1 June 2018
Three days after the May full moon
Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures main lobby
Level Four
Ministry of Magic

Figaro Sellaphix sidled up against Raine Almasy at the expansive front desk that dominated the reception on Level Four. He'd slid down the worn wood surface until he bumped into her, one of his oldest friends in Auror robes. He was here to drop off paperwork (late) from his shift at the werewolf safe house. Meticulous he may not be, Figaro, but he could be counted on to be reliable eventually.

"Alright, Raine? What's that? How's the boyfriend? Keeping you happy?"

Figaro had been doing a very good job not being obsessed with Raine's boyfriend. It was very difficult considering she was seeing Earnest Carstairs, the captain of his die-hard favorite Quidditch team. He was hardly ever asking her about him or telling her about him since last month when she'd told him.[1] But that didn't stop completely him needling her.

Figaro had fancied Raine on and off maybe, having confused any attention as good attention, but that was forgotten like the cares of a goldfish. He was thinking about someone new.

1.	5 May 2018 - It's All Such a Laugh

“Nina!” Molly called across the lobby of the fourth floor. She had been trying all week to track down the auburn haired witch from the Rehabilitation of Creatures Department.

“Nina, you have to take him back!” she said as she approached, her boots[1] clunking on the hard floor. Molly’s coworker looked back at her with pleading eyes.

“Please, can’t you manage him a bit longer?” Nina asked desperately. “He likes you! He eats for you! He doesn’t fuss with his little bandages for you! Just a bit longer!”

Molly sighed, a sympathetic expression settling on her soft features. She had been there, having to deal with an unruly creature who wasn’t fond of her, but she hadn’t signed up for this when Nina had convinced her to tag along on her first ever assignment of collecting the injured bowtruckle from its beloved tree. Nina was new, was still learning the ropes of their department, and though Molly mainly dealt with dragons these days, she hadn’t felt she was above lending a hand to those still trying to find their confidence.

“Eventually you’re going to have to get used to the idea that not every creature is going to love you.” Molly calmly explained, plucking the clingy bowtruckle from her pocket, a small strip of gauze wrapped around the wound on one of his legs, and holding it out in her palm towards her colleague. “You have to take him!”

Both seemed very against the idea, Nina leaning away as the little spindly creature snapped at her a few times before climbing up Molly’s arm to her shoulder and trying to hide in her chin length hair.

“You both are pathetic.” Molly said with a breathy laugh as she shook her head.

1.	Outfit reference

Raine didn't love paperwork and tried, best as a young auror could, to offload this sort of work on trainees. But some things were unavoidable.

This is what saw her filling up an interdepartmental form at the front desk - it was a vampire investigation, she needed an external consult. Raine was not going to bring it up with Auror Pinn, whose advice started and ended with zero diplomacy. Pinn was the reason aurors had to fill up these bloody forms for Vaillancourt!

So annoyed was she that the redhead didn't clock Figaro until he bumped into her along the desk.

"Oh, hullo," she signed her name at the bottom of the form before glancing up at him, brow relaxed. "Boyfr-- right, yes, Earnest is fine. I mean, I'm fine with Earnest."

Was that what he asked? Raine sometimes forgot about her boyfriend when she was at work. Hardly her fault; she wasn't used to having one! Thinking about him did make her smile, though. Fig made her smile too.

He worked a safe house, she knew, but he never quite fit at the Ministry. Fig was a free-range wizard. No cubicles and cumbersome IDs for him.

"What are yo--" she began, only to be cut off by a familiar voice calling out to someone else in the lobby.

Raine glanced over her shoulder and spotted Molly King, who she sometimes lunched with at Munchies.

"You have to love beast handlers," she remarked with a half-smile. "They give Two a run for our money."

Merlin help anyone who came between them and the aurors at loggerheads with one another.

"I do love beast handlers," Figaro said, keeping mostly shoulder to shoulder with Raine, but chancing a glance where Raine was glancing because that's where he'd already been glancing. "I've never been interrogated by a beast handler. Or arrested by one for that matter. That's twenty points on the Auror Corps right there."

It was water under the bridge that Raine had twice harassed Figaro Sellaphix and his law-abiding family. He almost never brought it up, mostly because no matter how you told the story, it wasn't very flattering.

"Tell me, do you know her, though, Raine?" he said, leaning on an elbow, making like he was cleaning off his glasses on the tail of of his shirt. "That one, don't be obvious. Dark hair with the boots. Shh. Stop. Merlin, be subtle."

Since when did Figaro care about anything like workplace gallivanting could probably track to when he'd pulled the cougar spokeswitch for the Werewolf Wing and burned up in a spectacular supernova.

She snorted at his personalised comparison between aurors and beast handlers. Raine sometimes forgot about all that - it had become so normal, investigations day-in and day-out, that her history with the Sellaphixes felt distant.

Not that one was likely to entirely forget if Zelda herself were in the vicinity.

"Know he-- Fig!" she stopped herself from laughing. "I would think you know her better than I ever did, at school."

