InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "captain astro"

Lucy Spinks (addingvalue) wrote in finnigans_rpg,
@ 2015-02-25 13:55:00

Entry tags:

character: alicia spinnet, character: lucy spinks

Lucy needs advice
Who: Lucy and Alicia
What: Talking about the Ministry
Where: Offices of the Fawley Foundation
When: Sometime Wednesday 25th
Rating: SFW

After being stuck in St Mungo's for over a week, Lucy had returned to her job to find absolute chaos. The office had had to get a temp in to make sure payments continued to go through in time, but either no one had explained Lucy's system or the replacement had simply chosen not to follow it. Payments were made in time, but half of them went through under the incorrect tax codes and the other half were made with no notes as to what they were for. It took Lucy days of working overtime to get everything sorted - and then more to catch up on the backlog created by focusing on that. It wasn't as if February was exactly a calm month at the best of times. With the end of the financial year in sight there was always extra work to do compiling end-of-year reports and setting systems up for the new year.

Finally, though, Lucy had gotten to the stage where she had to either take a day off or go absolutely stir crazy. Even then, she didn't have time for a real break. As much as she wanted to sit on the couch in her pyjamas watching bad daytime television and eating chocolate, she had too much to sort out in her other life. So she started off the morning with a climb at her usual rock-climbing gym, then showered and changed and headed to Monument Alley. Alicia had volunteered to help weeks ago and Lucy was finally going to take her up on it. It would be helpful to have someone who wasn't too invested in Lucy's personal life give her an objective opinion.

Lucy waited in reception, having asked for Alicia and been assured that a message would be sent for her. The unsettling fact that Lucy didn't even know how that would be achieved without telephone or e-mail was mentally added to her 'con' list.

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_alicia_
2015-02-25 02:34 pm UTC (link)

Quidditch was starting up again this weekend, and for the Pride their first match was this Friday. Sure, the team had met for practices, check-ups, informations, or whatever other reason there might be, once a week since their last match, but now that the first match was coming up, there was an air of excitement in the troupe. Alicia couldn’t quite help but comparing the players in the air to a flock of horses let out of the barn for the first time after a long winter, but it was great to see, and loads of fun. Fortunately most of the injuries had been Healed over the break, so there wasn’t a whole lot for her to do in that area. On the dietary side, however…

Alicia was just finishing up going over the last player’s new diet with him, when a call came through on the Floo to let her know that a Lucy Spinks had come to see her at her office. At first, Alicia had wondered a bit about the lack of response from Lucy, but she hadn’t pushed for it, knowing that you couldn’t force your help on anybody, and that if she needed it, Lucy would come around when she was ready. So hearing that she was there now, made a sense of relief course through her, as she let the receptionist know that she would be there in a few minutes.

It didn’t take more than that, for Alicia to conclude that the player in question had understood all the notes on his parchments and let him know to cut down on his pipe, before she could step into the Floo at the Portree Pitch and whirl out of the one in her office in Monument Alley. Quickly she waved her wand to rid her purple and gold Healers’ robes of the ash, and went to the reception where she quickly spotted the other witch.

“Lucy,” she greeted her with a smile, coming around with her hand extended in greeting. “Glad you could make it. “Good to see you.”

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addingvalue
2015-02-25 05:27 pm UTC (link)

Lucy smiled, getting up from the seat she'd taken to shake Alicia's hand. "Hi," she said, "sorry it's taken me so long. Taking a week off without preparing is never a good idea." Her face adequately expressed the horrors of disorganisation she'd returned to. There had been no recurrences of the Vanishing Sickness that had confined her to hospital, at least, which Lucy had been hoping would cool the Ministry's interest in her somewhat. It didn't appear to have worked that way. "Is there somewhere we can go?" She didn't particularly want to talk about all this in the open lobby of the office.

"How are you, anyway?" She asked, to fill time while they made there way to somewhere more private. "I don't think I've seen you since the auction. Did you and the twins have a nice Christmas?"

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_alicia_
2015-02-26 10:03 pm UTC (link)

Once she had shaken Lucy’s hand, Alicia held up her own hand in a disarming manner. “No worries,” she assured the other witch. “I don’t think we’d settled on a time, and there’s no expiration date on the offer.” She could easily sympathise with the mess that un-planned absences could lead, though, and chuckled as she nodded her understanding.

“My office is just this way,” gesturing for Lucy to walk with her. Before they left the reception area, she asked the receptionist to have a tray of coffee, tea, and water brought to her office.

“Oh, we did. We did, thank you,” she smiled. “Loads of grandparents to spoil and adore and the twins lapped it all up. How about yourself?” Closing the door behind them, she made sure that they had the privacy to address Lucy’s personal matters. “Any flare ups of the Vanishing Sickness? Please, have a seat, let’s figure out how to best get you through this, yeah?”

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addingvalue
2015-03-02 05:05 pm UTC (link)

Christmas seemed a million years ago, but Lucy tried to cast her mind back. "It was nice to have some time off," she hedged. Christmas with her family had seemed... strained. Lucy couldn't tell if it was her imagination or if, possibly, it was the fact that she'd ventured back into the magical world. Her family had always seemed happier when she was away from it - which had probably played its part in keeping Lucy in the muggle world for so long.

"No flare ups," she said, taking a seat as indicated. "Thank goodness. One morning waking up to find parts of my body missing was enough." Lucy liked to think of herself as being quite tough, she could deal with knocks and scrapes without making much of a fuss - but she'd never been magically ill before and it had freaked her out. "I haven't had much to do with the Ministry," she said, shrugging out of her jacket and folding it on her lap. "I don't know whether they're going to forget about this if I don't get back to them or if they're going to turn up at my house..."

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_alicia_
2015-03-04 11:25 am UTC (link)

Taking a seat in her chair, Alicia listened as Lucy spoke. She didn’t blame Lucy for not having had all that much to do with the Ministry, and often praised herself lucky that she was in a position where she could pay other people to deal with them on her behalf. Most of the time, at least. “I don’t know either,” she admitted regretfully. “I do know, though, that they cannot force you to move, and if they do show up at your house, it is their responsibility to provide an explanation to any Muggles who may be around. Uhm…”

She paused when there was a knock on the door, and waited until the receptionist had brought in the tray she has asked for, before she gestured for Lucy to please help herself and then continued. “They may start monitoring your house and work for magic like they do with underage witches and wizards, but your guess is as good as mine at this point. We have people here who do nothing but deal with the Ministry, and I’ll set you up with one of them, but before I do so I want to hear what you want. Do you want to stay where you are or would you be interested in moving?”

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addingvalue
2015-03-04 02:29 pm UTC (link)

Lucy shuffled forward on her seat to help herself to the tea - which was a convenient cover for a moment of silence. She'd been thinking through Alicia's question since the Ministry had contacted her, and she still didn't have an answer. Her sisters would always tell her that one of her biggest weaknesses was a need to process everything from every possible angle, and in this case it was definitely true. Her first instinct was to run back to the world she was most comfortable in, but that wouldn't solve the problem of having no one she could really talk to about every aspect of her life. It wouldn't fix anything.

"I wish I could make them see they're overreacting," she moaned, still skirting the crux of the issue. "It wasn't even my fault. I didn't lose control or forget or make a mistake. I just got ill. Surely that could happen to anyone?" The problem really had been that she couldn't apparate to St Mungo's and hadn't been able to call anyone else for help. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked up at Alicia. "There was another incident, last summer. I guess that's worrying them too." She had lost control then, and her housemates' memories had had to be modified.

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