It must have been a solid half an hour before Vanessa finally snapped out of her dazed state, and even so she was still having difficulties figuring out what was going on. Sitting on her bed with various items strewn across the floor and a few collected in her hands, how had they gotten there again?, she wasn't sure what the man had taken. Presumably he'd taken something, rather than just appearing in her house, flinging things around and apparating off. Apparating? Yeah, she was pretty sure there'd been a crack.

What now? Vanessa found that she was surprisingly calm about having her house broken into and her room trashed. She figured that that would be because of that spell the thief had hit her with. He had hexed her, hadn't he?

But no, Vanessa was getting distracted. She kept getting this nagging feeling that there was something she hadn't done but she couldn't remember what it was for the life of her. Unless, maybe... nope. Nothing. A small itch of annoyance flickered in Vanessa's chest at this. Dammit, what was it you were supposed to do when you'd been robbed? She knew this! Everyone did!

Of course! Vanessa jumped up from her bed, millimetres away from shouting eureka. She had to alert the police! She dashed downstairs, almost falling over multiple times, pulled on the closest coat and slipped her feet into a pair of trainers before she remembered that wait, she was a witch and wait, the thief was a wizard. Vanessa paused for a second, staring at the floor in concentration as if it could tell her what to do if she just glared hard enough. It appeared the floor thought her worthy as just like that, Vanessa remembered. Of course! The ministry!

Vanessa rushed to the fireplace, grabbed a handful of floo powder and threw it into the flames. Without a second's hesitation, which probably wasn't good when you were confunded, she'd ducked into the flames, calling out 'Ministry of Magic'. Fireplaces whizzed by too fast to distinguish and in no time at all Vanessa stumbled out of a new fireplace to find herself in the Ministry of Magic atrium.

The atrium was almost completely deserted, as ought to be expected when you flooed there at almost 2 in the morning. The few ministry officials that remained were hardly subtle in their odd looks, and that was no surprise. Vanessa was an odd sight, a celebrity flooing in at this hour in a fancy dress with a raincoat of all the jackets thrown on top and trainers on?

Vanessa paused, suddenly realising she didn't know where on earth to go to next. Dammit brain why won't you function! She frowned, spinning in a slow circle as she tried to figure out which way was the right way. Why couldn't the ministry just stick a giant arrow in the air with 'This way if you've been robbed and for some reason aren't functioning properly' in bold? Preferably glowing as well.

But two women a little way off seemed the second best option and so Vanessa marched over to them.

"Scuse me? Hello, so uh someone broke into my house and went through my stuff?" Vanessa said. "Oh and I think I've been confloundled. Confunded. I've been hit with a spell."

Zora had caught a night shift, covering for another Auror who'd come down with some nasty flu.[1] It had been awhile since she'd done this and Merlin's pants it was numbing. She'd finished her back log of paperwork an hour ago and was now absently thumbing through an issue of Witch Weekly - also numbing.

      "Oi, Roh. Can you come up? Vanessa Carson is here."

Zora looked up - the night guard at the front had come around. "Am I supposed to know who that is?"

    "Uh..." The night guard pointed at the magazine. Zora looked at the cover. It was a close up of a pretty young witch and had some headline about a new album dropping and something or whatever. Now the name was familiar - her daughter might have some of her records.

Shortly, Zora was coming up to the front. Her red Auror robes were open and her thick black hair was pulled up in a messy bun. Whoa. Vanessa Carson looked nothing like her cover photo. Like, an absolute wreck.

"Miss Carson? I'm Zora Roh. I understand you've been attacked. Do you want to come with me?"

1.	Magical Measles!