were me mate Flora bloody Blake wishin’ me a goodnigh’ and slammin’ t’door.” Or so he’d been told by the hitwizard on duty. “I’m surprised she didn’t read him The Wizard and the Hoppin’ Pot before kissin’ his forehead.”

Blake was a clever girl with some good instincts. Ed saw potential and she’d become a sort of project for him. She probably didn’t see it as that, but that was where the problem lay, wasn’t it? She was a little too fluffy and nice.

            "Well Almasy clearly hates the kid."

Solomon snorted, letting the whisky linger on his tongue as he tipped the glass to watch the liquid catch the light off his green desk lamp. It didn't surprise him. She looked prepared to throttle Sellaphix when the boy talked his way into an interview on level two. He had turned a blind eye to the hexing.

"She wished him good night?" Sol looked up from his drink, somewhat startled. It was one thing to say it tongue-in-cheek but Fauna Blake was not that kind of witch. "Merlin help her," he laughed before setting down the glass, "poor thing has a steep learning curve."

There was something fond in his smile - he was thinking of his own daughter, who would have made an atrocious auror. Solomon liked Blake but he hoped she would overcome the vagaries of her heart and realise that it was more merciful to keep friendliness out of these situations.

"You've never spent time in a holding cell?" he murmured thoughtfully, still smiling. "We used to put rookies in there for a few hours, when I was training. Make them think they were in for the whole night, just to see if they cracked. Gave us a sense of... gravity, when we had to lock up fellows like Sellaphix."

Fellows who were being thrown in because it was protocol and not because the MLE was convinced they'd committed a crime. Solomon's countenance was coloured by the faraway features of nostalgia - he reigned them in, taking another sip.

"Are you going to talk to Blake about it? Or to Almasy, for that matter?" he nodded at his door, meaning the hot mess that was level two. "Very different, those two. I suppose it really does take all types."

Even, to the horror of some, types like Ed Pratt.

Never spent time in a holding cell… Carstairs didn’t know the half of it and Ed would rather he didn’t. 3 Years ago[1], a couple of weeks after the confirmation of his divorce from Quincy, wife no.1 and mother to his children, Ed had been out drinking heavily with his best friend. They’d taken to the Quidditch pitch and L2 had received complaints. Him and Jason had slept it off in a L2 cell and he’d woken up feeling like death warmed out and served to a group of trolled the next morning. No one knew, other than Raynor. It was best kept that way.

“Nope, good boy, me.” He toasted his own tumbler of whiskey before taking a gulp. It had never been recorded and it wasn’t like Raynor still worked on L2. His secret was safe. Although he did rather like the idea of shoving the annoying trainees in a cell for the night. Now, unfortunately for his staff members, the Head Auror’s mind was whirring with possibilities.

“I’ll give ‘em a day or two to finish up and reflect.” A good auror reflected and considered their performance. “Gonna’ have Roh start steerin’ them in the right direction.” She wouldn’t want to admit it, but Zora Roh was good with the trainees. She wanted to be a senior auror and Ed was currently considering how this may be a good exercise to show her ability to lead.

But Ed had better things on his mind now.

“Can I really lock the trainees up? We won’t get in trouble or owt?” ‘We’ because Carstairs had suggested it, making him an accomplice in the plot. It wasn’t that Ed didn’t like trouble, just that he’d been in enough of it to last a career.

1.	Let the game begin

Good boy was not a term anyone would apply to Pratt, not even wildly, but Solomon simply raised his eyebrows incredulously and listened to what tactics they would be taking to deal with the trainees. Zora was a better fit for the ladies - she didn't bring out a rebellious note in the same way that some of the other aurors did. After years of being ordered around at Hogwarts, trainees didn't always enjoy the gruff continuation of authority.

"Merlin be with her..." Sol murmured before taking another drink of whisky and then setting the tumbler down, as if to stop himself from finishing the entire thing at once.

            "Can I really lock the trainees up? We won’t get in trouble or owt?"

Pratt's mind had clearly moved on to other pastures. The older wizard laughed, leaning back in his chair and interlacing his fingers over his middle. There was the slightest trace of the boy he had been, nestled right where the smiling wrinkles of his mouth reached for the creases of his eyes. It was a mischievous laugh.

"Oh, you can lock them up for a few hours," he said at length, "but don't tell them how long they'll be in there. Just say you have some manner of training to do that will take all night."

Solomon wondered who would crack and who would pull through. Sometimes the ones you least suspected were the ones who managed to keep a calm head. "Blake might surprise us," he mused, taking off his spectacles, "just don't forget to wish her good night when you turn the key."

Unfortunately for the auror trainees, thoughts had already begun to whizz through their superior’s head. Of course, he grinned at the suggestion to wish Flora Blake a good night. Why wouldn’t he? But to tell them anything? Nope, he didn’t agree with that. This would be spectacular. It would be an initiative then taken every year after. He knew it already.

“That’ll take the fun out of it, Guv. Ah…I mean education.” The Head Auror smirked as he balanced his tumbler on his knee. Training aurors wasn’t meant to be fun. But since when had Ed not tried to make his work fun? One might be sucked into the void of depression and anger if they didn’t make being an auror fun. “It will take the educational value from it if we tell them what we’re doing.”

“Don’t ye worry, I’ll sort it out. I just need a fake corpse.”

            "Don’t ye worry, I’ll sort it out. I just need a fake corpse."

Solomon snorted, eyebrows arching over the rims of his spectacle frames. Was Pratt planning a group activity or a murder mystery? Did he even want to know? In his own time as a trainee they had done all manner of things - but back then everyone felt less watched, somehow. Or at least less watched by people on their own side.

"Don't tell me anything else," he held up his hand with a smile, "I think it's better if I have plausible deniability. All that tosh about better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission is nonsense but this is the exception."

The less he knew, the less culpable they were as a department anyway. Not that the trainees would complain. That would be against the spirit of the exercise; if you couldn't survive the pranks, how were you going to survive the dark wizards? Even he had to deal with these impertinences.

Solomon considered the remnants of his whisky glass, as if deliberating its last sip. "I'm sure the other aurors will be more than willing to cooperate," he added distractedly. "Merlin knows they need a reprieve."

"Don't tell me anything else,"

Best. Words. Ever.

Pratt grinned before downing his whiskey and placing the tumbler back on the desk between them. Did Carstairs know what he’d just let the trainees in for? And he’d basically informally sanctioned whatever Ed thought best for the experiment. Poor poor trainees.

He knew, of course, that Head Auror Pratt needed to be in charge rather than Prank King Eddie Pratt. He had a crown somewhere in his office and everything. Someone else had magically changed the word ‘Prank’ to read ‘Pratt’. An old joke. An old boring joke.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be struggling for volunteers to help with this training exercise.” He confirmed with a nod. “I’ll save it fer t’new year, mind. Dust off the cobwebs of the holidays and get ‘em back in serious mode.” Well, serious for the trainees. Ed and his fellow aurors would be having great fun. “But just to confirm, boss. Ye don’t want to know details?”