Thursday, 21 December 2017 WHO: Adrian Pucey and Audrey Parker (AP2) WHAT: Case discussion WHERE: Audrey's Office WHEN: Thursday afternoon, 21 December 2017 WHY: Adrian is boggled that this office is only in partial meltdown. And they need to talk about everyone. RATING: PG-13? For discussion of Dark magic and other problematic behaviours. STATUS: Completed
Adrian handed over his written case file notes, the ones that were appropriate to hand over to Audrey, with suggested redactions for Duvall indicated, and settled into the visitor's chair in Audrey's office with something that could best be described as an aggrieved sprawl. There were no patients in here so it wasn't like they had to be especially professional-appearing. "So are they like this all the time? And if so, why haven't they all melted down? How haven't you melted down? You should bottle your secret and sell it on the open market because you'd make a mint."
She grinned at his demeanor. Audrey quite liked going to conferences and meeting with her colleagues for this one very reason. In front of their patients or potential patients they had to be one way, but with each other? Well, that was a whole different beast. Audrey placed the file on her desk - she would get to it later.
“Well, you’ve worked with their British counterparts before? Of course there is always going to be a certain...American flare to do it bigger, although perhaps not always better.” With a flick of her wand, Audrey brought over her teapot and an additional cup. An appropriate offering she hoped as she couldn’t offer anything stronger. “The team you have been working with do have a unique set of problems. Which requires for a rigorous self-care plan.”
Adrian snorted at that last bit as he took a quick look at the back of the door, which he imagined might have several faces charmed to stick to a dartboard or something. "I thought that getting out of the small town that is London meant the office might be a little less--" he started to think of a word and settled on the one he'd originally thought of, which was "--incestuous, but I reckon it really is the same on both sides of the pond after all.
"Whisky's right out for self-care, I know, and good thing, because I reckon a year with this crew would have driven most of our colleagues to drink even before we get to lycanthropy and its effect on team bonding."
“For many different reasons.” Audrey refilled her own cup and poured one for Adrian. Even before the pregnancy alcohol wasn’t her vice of choice. “I much prefer non-magical television shows and films. Every October New York hosts a Comic Con that is quite entertaining. My husband provides a good guide and support in all of this - although he brings his own challenges to the table. He works for the NYPD as a detective and one of our nomaj liaisons.”
Audrey could easily expand on that and really any other topic for a long while, but that was not what they were here to talk about. “As for the job? The best and worst parts is that I only dig deep enough to determine if they can function in the field and recommend other healers to get into the root causes. Neither is a particularly easy job.”
Adrian took the cup and filed "comic con" under "things I should find out if Pen is interested in" and set it aside for later too. "I know from experience that marriages with two high-stress careers are hard, sometimes too hard. Even before you put babies in the mix. I'd have a hard time with your job. Trying to help people fix their underlying problems is difficult enough. Patching them back together just enough to get them back in the field, knowing they'll be back with you needing more of the same almost immediately, has got to be heartbreaking." He shook his head and huffed out a thing that wasn't quite a sigh. Down to business, then.
"Do you want to start with Staunton-Perksmoore or Singleton? I'm inclined to leave Hastings to last but I have no strong preference about which of the others we start with, since Hastings follows on naturally from either or both." Incestuous. It really was the only word.
“Singleton perhaps?” Audrey worried about all of the DMLE employees, but the ones with active trauma and certainly the ‘Salem Team’ more so. Adrian was spot on his assessment - the Salem team did seem to be on the brink of a meltdown. “She has had a harder time than most after Salem and now with our current cases.”
Adrian nodded. Either one of them was tricky, honestly. "Yeah, I understand that she's off field work for the moment because of both the Playfer incident and the Wilkes case--and I need to talk to Duvall about that because I'm a potential Wilkes target myself because of my own involvement in sending one of his rat bastard colleagues to gaol--and I think that's wise, for all that she's anxious to be out there. I mentioned spiritual and moral injury, for all that I'm not sure she's the type who'll go read up on them." There were times he missed his Ravenclaws.
"But I think ultimately part of what we're dealing here with in her case as a long-term issue is that Wilkes bested her, and reading between the lines, that's when Hastings was turned, and Hastings tells me they're romantically involved and potentially sexually intimate. Similarly," Adrian dragged himself back round to the point, "Playfer, who's not a Death Eater but shares some of those characteristics, and probably more of them from where she sits than from where I do, defeated her too, and dominated her will. I don't read that as breaking her will. Quite the contrary, in fact: it looks to me like it'll make her more reckless."
“That my initial evaluation of her case, and why the decision was to to keep her as far from the Wilkes case as possible, and inevitably bench her.” Of course it was made complicated given she would have write up her recommendation for field accommodations for Hastings and Singleton given their relationship. Audrey had to write, and then update quite a few of those recently. It really was an incestous office.
