Fredcat (panthera_uncia) wrote in regulation, @ 2008-04-23 17:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | christopher warrington, fred holden |
Who: Fred Holden & Chris Warrington
What: Fred comes in to do paperwork post-moon, Chris has legal issues, foreplay ensues
Where: Fred's Office, Scamander Park
When: Mid-afternoon, 23rd April
Rating: PG-13 for Fred's mouth
Status: Closed; Complete
Fred had the smallest office in all of Scamander Park, but it was kept pretty impeccably tidy because she often looked for things to do that weren't her paperwork. Often that led to cleaning or organising. Unlike the other offices, though, hers rarely contained a person sitting in the chair. She'd never really taken to sitting in chairs. In fact, it was sort of the most frustrating thing you could inflict upon her. She'd sprawl on couches and perch on the arms or backs of furniture, but she didn't like to just sit in a chair for long. Fred was most often found sprawled on her floor if there was a decent sunspot there or sitting on top of her desk. People had pretty much gotten over it by now that she was just strange. From day one she claimed she worked better by sitting on the desk and since her work got done and filed properly they could only complain so much.
What she didn't get often were people actually knocking on her door. The nearly raw steak she'd been munching on was put into a container and shoved into a drawer before she called out, "Come in." Soon after she had a piece of beef jerky in her mouth to gnaw on instead. She hadn't stopped eating at all since Mathwall but today it was just the usual post-moon replenishing of protein. Tomorrow she'd be totally fine and she couldn't even begin to explain how overjoyed she was over that prospect.
Chris glanced down at the file in his hand and sighed. Really, her job wasn't as difficult as all that - it was simple. She carried out the executions deemed necessary by the department. Most of the charges that had been brought against her were nothing more than hot air stirred up by the owners of the creatures she disposed of.
Like this. It was ridiculous, but there was just enough confusion so far as the language of the charges went that Chris had felt it necessary to speak with her himself. He had her report of the incident in question tucked under his arm, but anything and everything could be used if it really came down to it, so it was always good to keep meticulous personal notes.
Stepping through the door after opening it, he gave her a half-smile. "Good afternoon," he said, brows rising a bit. "How are you doing, Fred?"
Fred stretched and gave him a toothy grin after snatching her dangling jerky out of her mouth for politeness' sake. "Hello most esteemed Mister Warrington," her tone carried the same dramatic flair as her words and she even hopped down from her desk to give him a lavish bow, completely ignoring the fact that technically she should have curtsied. Her skirt amounted to little more than knickers it was so short anyway so the curtsy was a moot point.
"I'm just dandy. What brings you to my amazingly sunny but utterly cramped corner of Scam today?" Fred gestured for Chris to sit in one of the chairs that faced her desk which she once against perched upon. This time her ankles crossed as her legs dangled over the edge rather than sitting cross-legged on the surface. Chris was definitely a bit too mannerly to be near comfortable with her sitting like that in a skirt as microscope as the one she wore. On the bright side, she was actually not flashing midriff today.
Chuckling, Chris shook his head a bit and said, "Business, I'm afraid," as he took the seat she'd indicated. "Someone's filed suit against you - well, the department - over one of the jobs you handled a couple of months ago - it's only just gotten to me because of all the Mathwell mess as well as the horrible system the Ministry has in place for dealing with paperwork like this." He paused, quirking his head to the side as he asked, "How are you after that? I know my sister's just managing to get over everything... but my niece seems to have managed well enough. Only a nightmare here or there." Mostly, Andrea had been preoccupied with her pieces of glass.
He pulled a packet of jelly babies from the pocket inside his robe, opening it after tucking the file and the report into the chair near his hip, and ate a lemon flavoured one. "I remember hearing something about odd things - fur and the like. Andi's mentioned something about a big white cat, but I can't recall a great deal beyond that." The consequence of too many potions, too little sleep, and far too much anxiety as well as a rather impressive knock on the head from that damn wall.
"Way to kill a girl's good mood," she said with a pout. The fact that someone was filing a lawsuit about her hacking something's head off wasn't terribly surprising to Fred. She knew it happened in seemingly regular intervals, but no one had ever had to come to her about it before. The fact that people wanted to sue them for killing something dangerous and uncontrollable was one that made her both laugh and want to scream for the priorities people had. Hey, what were a few dozen lives so long as you got to keep your pet dragon in the middle of London who was now unable to be put on a dragon reserve because of the psychological damage inflicted by being kept as a bleeding housepet?!
