13 December 2011
Tuesday @4pm
Auror Headquarters, Ministry of Magic

The paperwork was off. Zora Roh had missed Monday to stay home with her wife Iona who'd had a particularly rough full moon. Wolfsbane Potion could be disagreeable to the constitution to say the least, so Zora'd been holding hair back and making ginger tea all day. And when she arrived back at work on Tuesday, she'd returned to some strange documentation. It took a little asking around and promises to keep it quiet, but something had gone down at the London Zoo on the full moon. Something bad and Auror Trainee Fauna Blake had been in the middle of it.

Roh had been in favor of the push to have Aurors backing up the WCU, if only to get both parties a better understanding of the others' job. WCU had a lot to learn about discipline, and Aurors could always use more time in the field. Blake, especially; Zora hadn't batted an eye seeing that go through. But when 'Tawse' and 'direwolf' were being whispered in the same sentence, Zora couldn't just let that pass without a word. Blake was what, six months from going full Auror? Seven?  She was getting on, but that was still spring green.

She grabbed an empty file from her desk and found Blake in the bullpen.  "Oi, Blake!" she called. "Quick word."

It was Fauna's first day back in the office after the full moon ambush, and she was so ready to wash out her coffee mug and leave early. After getting stitched up on the eleventh and resting on the twelfth, she still felt exhausted, more so mentally than physically. Other than the debriefings and occasional meetings, she'd stuck to her desk like glue, keeping her head down and only making eye contact upon hearing 'alright Blake?'.

She'd talked about it and thought about it enough, just not in a helpful way. Talking on Level Two had to do with giving information, details about the steps she'd taken and everything she could remember about their assailants, the werewolves, and the way the net spell had caught their magic. A dull headache pounded behind her eyes as she read through the files in front of her without processing the words. All she wanted to do was head home, turn on some music and stare at her ceiling. Eat something that Grace had cooked. Give a ring to her worried mum.

Fauna checked the time. Could she get away with this? She half-rose from her seat, the upper half of her face visible as her blue eyes tracked the bull pen, watching the Aurors. No one had stopped by her desk in a while. Maybe she'd floo home and have a good cry before...

Someone called her name. Roh's voice. Damn it!

She dropped back into her seat and sighed. Slowly, Fauna took her coffee cup, and glanced around for her notebook and quill. She tucked her notes under her arm and rose to follow Roh.

Quick word! Oh she hoped so. It was 4 pm. Fauna did not want an impromptu meeting that would last an hour as impromptu meetings did.

Fixing a polite smile on her face, Fauna caught up to Roh.

"Afternoon."

Late afternoon, and nothing good about it.

Zora had the inkling that Fauna was putting on a face just as much as she was, so she let their little facade ride as Zora led them out of the bullpen and around to a quiet hallway with an abandoned bulletin board. It was covered in antique flyers and vandalized wanted posters, yellowed workplace safety notices. Zora posted up against the wall and tucked her fake file under her arm.

She kept quiet a minute and looked at Fauna. She looked tired. Tense. Maybe impatient.

"I heard about what happened at the zoo this weekend," she began without preamble. Zora was self-aware enough to know that this would probably come out of the blue, 'Auror Zoh' never the mother hen of this place.

"Heard things got rough." Understatement of the year.  She lifted her eyebrows. She hadn't asked a question, but she certainly was looking for an answer.

Fauna stood a bit awkwardly with her coffee mug in one hand and her notebook in the other, brow furrowing when Roh stopped by an old bulletin board and gave her an assessing look. Then came the 'I heard'.

Her face fell and she drew in a breath and held back a sigh.

"Yeah," she said, lowering her voice and glancing around the empty hall. "Yeah, you could say that. We were expecting to run into maybe one werewolf, and we got ambushed by a yeti and some bloke with a candle."

It was never too soon on Level Two to make jokes about terrible experiences, and she'd already heard the one about the Return of the Yeti. Other Aurors were much more serious, and Roh often fell into the latter category.

Fauna just looked tired. Sometimes, she really did wonder if everyone was waiting for her to break. She was more emotional than most in the department, she kept family photos in her cubicle, and Level Two watched her carefully when shite went down. Waiting, wondering. Not maliciously, but she felt the pressure all the same.[1]

So she showed up with her game face on, and wore her nicest blouse and braided her hair over the small scar on her neck. She avoided looking into getting her jacket mended and returned to her while she pored over old files that didn't need poring over. She explained what happened over and over, without diving too much into how she felt.