“For me, the challenge is the goal is to get her back to the field. I have found the best option has been to allow her on select cases while continuing to work with a specialist.” She didn’t always like that approach, but that was what she was given to work with. “However, as you pointed out, there is an ongoing case that places her as a person of interest and is deeply personal to Singleton. With any luck, the department will be able to make short work of that case and we won’t have to worry.”
"They need to get Wilkes," Adrian agreed. "No offence, but Death Eaters are a breed you Yanks haven't had to deal with. And they will fuck your people up royally for years afterwards. But yeah, she needs a case where she gets a win and your strategy is the best way I can see to get her there in the near term. What's your take on what's going on with her and Hastings?"
“And I hope we never do have to deal with that breed of criminal.” Not that hope was everything, but it was something. “I have only just been privileged to knowledge of the relationship for a week, but I have long since expected there was something more complex than colleagues or friendship between the pair. That became more clear after Salem.” Audrey paused a second. “To be quite honest, I worry that at some level the relationship centers around Singleton’s guilt for her perceived role in Hasting’s condition. How, that personally impacts them is technically outside my scope here, but professionally? Concerns of recklessness seem about right, or even temporary over corrections.”
"It's not outside my scope, and the fact that it's a problem on both sides was obvious to me, too." Adrian frowned. "Was this going on, or trying to go on, before the incident with the Wilkes case in which Hastings was turned, do you think? Because it makes more sense that way, and if they fell in love afterwards, that's a sign of some problems I'll need to dig at with both of them."
“Singleton and Hastings were partners who worked well together. Before the incident, I don’t think there was any mutual affection.” Or if there was, Audrey was never aware of those things, and their actions had given her no reason to pry. “However, working in the field they do, it’s not uncommon for there to be more complicated attachments, especially after a trauma, which I imagine might be in line with what you might be considering.”
Adrian nodded. "I'm familiar with the complexity of field relationships, especially if long-term undercover work and handler relationships are involved. My experience with the London team was that that kind of bonding doesn't always last once the Aurors are out of the field. Not sure that's going to apply to Singleton and Hastings since he'll always bear the marks of that incident. But let's get back to her, individually, and the guilt issue. I'd like to hear you elaborate on that; she's going to take a while to open up to me about her mother, I think, never mind the complexity of making a bad call that results in your partner getting turned."
“Auror Singleton’s initial motivation for this line of work was avenging her mother.” She could have further elaborating on ACEs and how many aurors had those in their histories. Instead she made a small note to see if she could get a summary of Singleton’s Academy psych eval released to Adrian. “In the past year, I feel it has become more guilt driven, perhaps even trying to seek atonement.
“Salem was her first opportunity to work with Hastings again. It resulted in him being medically incapacitated for a time. She had missed working with him. Then the case…” Audrey motioned with her hands, not really needing to repeat how poorly Salem had ended. She imagined Adrian was quite familiar with that. “If pressed, I couldn’t quite say what her motivator was right now, but I do feel these things are far more distractors and I’m not sure our tried route of getting her back into the field is going to be appropriate.”
"What would you recommend in the short term?" Which was Audrey's job, as she had pointed out. The longer-term end was on him but Audrey was also more familiar with Ariel's day-to-day functioning: an insight that Adrian was going to take a while to get to. The added complications of her relationship with Miles and how it bound her more closely into the job were also on Adrian's mind. He'd told her that if she ended up out of the field that it was honourable retirement, and that was true. But there was no way Ariel was going to feel that short of a physical injury that couldn't be overcome. Dark magic wasn't enough, and neither were the psychological and moral injuries that she's already suffered.
Audrey considered that question. “I would like to say that I have a more thoughtful plan, but there is a lot unfolding currently and with the stress of the holiday season… My short term recommendation is to keep Auror Singleton on desk duty until after the New Year barring any large emergency requiring all hands on deck and even then I would hesitate to approve her for field work for concern that she might be distracted to be safe.”
Adrian sighed. "If we can't get her through the short-term, we can't worry about the long-term." It sounded like the sort of mantra Healers used to get through difficult cases. "Right, she stays at her desk through the New Year and we re-evaluate her at that point. Anything else or shall we move on to Staunton-Perksmoore?"
“As an asset Auror Staunton-Perksmoore is a bit more difficult to manage. She is similar in some way to Auror McMullen if you’ve had the … pleasure, although, perhaps far less challenging.” She didn’t bother to hide her feelings about Ben. Adrian would understand soon enough if he didn’t already. “She is reliable in her sessions with me, appearing to process things well. She has no more current concerns for restrictions than she did in the past. Although her social relationships with Hastings and even Singleton are to be considered.”
