dial m for mayhem (macdougal) wrote in afic, @ 2011-06-25 22:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | !completed, character: michael corner, character: morag macdougal, player: bri, player: em |
WHO: Michael Corner, Morag MacDougal
WHERE: DMLE holding cells
WHEN: Saturday, 25 June 2005, late late night
WHAT: Side-eyeing
RATING: PG-13 maybe, for language
A large meal and a nap had been the highlight of Morag's week -- a highlight almost immediately tarnished by the implicit understanding she had that Certain Paperwork needed to be finished before the Wizengamot could meet on Monday. It wasn't so much about if she could get up the gusto to get back into the office this weekend, but when, and Morag wasn't much for sitting about dreading things. The second she caught herself thinking but isn't there a secretary who can come in on Sunday?, she was pulling on her auror robes, kicking back open the grating on her floo, and gathering up the powder in her hand.
She was stopped by security almost the second her shoulders made it out of the Ministry atrium's fireplace, and she dug out her credentials and her wand to be checked.
"Anything serious going on?" was the friendly inquiry as Morag took back her authorisation papers and slipped the wand into its holster at her hip.
Everything is serious. She thought about the guard's wife and children at home, always waiting, always wondering if tonight would be the night that something serious happened and he wouldn't come home. If tonight would be the night that death eaters, still a scare-name long after Voldemort's death, would seize the Ministry again and kill anyone who struggled. She blew a piece of stray hair out of her eyes and shook her head.
"Late night paperwork. You know how it is."
He did indeed.
And then she was in the lift, rattling woodenly through the depths of the Ministry, and then she was being spit out onto the DMLE floor, which was all but dead at this hour. Snapshots of wanted criminals leered down at her from the bulletin board and she stopped, as she always stopped, to consider them. Each of them worthy of capture, if you adhered to the societal belief that streamed hard like a current through every citizen: that the government was here to protect them. That belief was being tested daily, and yet people held fast and strong to it like it would bring them life. Morag couldn't think of a time when she'd ever wanted to believe it.
Yet here she was. Fuck o'clock on a Saturday-night-slash-Sunday-morning, ready to prepare the paperwork that would result in a woman's death. Or half-life if you believed the argumentative banter of those who opposed the dementors' kiss. Morag did not.
By her desk was the map of holding cells, and she glanced over it absent-mindedly. There were a few drunks who were tossed in the cells overnight on such a regular basis that the Ministry had become practically a second home. Drunks who ended up stumbling their way in around curfew to find their bed and sleep off whatever hell it was they'd tried to drink off earlier in the day. She liked to say hello and bring them a cuppa because, really, who could blame them for pissing away life in bottles and boxes of booze. She'd been tempted on occasion.
Michael Corner. Cell 13C. She stopped and stared at the name, letting her finger poke at the round C in disbelief. What had he done now, she wanted to ask herself -- but stopped, unwilling to fill her mind with the endless possibilities that seemed realer by the day. He wasn't in Azkaban, so it couldn't have been that bad. When had she become an optimist?
Maybe around the time when innocents started getting a brand, right to the inner arm.
She dumped her satchel on the desk and decided the endless papers could wait. First would be a cup of tea, poured into a flimsy paper cup that she doubled up to keep it a bit warmer and spiked from a small flask of scotch she kept in her drawer with a few other unmentionables that shouldn't be kept at work. Next was the trip down through the holding cells, an occasional glance satisfying her duties to say hello to the drunks. Michael's window was shut, but she didn't bother to slide it open before charming the bolt open.
"Brought you a layman's toddy, drunkie," she said from the doorway, by way of announcement.