Molly King was a nice witch, genuinely. Raine liked her a great deal - she was a real person, tough, and quite good at her job. There weren't many people you could count on for sensible conversation at Munchies.

"It's Molly, Molly King..." the readhead clarified, rolling her eyes. "I suppose she's changed a bit." And then, after a moment, because sometimes even an Almasy can be thick. "Do you fancy her? Should I call her over?"

Raine didn't wait and glanced back over her shoulder to wave at the witch in question. "Molly!" she called out as she put on a smile, the kind that was growing more and more common on her face these days.

“Please! Just this once, I’ll never ask for such a favor again! Just keep him until he’s all healed up and I’ll put him back where he belongs.” Nina pleaded. Molly sighed, a look of sympathy in her eyes. She knew she shouldn’t, but she didn’t have the heart to force the bitey little living stick on her already stressed colleague who was just trying to find her footing in the department. She had been there, overwhelmed by the formalities of it all after having spent so long in the field pouring everything she had into her research, living by the hours the creatures set, not by a strict punch in and out clock with a million policies to learn and remember.

“Fine.” she relented, allowing the bowtruckle to remain on her shoulder where he had settled in rather comfortably. “But this can not become a habit every time a creature dislikes you!”

Nina nodded rapidly in agreement, thanking Molly profusely as she turned to scurry off to her next task. Molly had just watched her disappear down a corridor when a familiar voice pulled her attention from across the lobby. Turning towards the sound of her name, Molly’s bright blue eyes scanned the few wizards lingering about the area until she spotted Raine, her lips curving upward in a sweet friendly smile as she started towards her. A few paces towards her auror friend, Molly’s gaze panned to the side, a note of familiarity rang through her thoughts as she recognized the tousled blonde haired man beside her. His name came to mind almost immediately, though the last time she had seen him they had been fresh faced teenagers in their hufflepuff robes.

“Raine! Fancy seeing you here.” she greeted her friend cheerily before turning to her former classmate. “Figaro Sellaphix! Merlin, it’s been ages! How are you?”

Molly King! Figaro was gobsmacked and chanced another glance, but Raine had jumped the gun and Figaro was sure she'd done so on purpose.

"Mollers? Are you sure? No -! Bugger. Heyyyyy, Molly King!"

Figaro turned around, found there wasn't a good way to do that and keep leaning on the desk, so he ended up on his own feet fully, arms crossed. He was a little red only because he'd been caught not recognizing a girl he'd lived with for seven years. She looked different! He couldn't be held accountable for that. He liked to think he looked different as well. His hair was ... shorter, and he was ... taller. He wore glasses now. He dressed better, certainly. Marginally. He'd picked up some better habits from Virgil and, well, Wilhemena Gunn.

Molly really did look different. Back in school, he'd been a creature of constant movement and energy, swept up in the his friendships and dalliances with people other than Molly King. Then he'd exploded out of Hogwarts into the great big world, and forgotten all about her. She was really very pretty, even if he hadn't really thought so back in school.

"I'm excellent. Buzzin'. I work here. Looks like you do, also. But me, I just babysit sleeping werewolves. It's easy. Really, a chair propped under a doorknob could do the job just as well, but who would say, 'good morning'?"

Mollers! That was such a Figaro thing to call Molly.

Raine's smile stayed smug as she turned properly to face the other witch, hands going behind her back. Like an innocent angel. And hadn't she promised to try and set him up with someone? Practically saintlike behaviour.

"Oh I'm sure you're the highlight of every werewolf's morning," she broke the altruistic spell, raising her eyebrows at Fig and then turning back to Molly in a more conversational tone. "Figaro was just saying he hasn't seen you since Hogwarts, I could hardly believe it."

Not true, she believed it just fine. Many people fell off each other's radar after school - not intentionally. Life grew busy. And it was easy to lose track of old faces when you're adjusting to new things, new people.

Now wasn't the time to be sensible of course.

"Are you free this weekend? Next?" she gestured to mean her and Fig. "We ought to get a few drinks together, catch up on the old days."

And, well, if Raine so happened to have a last minute auror emergency that evening, the pair of them could go on ahead without her. Surely.

Molly smiled at Figaro’s slightly fumbled greeting and she had a hunch that he hadn’t expected to be thrown into an impromptu Hufflepuff reunion, or perhaps hadn’t recognized her as quickly as she had recognized him. She couldn’t blame him. She had certainly been different during their school years, much more quiet and unsure of herself than she was now, not to mention she didn’t exactly look like the baby faced teenager she had been all those years ago. She may not have gotten taller, her stature having stopped increasing around their fourth year at a whopping five foot two, but her overall physique had obviously changed to be more womanly and her she now kept her hair chopped short at her chin instead of long and adorned with whatever barret or bow her mother had insisted she wear.

“That still sounds exciting.” she said honestly. “Goodness I wish a chair was all it’d take to get some of these creatures in order.” Molly added jokingly, her tone easy going and friendly.

“Oh it can’t be all that hard to believe.” Molly responded to Raine, glancing between her fiery haired friend and Figaro. “I didn’t exactly make it easy to keep track of me after school. I wasn’t in one place for more than a week or two at a time until a few years ago. One of the cons of being so nomadic I suppose.”

