Cyril Warrington loves his unstoppable scimitar. (thedandiest) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2009-12-23 10:01:00 |
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Getting the tickets for three matches had been easy enough. All she had to do was send a little message to Department Head Hamish MacFarlan asking if there was a way, and since they were a personal gift to her boss, she would, of course, pay the standard price. They were private box seats, which meant they cost a little more than average, but at ten galleons a set, Hope Dobbs couldn't help but be insanely pleased. Her tickets would be 30 galleons, total. It was fated. "You have no idea how grateful I am to you, Mister MacFarlan," Hope told him honestly, and without the slightest hint of sarcasm. She was shaking his hand fervently, a face-splitting grin on her face. All in all, the trek from the Auror Department - level 2 - down to Magical Games - level 7 - had to be made precisely thirty minutes before going to lunch. The lifts always took her desire for lunch for another ten minutes. The secretary's refusal to let go of his hand was something of a discomfort for the elder man, something which he tried desperately to hide, but she reminded him of a monkey barring its teeth. He wasn't willing to incur her wrath should he attempt extracting himself. "It's absolutely not a problem, Miss Dobbs. I do hope that Kenneth enjoys them." "Hope! Please. I keep telling you that you don't have to call me Miss Dobbs." Hope knew very well that half of her ability to scare anyone shitless was that her brother Guy was the most prominent and, if she might be so bold (and if she couldn't with her own brother, who could she be?), controversial news reporter the Prophet had on staff. "No one ever listens to me. Silly." Her watch face glinted in the flickering light, and before she knew it, she'd jumped - nearly out of her neat, tidy, and boringly plain flats. "Oh! I beg your pardon, but I really need to get back. Mister McKinnon has a lunch appointment that I have to make sure he gets out to immediately!" A date with his wife for last minute Christmas shopping. MacFarlan knew to take an out when he could. With a final smile, he hurried - as fast as he could - back to his office. The tickets were secured in black fabric wallet that was wrapped discreetly before being slipped into an inside pocket in her cardigan. Hope must have been the only person in the world to have had pockets created for a cardigan. The secretary pivoted around to make her way back toward the lifts, nodding her head to smartly dressed man sitting at a desk near where she'd met with the Department head. As much as Cyril loathed his job, there were a few perks. One, he could get Quidditch tickets fairly easily if he ever found himself with the desire to attend a match -- which wasn't often. Two, it was far from challenging work, which suited him just fine, especially within the last few weeks. He had enough stress in his personal life; the last thing he wanted was some while he was working. Three, rarely anyone noticed when he took longer breaks than he was allowed. And four, sometimes pretty women stopped by, which offered him at least an hour's worth of amusement while the more outspoken (and crude, on occasion) men commented on her. Cyril had what he felt was a sixth sense for the presence of certain types of people. One type was his boss, or anyone else that he was supposed to report to, and the other was women. He'd glanced up just as Hope appeared. She was... pretty enough, though perhaps a bit mousy due to her outfit and glasses. Not that he was on the prowl, of course, but he could still appreciate women from afar, couldn't he? So long as he just appeared mildly curious, there wouldn't be a problem. His attention waned when she started talking to MacFarlan, but it returned when he heard her name. So that was what McKinnon's secretary looked like. Cyril would have let her go had they not conversed on the journals, but because he was dreadfully bored and because he needed something to do other than contemplate his family's situation, he rose swiftly from his desk, smoothed out his suit and approached her. "Miss Dobbs?" He held out a hand. "Cyril Warrington. The one with the cat." There was an awkward moment in which Hope Dobbs simply stared at the man's hand, as if the lenses in those glasses were microscopes and she could discern whether or not his hands were clean. Men were notorious about not washing after the loo, after all. Eventually, she decided to shake his hand for several reasons. The primary being that having just shaken MacFarlan's hand, she was already set for the toilets to wash her hands. Other explanations ranged from his waist coat having six buttons (priority: URGENT; divisible by 3), how soft they appeared as if he'd never done one single day's hard work (priority: MEDIUM), an unwillingness to be rude (priority: LOW), and business connections (priority: HIGH; it never hurt after all). As the secretary to the Head of the Auror Department, Hope was extremely careful with whom she spoke to. She often pulled files, and with her near eidetic memory, it was easy to freak people out with it. Nice parlour trick, which she did now. "Warrington, Cyril Felix. Born 15th April, 1962. Brother: Warrington, Cecil. Wife: Warrington, Imogen. Formerly Rookwood. Son: Warrington, Conrad, the second," she answered with a smile. Normally, in Cyril's world, when an introduction was made, the other person usually expressed some sort of sentiment that said they were glad to make the acquaintance, even if they weren't. That Hope hadn't done so had not escaped Cyril, and for a moment he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake by saying hello. Beyond shaking his hand, he felt like she'd barely acknowledged his presence -- until she spoke up. "What --" Cyril could only stare at her in a combination of confusion and surprise as she rattled off facts about himself. She was right: it did freak him out, even though nothing she said was a secret. What freaked him out was the fact that she remembered all of it, and that she'd researched him in the first place. He was suddenly even more sure that he should have just let her walk away. "How do you know all of that?" he asked slowly, trying not to sound intrigued. "We spoke in the journals," Hope answered, as if it should be obvious how she'd known all of that. When it didn't seem to come to him, she continued, "I'm a really, really high level secretary so I check files on people I talk to in order to not put myself and the department in danger." Here, she took out her wand and tapped it - you guessed it - three times against her temple. "I have a lot of information locked away up here." She seemed to realise then that she's skipped over the formalities and pleasantries that she was used to performing. It was just his casual tone, bringing up the cat. Her eyes