WHO: Robbie Stebbins and Padma Patil, possibly some NPCs WHEN: Thursday, 9th June WHERE: The Ministry, Level Two WHAT: Padma sees Robbie for the first time since her Obliviation STATUS: COMPLETE RATING: PG for many mental swears.
It had taken a couple of days for the two Departments to begin to coexist peacefully in the same space. The offices had been magically enlarged, but there was a limit to the amount that the level could be expanded. Offices were being shared, break rooms crowded, extra filing cabinets lining the hallways because there was no extra space for them. There had been tensions between the two groups of staff, used to the way they had it. Robbie had had to intervene in a dispute over milk between some of the assistants from his floor and a number of workers from the Improper Use of Magic office, trying not to roll his eyes at how ridiculous it was.
The attack on the Ministry owls on Tuesday had also put a spanner into the works. Forced to use messengers, who were much slower and more unreliable than the owls had been, Ministry communications had slowed to an unbearable and frustrating pace. Thankfully, they still had the use of interdepartmental memos, but the amount of paper aeroplanes had more than doubled, and the ceilings of the Ministry was often indiscernible from the amount of flying traffic.
Robbie had managed to wrangle an office the day before when he’d found out that one of the older members of the Wizengamot very rarely used their office, working from home and only attending the Ministry when the council was called together for meetings or trials. It had been easy to get permission to temporarily take over the unused office, though the adjoining office contained a wizard with a penchant for playing banshee choir music.
On the fifth chorus of the song he could hear quite distinctly through the wall, Robbie pushed himself from his chair and left the office. He’d take the discontent mutterings of the office floor over this.
Padma truly had less love for this job than she wished she did. She missed International Relations. She missed India. But, her job was here now—as she’d so desperately tried to make Anthony see—and supporting Neville had become important to her. The passion for her job was often hard to see, especially when surrounded by witches and wizards, so passionately themselves, following the Minister.
But, while working in public affairs for the Wizengamot’s young, rebel wizard earned her many glares at the water cooler, Padma did find that she enjoyed her job in some capacity. At the end of the day, she knew she was working for what she believed in, and she hoped she was helping Neville in some capacity. Though, with everything that had happened in the last month, especially her Obliviation and Anthony’s suicide attempt, she wondered if it were even enough.
Thinking on the divided Resistance and all that was going wrong would get her nowhere. Thinking on Anthony would only make her cry. Thinking on anything else would make her angry. She’d had a hard enough time coming to work again after her Obliviation that she didn’t need to add emotional drama to the mix. She had a day to focus on, and if she manifested the courage, Robert Stebbins to look for.
She’d heard he was on their floor now, with the rest of Level One. Padma shuddered at the thought. She wondered what he looked like—she could ask a coworker, but she’d feel daft. Someone who had been in the Ministry two months now sheould know what the Minister’s Jr. Assistant looked like, especially during recent days. She knew what he sounded like; she had heard some announcement or interview he’d made on the Wireless (and subsequently gagged and turned the bloody thing off.) And Padma couldn’t explain that she didn’t know what he looked like because he may or may not have effectively removed every memory of himself from her mind.
Padma sighed as she brushed lock of hair behind her ears—she’d have to go to the restroom later and resecure her chignon. She would work up the courage to ask someone after lunch—maybe Harriet in Mr. Levin’s office. For now, she needed to get these press statements out, and that meant sending assistant to hand deliver a few, and flooing over with the rest of them herself—she couldn’t believe someone would poison the Ministry Owls! It was likely the cruelest thing she had heard this week. And yet, some part of her reveled in the Ministry being set in even further uproar.
Padma flicked through the folded owls in her hands as she walked down the hall to Neville’s primary assistant, the one who’d been moved to the end of the hallways to make room for someone or another. She bumped her shoulder on one of the many magical filing cabinets that lined the hall glaring at it as if it was to blame for her running into it. She stepped further into the hall to avoid hitting another filing cabinet, but rounding the corner, she just bumped into someone instead of something.
“Sorry,” she said immediately, gazing up at the taller man, a sincere, apologetic frown on her lips. “Can’t quite navigate the halls these days, even the nimblest of us.”
A smaller body, definitely female ran into him then, and he began to smile at her sorry, his own apology forming as he looked down at the woman, but it quickly died as he realised who it was. Padma Patil, Jesus! His eyes widened and he darted backwards, colliding with a filing cabinet painfully but he wasn’t focusing on that, just on getting away from Padma. Fuck, he mentally swore, panic raising his heartbeat faster than if he’d sprinted a mile.
Logic swiftly took over his brain for a moment and forced him to calm down. He couldn’t actually run away from her - not only was that ridiculous, but it would make him look like an idiot. And there was also the very small chance that she hadn’t figured out it was him that had obliviated her, that his panic was in vain, that if he didn’t actually panic, he might get away with it.
It was for this reason that he tried to play his initial reaction off as something else, a comic blunder, but Robbie wasn’t sure it was convincing at all. He’d never been a good liar. “Can’t navigate my own feet,” he said with a uneasy chuckle, indicating the cabinet with a jerky gesture of his head and stuck out thumb. “So clumsy,” he added in an awkward voice, his eyes not meeting hers but looking past her along the hallway as though he was looking for an exit. He couldn’t go back into his office if she was still stood outside, he’d be trapped, might have to make conversation.
His expression startled her, and Padma clutched her envelopes to her chest as he looked down at her. She felt bad for startling him, and she imagined he had been miles away before. She raised an eyebrow at him, concerned. His uneasiness radiated off of him in a contagious way. Was there someone around the corner? She followed his gaze, panic rising as she expected someone to come barreling down the hall to attack them. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. This was the Ministry, not the battle field. If someone came barreling down the hall, it would be over work related things—maybe this man was fearing a verbal lambasting. And that made her rationalise that whoever he was fearful of wasn’t after her.
She reached out and touched his arm, hoping to calm him. “Everyone’s on edge this week with the shuffling about,” she said reassuringly. “But you’ll be back to your own office soon and away from rogue filing cabinets,” she gave him a warm smile, teasing a bit before stepping back to walk down the hall, though she kept her eyes on him for a moment. Strange man. She hoped he didn’t get yelled at too severely.