"Oh, yeah, I was one with the growling. Snow leopard, actually, which is slightly different than just a big, white cat. Think my height, my weight, only four legs, fur and a tail. The agility on four legs, though, man I'll miss that. Post-health trauma I'm fine though. I mean, I'm a bit more used to seeing dead bodies than your family, I'd assume. Not that some of that stuff doesn't still haunt when I close my eyes but I'm not having nightmares. My brother had a couple but I think he's over the worst of it." She shrugged. The jelly babies Chris was eating had such a strong stench of sugar to her that Fred was pretty sure she'd get a contact sugar high from them. Miraculously she kept her nose from crinkling at the smell. "Andi was one with the petting, actually. Loved that kid for that. Right under the chin and behind the left ear," she had a look close to ecstasy on her face. "That kid can work the strategic scratching as long as people aren't being irrational and one with the 'Oh no the big cat's going to try to eat her!' I don't even do veal, why would I do underdeveloped human?"
Chris just snorted a little, amused at how much and how fast Fred was talking. "Well, Andi's got a lot of practice with cats. She's quite fond of our Chartreux at home - Devlin. And I'm fairly certain having something familiar to do helped her through everything..." Shrugging, he ate another jelly baby, then tucked the packet back into his pocket and tugged the file as well as the report properly into his lap. "But I'm glad you're doing well - I'm glad everyone's doing as well as can be expected... who was being irrational?"
Looking down at the paperwork laid out in the file, Chris shuffled through it for a moment, finding the documents he needed before glancing back up at Fred.
"Meh," she shrugged. "Zacharias Smith, but to be fair he'd just shown up with Jac and Andi, was all beat up and freaked out already. Then I changed into a leopard in front of his eyes and if it looked as bad as it was painful I can't blame him too much for wanting to keep her away from me. He let up a little eventually, but, y'know, people see giant, wild cat and their instinct is 'Oh god it's gonna eat me!' It's perfectly rational," except for the part where she was nodding her head to his questions which meant she wasn't any more a danger than she had been with two legs and no fur.
Fred watched Chris' fingers deftly sort through the file in his possession. The growing sense of work dropped down on her, taking the corners of her mouth with it until she was frowning obviously. "So what case? What's the complaint? And what am I supposed to do about it?"
"A pair of peryton that someone had imported from Rome - they'd not gotten to the 'devouring human flesh' stage, evidently," Chris murmured, skimming the file quickly, "But they had killed a few neighbourhood animals and the risk to Muggles was high given the lack of proper containment. The owner - Colendair, Josephina - was unwilling to cooperate with us despite multiple citations and by the time you were called in, they'd attacked a Wizarding couple in a park after escaping from Colendair's... kitchen, I believe. Yes, it says kitchen here."
Glancing up, he raised his brows. "Ringing any bells? The charges are fairly straightforward - she's saying you never presented proper identification and that you didn't notify her of your intentions. From there it gets a little trickier - she's alleging that the department itself didn't actually dispose of the creatures despite the evidence to the contrary and from there it's out of your hands personally, but I'd like a walk-through of what happened in your own words - just what you recall. Impressions about the woman, the creatures themselves, that sort of thing. Anything that you feel might help demonstrate the woman's lack of sense would be appreciated as well."
It hadn't taken much more than the owner's name for a groan to be issued from Fred's throat. She remembered the nutjob in vivid, glorious detail. She'd also hated every moment of that job with an intense, fiery passion. "Yeah, bells are a'ringin' loud and clear. First of all, those things tried to attack me before I'd even gotten an introduction in. How they hadn't turned on darling Josephina is completely beyond me. I introduced myself and showed her my badge. She thought I was a liar because I said my name was Fred, showed her a badge that said Fred but I'm a woman," Fred rolled her eyes. "She refused to believe I was who I say I am. Now, sure, my badge could say Winifred Holden but not a single person around here would know who you're bloody talking about for good twenty minutes if you asked for someone by that name. Anyway, I'm getting with the tangent here."
With a sigh and a wrinkle of her nose she went on. "So while she's trying to figure out who I really am I'm trying not to get my thigh eaten by these things. She kept them in her kitchen. They'd already eaten her dog, whose half a corpse was still in the kitchen. Colendair claimed it was their toy but it wasn't filled with stuffing and it was already torn open. Few more days and I'm sure there'd have been maggots. I tried to take the evil beasties out of her home but she refused to have them leave her sight. I told her she was welcome to accompany them to their deaths, at which point she starts flailing her arms, including the warrants of execution I handed her which she had clutched in one of her bony little hands, and going on about how I can't harm her babies. Beauty and Beast, I kid you not, is what she'd named them. I told her she had the option of either coming with them or not but they needed to be removed. She refused. I pointed out if she didn't comply I could have her head via the Wizengamot as well. She got hysterical. I hit the beasties with full body binds and had to levitate them out of the window, Chris. The bloody window! She wailed the entire time. I got one beheaded and then the other came out of the spell early. Tried to take my arm off and nearly succeeded by time I got that thing's head off. Then I waited for cleaning crew."