widened behind her glasses. "I'm sorry! Hope Dobbs," she reached out to shake his hand. Damn, now she was going to have to shake it once more before she parted from him. "Nice to meet you, Mr Warrington!" She was right: the simple fact that they'd spoken in the journals wasn't enough for him to understand why she would do so much background research about him and frankly, it was even more worrisome. The rest of her explanation, however, made far more sense, and Cyril was briefly embarrassed that he hadn't realised it sooner. Of course someone who had daily contact with the most powerful members of the Ministry of Magic would be careful about who she talked to. He had to wonder, however, how much good knowing his birth date and the name of his son would do. Surely anyone who was actually dangerous would keep that from somehow being discovered, and it would therefore not be in a file somewhere? Unless the Aurors knew something (or thought they knew something he didn't know. Cyril shuddered a little at the thought. "Nice to meet you as well, Miss Dobbs," he replied in his most genial tone, despite his mild discomfort. "Uh... so what else do you know, or is that confidential? Or is it not, because it's about me and therefore I most likely already know? I bet you have my brother's birth date somewhere in there too?" "18th March, 1954," she answered smartly, tugging the end of her cardigan down. The gesture was oddly proud, as if she'd just won some sort of contest. A contest in creepiness. "Warrington, Cecil Sextus. Of Roman original. No idea if he was named after a Roman general or a poet or something." She laughed then, as if there was some supremely funny joke to be had in that, and it should be noted there was something of a snort in there. Her face blanked then as if wiping clean of her joke. "Have you tossed the cat out of the window yet? Or dumped it in the woods? I would have pitched it long ago for far less than what you've put up with it." "Couldn't tell you either way." Cyril honestly had no idea where Sextus came from, but whatever the reason, he still thought it was amusing, and what was even more amusing was the mental image of Cecil's face when he found out that McKinnon's secretary knew his middle name and his birthday. Talk about unsettling. Cyril's face morphed suddenly from confusion and discomfort into surprise and amusement, his eyes going wide as his eyebrows shot upward. Had she really just suggested that he toss the cat out the window? That was... brilliant, if it wouldn't leave a mess afterwards. "Why didn't I think of that?" he wondered aloud. "Here I've been trying to come up with a solution that would allow my wife," which was said with a slight wrinkle of his nose, though whether that was because of how he felt about his wife or how he felt about the cat, it wasn't clear, "to keep her cat and would allow me some peace for the first time in three years." "Cats are impudent creatures; they cannot be tamed," Hope said, with the slightly bit of disdain. She'd never warmed to animals, and particularly not the standard warm-blooded animals kept as pets. Dogs, conversely, were unrepentantly affectionate, constantly getting under feet and into things. "You could always make it disappear. Find a home for it, and say it ran away. Less messy that way?" "Unfortunately," he muttered. What he would give for a pet he could train to do his bidding. He would have forgotten all about the piano he wanted to give Cecil if he had to, if he had to choose between that and getting rid of the cat. Hope's next idea was more promising, as Cyril didn't want to clean up any messes. He didn't want to have much contact with the cat at all, because even though it was easy to heal and clean up cat scratches, he would really rather avoid them altogether. "Or accidentally," he began, emphasising that word, "let it out of the house and hope that nature, or London herself, takes care of the rest?" Cyril knew he shouldn't be having such a conversation with anyone who wasn't his brother, especially not in public, but once he opened that door, it was difficult to close. "And hope she never finds out." "What is this cat's... name? I feel odd calling it the cat as if there's only one cat in the world - Merlin's beard! I honestly wish there were only one," Hope said, drifting off for just a brief moment as she pondered a world free all of all but one cat. With a shake of her head, she came down to Earth once more. "Duchess," Cyril sighed. "Her name is Duchess, and it suits her rather well, except for just how ugly she is. But I suppose even duchesses are allowed to be really quite unattractive." In fact, it was probably more likely that they would be, as he thought about it. Marrying their relatives and everything -- ha. "I don't use her name unless I have to. Unless I'm speaking with..." My wife. Cyril felt his shoulders tense up, remembering the weekend they'd had, the announcement she'd had, "someone who might actually care about the creature. The rest of the time, it doesn't deserve it." "You're funny," Hope suddenly blurted out, squinting behind her glasses with an smile that was all teeth and nose. She'd never been one to particularly harp about her appearance - at least not the aspects one could not control, like whether or not you had a pretty smile or bad acne or big teeth. There were only so many things you could do to control the genes you were given, so Hope never stopped to realise that she might appear now as some sort of mentally unstable person with a whole mess of Issues... But her watch made a tiny chime which meant she needed to get back upstairs to make sure that her boss made his lunch meeting on time. "Oh! Sorry, I've got to - " She reached out and shook his hand for the third and final time. "Boss needs to get somewhere on time, and I just know he'll completely forget all about it if I don't kick him out of his office. It was nice to meet you, Mr Warrington!" Funny? His brows lifted in surprise, his bright green eyes going wide as he looked at her. Cyril wasn't sure if he'd ever been called funny before, at least not by someone who seemed genuinely amused by him. He'd been called plenty of things before - selfish, charming (though usually by people who he knew didn't mean it) - but a comedian he wasn't. Still, it was nice to hear. "Thank you," he replied, very nearly adding I suppose in a dreary tone at the end, as was habit. Startled by her abrupt shaking of his hand, Cyril barely had time to realise what she was doing. He managed, somehow, to catch on before she ran off. "You as well, Miss Dobbs." He thought it was nice, at least, but given her penchant for memorising facts about people before they'd even met, Cyril wasn't quite sure. What sort of things would she dig up now that she had met him? he wondered as he watched her leave. He shuddered at his next thought: what things did she already know about him, or worse: about his family? |