"It's fine, you know. I'm here," she nodded with a strained smile. When was the actual meeting? Was there a meeting? She glanced at Roh's folder tucked under her arm, and then glanced down the hall.

1.	Just Fauna's interpretation while she's in a foul mood, of course.

Blake was more stalwart than people gave her credit for, and Zora certainly wasn't going to fall into coddling her. Zora had her own experience being babied as a witch in a wizard-dominated department. Didn't mean they shouldn't look out of each other. Zora listened with a neutral expression as Blake obliged her inquiry. Zora noted Fauna's glances around, but made no move to explain. She'd figure it out, figure out that this was all it was - a check-in.

The yeti? Oh, right, Cinead Tawse. Yeah, people called him that, but Zora didn't care for it. He was a person, not a monster. He was a person accountable for his actions and vulnerable to the same things everyone else was. It wasn't worth arguing about. It didn't matter.

"You get hurt?"

Fauna blinked at Roh, having expected questions about the attackers, the werewolves, the deaths, etc, but the first question she asked was a personal one.

Glancing down, she shifted her notebook under her arm and self-consciously tucked her braid closer to her neck.

"Yeah. Near the end of the attack," she paused. She'd thought many a time about how it would have gone for her if the hex had hit earlier. Not well, not well.

"It was some nasty slash and burn hex. It rebounded and hit me while I was firing Stupefy. We almost had him, Roh," she shook her head. "The guy who was with Tawse."

She wished she had a name for the arsehole who thought it was fun to trap them in a net. Her gaze grew distant, unfocused. She'd bled all over a table, faced an Avada Kedavra, almost been mauled by a werewolf, watched a muggle die, watched Bagnold square off against Tawse, watched a vampire get thrown across a courtyard, but what really kept her up at night was that feeling of helplessness under the blurred moon and starry sky.

Zora nodded. Blake was visibly still affected by the weekend's fray; Zora could relate. Some things just stuck with you for awhile, and when there was no resolution and no one to talk to, it was worse. And you couldn't take it into the field. Tawse was lethally dangerous, and werewolves and direwolves attacked without mercy. Blake and the WCU crew, they survived on their skill but also luck. Sometimes the veil was close enough to graze the cheek.

She didn't want to make Blake uncomfortable, but when weighed against the rest of their job, this had to the more survivable stressors.

"Where'd you get hit? Seen a healer yet?" Zora continued with the level questions. Blake had been in scrapes before, but from the reports, this was the worst she'd seen. Might rank in top five for Bagnold even. Zora knew she'd be shook too.

"Of course," Fauna said curtly, then bit her lip. "Er, yes, sorry. I saw a few healers right after it happened and um, what day was it. The 11th. During the day, you know."

She sucked in a breath and let out a sigh this time, raising her eyebrows at Roh. It wasn't that she didn't answer the other question on purpose, exactly, but she was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Roh asked questions as Aurors did, focusing on facts, keeping her own feelings and reactions inside.

"We don't have a meeting, do we."

Her mouth twisted to the side sulkily. This was the meeting.

"Never said anything about a meeting," Zora said with a smirk. She outranked Blake, so Blake could endure a little checking on. This was important, even if didn't seem that way.

"Look, Blake, it's not as if I think you're not capable of handling this. I know you can. You did. But we're a team. No one can just walk away from something like that without something following you."

Zora paused and took a long-suffered breath and ran her hand through her hair. "And I don't want to leave it to Pratt," who'd probably be a grade-A louse about it. Merlin, Blake was going to think she'd gone soft.

"So where'd he'd get you? Tawse or the other guy?"

"Ro-oh," Fauna drew back with a horrified look at the mention of the P word. Leave what to Pratt? What was this? Not a meeting. Roh was visibly uncomfortable. If this was her attempt at being nice, Fauna hated to think what Pratt's attempt would be.

"I don't know who," she sighed, exasperated. Wait, she did. Tawse had been aiming for Bagnold.

"I, uh," she hesitated, "I have a cut on my arm and a small one on my neck. It's not pretty. Ok?"

She moved aside her braid and turned her head, showing her the raised scar below her jaw. It had hit right above the collar of her jacket and was only an inch long, but Fauna had found herself staring at it over the past few days. That, and the longer line on her forearm.

But whatever. Was question time over? If she could handle this, why was Roh directing the conversation instead of letting her talk? If she wanted to talk?