It was a messy business, but Chris was sure that if he could get hold of the cleaning crew to back up the tail end of Fred's story, they'd be alright. "We've got several statements from various neighbours testifying to her mental instability," he murmured, tilting his head to the side a bit as he pulled that piece of paper from the file as well. He jotted down a note to himself on the inside of the folder near the top right hand corner and then nodded. "As well as statements to the effect that she was keeping them in squalor to begin with..."
Humming softly to himself, he tucked all of the statements in order, then looked up and gave Fred a smile. "This falls in line with what's in your report as well as what the neighbours have said so far. I might need to come speak with you again, especially if things actually make it to the Wizengamot. You'll have to testify as to the chronology of events - but we'll worry about that if it comes to it. I don't think it will, necessarily, but it depends on who she's managed to find to represent her. Honestly, there are a few activists out there who may or may not be interested in the case purely as a way to further discredit the department after the Mathwell fiasco..."
"Because we need so much more proof she's unstable beyond the fact that she imported perytons? Seriously, what kind of fucked up individual do you have to be to think that's a grand and lovely idea? Only thing worse is if she'd given them to unsuspecting children as pets." She almost felt like she shouldn't have said that lest something precisely to that effect come across her office in the next day or two. There were enough unhinged individuals about to think it was the best idea ever thought of in the history of the world. "I think anything short of wide open fields counts as squalor. I mean, these critters are half stag. You can't keep a stag in London. What she would have done when they'd gotten fully grown, I don't know."
Fred sighed and grabbed another piece of jerky to tear into. It was cathartic in a way, tearing flesh apart with one's own teeth. Perhaps not for other people, but it certainly was for her. "As someone inside that wall, those activists can kiss my pale arse. Technically dealing with that thing wasn't even entirely our area of expertise. If they want to be pissed off at someone they can look at Mysteries who did sod all to help us even though weird shite is clearly more their area than ours. And yes I promise to behave more if I ever do end up in front of the Wizengamot." The mouth like a sailor thing tended to cause most people to not want to consider what a person was saying much, but since it was only legal eagle in residence she wasn't too bothered about her vocabulary at the moment.
His lips turning upward at the corners, Chris just laughed a little and shook his head, then said, "Well, you've enough experience and a good enough track record so far as these sorts of things go that your word alone against hers would probably be enough to shut their case down, but it's the allegations that we kept the animals for our own - obviously nefarious - purposes that's causing the problem. If it gets much farther than talks between myself and her legal representative, I'll let you know." He straightened his robes out and stood, tucking the file and paperwork under his arm before offering his hand to her. "Hopefully the next time I stop by it won't be something like this that's necessitated it."
"Of course," she replied as if it were perfectly logical. "We need them for our experimentations. How else will we find the best way to deep fry them? Or the most efficient means of plucking them whilst alive? Not to mention the fertility potions we could make by grinding up their antlers!" Fred struggled but a smile cracked her face and once it began there was no stopping it. Her legs swung to and fro as Chris stood, almost like an impatient child. "Hopefully. You don't call. You don't write. I'm not feeling the love here, Chris. Seriously, sometimes there's moping. There could even be tears one of these days. You don't want to be responsible for making the big, tough executioner weep like a little girl, do you?" The smile she wore was as saccharine as straight sugar.
Laughing outright at that, Chris leaned down and pressed a kiss to Fred's cheek before saying, "Well, I'll work on writing more. Perhaps I'll send a battalion of memos your way asking for terribly important things like signatures and such. You know..." He paused, then deadpanned, "I just love the way you write your D's."
Fred beamed at the kiss on her cheek, which was accompanied by a high, squeaky sound of joy. "Oooh," her lower lip found itself trapped beneath her teeth. "Penmanship foreplay. Mmm, you do know how to get me all worked up in all the right ways." Repressing a laugh, she gave him a wink and a tug on his tie. "Now go before all the entirely unprofessional images of you in my head have to be acted out." Laughter bubbled forth, unable to be restrained any longer.
Chris' façade cracked right down the middle as he tugged his tie free, heading for the door. "And we certainly can't have anything unprofessional going on in this office, let alone our department in general..." Giving her a wink, he headed out, intent on figuring out which members of the clean-up crew had handled the peryton case so he could get more than just their official reports.
Fred was still grinning like an idiot when she called after him, "Tell Andi the kitty says 'mrow!'" Caught up in a fit of giggles, Fred hopped of her desk to shut her door. She considered for a moment calling out how nice his arse was from this angle but that was pushing it...while at work. Even for her.