She had done her best to keep in touch with people during her four years traipsing around studying creatures, but some friendships had inevitably fallen through the cracks during that span of time. Sometimes she wished she hadn’t fallen off the radar so heavily back then, and had managed to tend to her relationships more, but there wasn’t much she could do about that now except try and make up for lost time. Thankfully it seemed Raine had managed to read her mind.

“Oh I’d love to get together! I have a short trip coming up for work, it should only be a few days, I should be back by the 13th or 14th.” She replied excitedly, looking to Figaro to gauge his reaction to the idea.

Figaro hadn't paid close attention to Raine's scheduling attempt. He'd gotten stuck back about how he could have missed Molly and not recognized her, but then what she'd said made it all clear. When they were both looking at him, he blurted it out.

"You've been traveling! She's been away! That's why I didn't --," he gestured to Raine smoothly and checked his tone, "that's why we haven't seen each other around."

That's why I didn't know she'd gotten hot, Raine my dear. Figaro was now confident he was blameless, and Molly was clearly pleased to see him despite him missing a cue here and her likely most recent memories of him were laughing too loudly too late in the common room about something really stupid. He was grown now, matured. He was interesting and had hair on his chest.

"We could get to the pub sometime," he suggested.

Godric's socks, Figaro.

Raine exchanged a smiling look with Molly - as if to say that yes, this is rather the same Fig that you and I remember from our days at school. Their attempt to land on a date for drinks seemed to slide right off his back like water off a duck. It was endearing.

"We usually do Death & Co," she added helpfully. "The weekend after you get back from your trip, maybe."

Molly was easygoing and cheerful, and Raine was almost a little envious of how easy she made it look. But that was a good thing. Someone too serious would not suit Fig.

Not wanting this little happenstance meeting to end just yet, she pressed on. "Where are you going? Somewhere exciting I hope."

The only work trips aurors got to make were undercover. Or to places like Hooker's.

Molly’s bright blue eyes flicked between Figaro and Raine as he blurted out in realization, managing to suppress enough to minimize it to a slight quiver of her shoulders and an amused smile. He was charming in a way she hadn’t quite recalled him being back in their school days, then again they hadn’t exactly been the best of friends, more like students who crossed paths in class and shared space in the common room occasionally.

“That’d be wonderful!” Molly said in agreement with Raine’s suggestion of a general date and place. “I can owl you both when I’m back home.”

It’d be refreshing to meet up with them outside the confines of the ministry and have something other than work driving their conversations. Some days it seemed impossible to get away from it all, and the feeling felt reinforced as her little bowtruckle buddy, who had been hiding his tiny face in her hair, relaxed enough to slowly maneuver his way out of hiding.

“Oh I’m heading to the states.” Molly informed them, reading up with her opposite hand to help the creature down from her shoulder and into her palm. “We have a dragon who’s being a bit ornery, getting into places it doesn’t belong and all that.”

Her words described an adventure worthy of a muggle children’s book, but she spoke of it as if it was as normal as a kitten that had been chased up a tree.

"He just needs a bit of sorting out is all."

"Aw, jealous," Figaro said. He's spotted the browtruckle and watched it work its way down to Molly's hand.

He never got to go anywhere. His family had rarely left the country for holiday and Fig hadn't done any of the school trips abroad, all owing to having to keep the shop open. He had once whined about it, saying how they should just hire someone to run it for them, but then he got an earful about the galleon tree and where he thought they grew. Figaro now suspected it had more to do with his parents' middling criminal behavior. Anyway.

He reached out a finger to the twiggy creature.

"I'll get the first round and you'll tell us all about how, (hey big man), exactly, you sort a dragon. Ham sandwich maybe."

The browtruckle extended a spindly arm towards Figaro, and it was like a tiny strange version of Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam.

Ornery dragons! For all her trouble with dark wizards, she was glad that lot fell to the magizoologists and beast handlers.

Raine smiled to herself as she watched Figaro befriend the little bowtruckle that had been hitching a ride on Molly. It was cute. She wasn't going to get her hopes up for the both of them but it seemed like they were compatible. Two huffies sitting in a tree....

"Sounds like a plan," she nodded in Molly's direction. "Good luck with the dragon. I think Feliks is going as well, isn't he? He might have mentioned in a letter."

Although she only saw him a couple of times a year, Raine kept an eye on her young cousin. She was his only link to the Almasys, after all.

"Oh," the redhead checked the time, "I had better run. These papers won't submit themselves, sadly."

She flashed Figaro a pointed smile, patting his shoulder. "I'll hold you to that first round, Fig."

“Bye Raine!” Molly called after her as she hurried away before turning back to Figaro and her spindly little living stick.

“If we’re lucky it won’t take too much to get the poor thing back within its normal range. Too long in the wrong habitat and things could get a bit out of hand.” She explained, watching as the bowtruckle happily responded to Fig’s offering of his finger.

“Hey you’ve got a friend here.” she pointed out, finding the interaction rather charming. “And he’s been awfully picky, he hasn’t liked many others.