Two spots of pink blotched her cheeks as she crossed her arms and avoided her gaze.

"Hmm." Zora leaned a little to see the mark Fauna showed her. It didn't look monstrous now, but it had probably been too close for comfort. She shook her head a little and tsk'd.  More apparent than the battle scar, though, was Blake's growing impatience. Blake was usually more thorough, but here she was all clammed up. And that posture; it looked like it came with a porcupine hex. It just screamed, 'do not approach.'

 Sadly, Zora wasn't finished. She held the moment a little longer, giving Blake a good look but also considering how to proceed. Didn't want to come off as smothering, but the greatest impacts were going to be in the head not the skin.

"So, how're you feeling?"

It was a coin toss if that was actually going to elicit any response, but sometimes it was the asking and not the telling that mattered. If it was Zora, she'd have obviously deflected. But Blake was Blake. But Blake was also post-werewolf-spell-fight. Eh. Could go either way.

How was she feeling? Her eyes widened. Annoyed. Cornered. On the verge of snapping at an Auror she very much respected.

Meeting her eyes again and scowling slightly, Fauna took a moment to consider Roh as well, her questions sinking in. Had she been hurt, had she seen a Healer, how was she feeling. Roh had looked at the scar but hadn't fussed over it the way Fauna's family had or avoided acknowledging it like most people trying to be polite. She was hovering for some purpose.

Not a pep talk, not a discussion, then. Not a determination of events.

"Tired," she told her pointedly, her mouth tugging downward. She woke in fits and starts throughout the night, and reached for her wand on the nightstand just to make sure it was there. Pez the dog sometimes rested his head on the edge of the bed, keeping watch.

And here Roh was, waiting for a real answer. Fauna knew her well enough to suspect that she wouldn't relent unless she got one.

"A little numb, I guess. But does it matter?" She lifted a shoulder. "It happened and it's still happening. I'm just trying to get through my day, and I don't know, be helpful."

Her arms crossed tighter. She wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that, other than when people died like the muggles had, or were hurt like the team had been, or were used like the werewolf had been, the effects that rippled afterwards went on and on. Tawse's voice was now stuck in her head. She'd recognize it anywhere. The smell wouldn't wash out either, the memory of it lingering on her hair and skin. The winter wind, fire and smoke, blood and gore.

This was new information, this side of Blake. Zora hadn't seen it before. This was part of it, part of becoming full Auror and meshing into the team. Everyone had to draw lines in their lives and only give pieces of themselves to the Corps. No matter how someone sliced themselves up, there were pieces that were only for the red robes and frequently that piece included this: how you came out of a scrape. Reaction to trauma was probably a better way to say it. They needed to know this about each other, and you couldn't know until you knew.

And now Zora knew. Blake was clearly struggling and anyone else would be, too. But she'd get through it. She was strong, she wanted it, she didn't sound like she was blaming anyone but Tawse and whoever the second wizard had been. If she wasn't fine now, Zora would bet she'd get there. Hopefully.

Zora took a deep breath through her nose and almost smiled. She didn't answer Blake's question - of course it mattered, but nah, not in the way Blake meant.

"Find someone who you can talk to about this kind of shit. Someone you trust who's not going to lose their wig. Not your mum or your Daily Prophet friend. Someone here, at home, your cat. Don't try and ignore it. Alright? That's it then."

Zora moved away from the wall and cuffed Blake on the shoulder as she began to move away. "Keep up the good work, Blake."

Fauna's eyebrows furrowed. Her mum? Her DP friend? How'd Roh know! She hadn't wanted to tell her mum, but her mum was her emergency contact in these situations, and Fig, well, she hadn't even owled him yet. She hadn't owled anyone, and couldn't spill the details outside of the Ministry anyway.

Stranger than Roh's advice was Roh's patient look. Not exasperated, not Dead Nao, not writing her up for rudeness, just looking her in the eye and clapping her on the shoulder and ok, ha, Fauna had no cat. Penny had a dog though. Close.

"I..."

Good work, Roh said, and started walking away. Fauna stared after her, still burdened by her notebook and her cup of cold coffee, an apology and a thank you and some other pleasantry dying on her lips.

"Ok," she said quietly, expression softening at her back. She looked past her down the hall, exhaustion overwhelming her other feelings. The annoyance, the delayed gratitude all faded. It dawned on her that Roh was just checking in, making sure she would talk to someone who could handle it.

But who?