InsaneJournal

Who: Alice Longbottom and Dulcinea Doge
What: Red wine and girl talk
When: Evening of 27 June, 1998
Where: Doge homestead in Batheaston
Warnings: None significant.



Dulci did public entertaining in her office, but for girls' night, she took over the old drawing room and brought out the wine, cheese, and chocolate. She and Alice were settled on the ends of the old sofa with comfy cushions, some of which Dulci had embroidered the covers to in her younger days when she was still trying harder, and a glass of good red wine in one hand. Dulci flexed her toes--her shoes had long since come off, and she'd encouraged Alice to do the same--and reached over for a square of the rich, dark chocolate.

"So tell me, Alice, what's on your mind, besides another birthday?"

Alice smiled warmly, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. The past year had taken its toll on her. She sipped her glass of wine slowly and nodded. "I'm just concerned about our standstill in the department. And with these open cases. I know there have been cases here and there we've wrapped up, but the big ones? Still open and still bothering everyone."

"Lady Noir, and I suppose the Prewett murder, and the Lestrange murder? Which is probably cold right now. I'm surprised the Malfoys aren't calling for someone's head over that one--or maybe they are? and I'm just not hearing about it? I know Martha is ready to see progress in finding out what happened to her son." Dulci reached across to give Alice a reassuring pat. "The thing about cases like Lady Noir is that once we break the pattern of her victims in a way that predicts them, we should find her easily." For all that she was technically no longer in the DMLE and hadn't been for years, Dulci still thought of herself as one of them.

"The one-off murders are harder. You know as well as I do that there are still unclosed cases from the war--like the Knocker. I'm sorry he's turned back up, but I'm not sorry we'll be able to get another shot at him. But what can the rest of us do to make it easier for you on the front lines? And I don't mean dinner--I'm already arranging for that."

"I can't remember the last time we had this much of a dry spell, for this long." She fingered the stem of her wine glass and took a deep breath, raking her fingers back through her hair.

Alice had been thinking about it for a long time, but she wasn't sure where to start. "For one, we're all overworked. I know that Rufus just wants to be our best and get things done, but it's not helping. It's making things worse. I know that's tough to policy, but …" She sighed heavily. "Sometimes I just think I've been doing this for too long. That has to be it."

Dulci pondered whatever scheme Rufus and her daughter had going: a scheme she didn't like, whatever the details were. "I don't want you to think I'd undermine Rufus, but--his way of thinking may not work for the kind of fight we're engaged in now. It's not as though you've been called out in the streets to do battle with the Death Eaters or anything. It's much more like the early stages of the war, when we were just dealing with the very occasional Dark Mark or werewolf mauling. Putting you on deep wartime hours and tasks is just burning you out.

"How would you do things if you were in charge?" This was a serious question, conveyed by Dulci's sudden straightening and the look in her eyes.

"Oh," Alice said swiftly, waving her hand in the air. "I could never be in charge. You know that." But she smiled a little bit at the thought. She supposed she'd be more of a mother than a dictator, but would that even work? "I guess if I had to answer you, I'd want to make sure that everyone has a chance to recharge, even in the middle of the tough cases."

After her own experience at the helm of the Hits, Dulci didn't buy that in the least. Alice was more than competent to run the Auror Office. And Dulci was beginning to wonder whether Rufus was. Alice couldn't be much less successful, that was certain. "It would certainly be easier on all of you if you weren't there on extra-long shifts. People break down that way.

"But what we really need is a pro-active approach to the cases. I don't mean rattling the cages of our ex-convicts, because as much as I'd like to see the lot of them back in where they belong, they're not necessarily the most likely to commit the crimes. I assume you're already tracing evidence to sources and investigating any leads from that. Have we got a map of the crimes to look at? Possibly suggesting clustered locations, which might give us locations where the murderers might be starting from? There's a lot of data to be sifted through here. What's needed is a new approach to sifting through it and finding commonalities.

"There's also the dead murderer from the Cresswell case. We might cross-reference that with whatever you get from your existing data and see what connections that turns up. You may have already thought of all these things--but it's hard to come up with new ways to look at the masses of information you have from the cases you've got when you're not getting enough rest. And I don't just mean sleep. I see what this is doing to Bina, and as much as I hate to say this, you're not looking like it's any easier on you." She handed Alice a square of chocolate, an unspoken order to self-medicate.

A small smile began to spread across Alice's face. "I think maybe you ought to be in charge," she said lightly. She nodded and agreed with everything else. "I wonder how I can broach the subject with Rufus. Actually, what might be an interesting start would be to have our first years start looking at the open cases. A new, young perspective might make a difference, too, and it'll give us some time to relax our minds from what we've been working on for nearly a year."

Dulci nodded at the idea of the new recruits reviewing the cases to look at things with a fresh eye. They might not know what they were supposed to be looking for yet, but that might be just as well. Data that an experienced Auror might deem irrelevant might work out to prove something now that the usual avenues had been exhausted. "Whatever you do, don't say it came from me. I suspect I may be about to be in bad odor in Rufus' office." She quirked a smile at Alice and took a square of the chocolate for herself.

Her lips formed a light 'o' and then she took a small nibble of her chocolate. "Oh? Well, color me intrigued by that," she said.

Dulci's expression sobered. "If I didn't trust you absolutely, Alice, I wouldn't say anything. But I think things have gone too far and--you're a mother, so you understand that sometimes we take extraordinary measures for our children. Rufus and my daughter are running some sort of confidential operation to use Cris' connections to find out what's going on with the old purists. I don't know what they're looking for in particular, but they must have a prize at the end of it, because Bina's making plans to marry the Rosier boy as a piece of it.

"Apparently this is all Narcissa Malfoy's idea, and I'm not sure what Bina is doing taking her suggestions seriously if she does suspect the Malfoys, but this is why she's taken a sudden interest in WICCA and all sorts of other ladylike things she used to sneer at." More concern crept into Dulci's voice. "Bina was already shagging the lad, and if she wanted to marry him for her own reasons, I'd think it was ill-judged, but it's her life. Now she's about to end up tied to someone she suspects of being involved in Auror-class criminal activity and I'm concerned that Rufus will think she's gone over the wall. You know how Rufus treats people he thinks have betrayed the Auror Office. I told Bina as much, and she's very unhappy.

"Someone who'll have Bina's back needs to know what she's doing, and I think that should be you. Because you didn't give up on even the people who actually did betray the office back in the day, and she might come to you when she won't talk to me about it, which she won't, now," Dulci concluded.

Alice let everything sink in slowly as she finished off her chocolate. "I like Bina a lot," she said after a moment. "And maybe I've been distracted with all sorts of other things, but I don't think I noticed much about her and Rufus. I'll see what I can get out of her. I've always thought highly of her, you know that, as a young woman and as a fellow auror."

Alice's praise of her daughter elicited a small smile from Dulci, but it didn't dispel the worry in her eyes, nor in her tone. "I get the feeling this is supposed to be a confidential mission, possibly to the point of being off the books. That's why I'm so concerned about the fallout. She told me to talk to the solicitor about the marriage portion, so I'm sure there'll be an announcement soon. If you want to make any subtle enquiries, that might be your moment.

"You would think that given how much she resented the trouble I had with Cris and how much she hated it when we divorced, she'd never consider marrying if she weren't sure it would last." Dulci sighed and reached for another square of chocolate.

Alice knew that not every couple could have the kind of relationship that she and Frank had, but she would have thought that Bina, at least, wouldn't rush in to anything. She almost wanted to ask if Dulci thought maybe that Bina and the Rosier boy might actually be in love, but she chose not to. For one, Alice didn't think it was true. She spent enough time with Bina that she was sure she would have noticed if that were the case.

"I'll keep it in mind," she said. "And I don't like the idea that something might be off the books, something like that. So I'll see what I can find out."

Dulci let out a quiet exhale of relief. "On the one hand, I can understand why Rufus would want something like this kept quiet. On the other--I agree with you. I don't like it one bit, and that's speaking both as a mother and as someone who once led an office in the DMLE myself. But it does relieve my mind to know someone else will be keeping an eye on the matter. Thank you, Alice. And I," and here Dulci smiled, "I have some other spanners I will be throwing into parts of the works, which should keep those others involved a little busy." Dulci touched her finger to her lips.

She shook her head with a light laugh. "I can always count on you to make sure things stay interesting," Alice said, and it was the kind of interesting that she enjoyed. Not that she didn't find her work interesting. She did. But interesting didn't always mean busy and frustrated and dangerous. She finished her wine. "I'll be sure to let you know if I find anything out."

"And should I find out anything useful in my dealings, you'll be the first to know." Dulci raised her glass to Alice and finished the rest of her wine. It was good, she thought, to have friends.