"Staunton-Perksmoore is a bundle of problems wrapped up in a bad attitude. She does all of her own regulation because she thinks nobody else understands her problems. Some of it's true: not many people do understand her problems. There are certainly problems I don't have interior understanding of, but I come closer than a lot. She's mostly duty-functional, but there's a lot under the surface to unknot. I prescribed an emergency portkey in case her potion fails her.
"There's also a lot of trouble relating to her relationship, such as it is, with Mr Brightstar the obliviator. I know it's not technically in our brief but if we can arrange to have his arse transferred to somewhere like Alaska, preferably with no access to a mobile phone or the internet, it would probably be a good thing for her." Adrian made a face at that. Adrian's opinion of Brighstar was still through the floor, even if Sal had come on to Brightstar instead of the other way round. Some things you just ought to know better than to do. This one wasn't as obvious as, say, Death Eating, but it should have been clear after whatever ethical training they gave Obliviators on this side of the pond.
She did not sigh. Although she might have wanted to. “I am quite perplexed at the decision to bring Doctor Brightstar into the obliviator division given his involvement in Salem.” It was clear she hadn’t been consulted on that decision, and thought very little of it. Then again, Audrey took issue with anytime the department or really the government valued unique ability over apptitude or correct fit for the job. “He is certainly a problem to be solved.”
"If he bothers her any more, he'll be dealing with me," Adrian said firmly. "And as far as unique assets go, she's more unique and valuable than he can possibly imagine. And apparently than your government can imagine." He did let out an irritated huff then; he'd been restraining it since Brightstar had come up. "How much do you understand of what she does for the department in a technical sense? I mean obviously you know her job duties, and the overview of her abilities, but how much do you understand of what that means for her in terms of casework, and how she uses her abilities in the office and the field?" Adrian didn't want to assume, but he wasn't sure on how clear you could be about the downside of being a legilimens without actually doing legilimency.
“As part of my training, I went through some of the more rudimentary legilimency training myself, but can’t say I ever had much aptitude for it.” There was a reason why she was a PsyD and not a trained healer. Unconventional, perhaps in the big magical realm scheme of things, but it served the same purpose. “However, I do appreciate the ability to takes to do it well, and understand that Staunton-Perksmoore is not only extraordinarily gifted, but unable to fully control her abilities which are managed by an experimental and not quite perfect potion regimen.”
Adrian nodded, because all of that was correct as far as it went, but it only scratched the surface of the problems Sal was dealing with. "Since you've tried it, you've got some idea of how the legilimency side of things works. And since your training was rudimentary, you'll have some idea of the--" Adrian hunted for a word and came up with "--residue. That you don't always get the thing you want and sometimes encounter other memories, or what you get sticks with you. Staunton-Perksmoore's been doing this since infancy and was, for years, uncontrolled. Even now she's not fully controlled. And on top of that, a lot of the time that she is using the power unleashed, she's skimming through the minds of really terrible people. Dark wizards who get their kicks doing terrible things to people.
"That's before you get to what that arsehole Doctor Brightstar did to her. It's a wonder she's not gone mad, but she's got her own ways of coping, not all of which are healthy. On your end, she probably won't require that much work to keep in the field," Adrian concluded, "but I've got a job ahead of me."
“With that sort of thing, it might be difficult to always tell what is real, what is self, and what is other?” But that was the nature of the beast. And to some extent ultimately why she didn’t pursue further training. Normal human empathy was more than enough for her without ever truly having to know. “We ask a lot from our staff, and more often than not they are willing to give regardless of the price it takes on their health. I am glad we were able to poach you to help as best you can, and I don’t envy you that task.”
Adrian had thought he was finished with Aurors when he left London. Little had he known. Still, this was a better place for him right now. "I'm glad to be here," he replied, because it was kind and mostly true. "As for Staunton-Perksmoore, she does want to be helped, which I wasn't sure about, but she doesn't think anyone can help. I think she's going to be two steps forward and one step back. We're on the forward foot right now because she's so delighted that there's someone out there who understands part of what she's been going through and who listened to her talk about some of the things she's done to keep from going mad without judgement. I think of your lot, she's the most challenging for me. But I believe in overcoming challenges." Adrian grinned.
"Which brings us round to ... Knight, who's dodging me, which is typical for anyone who goes undercover; they're always a mess; and O'Brian, whose schedule hasn't let us meet up; and last but not least: Hastings. Do you want to start there, or shall I?"
Audrey was optimistic that Sal would get the help she needed. Audrey did her best, but there was only so much she could do. “My impression of Auror Hastings is that he has made excellent strides in his return to the field after his attack. He is resilient, and has given me little concern for his actions in the field, his personal relationships notwithstanding.”
"Hastings is a good kid. What we used to say about his kind of patient in London was 'heart of oak and head to match' except Hastings is smarter than that makes him sound. Some people who are bitten come out bitter. Others come out with remarkable grace and Hastings seems like one of the latter. Reminds me of one of my favourite teachers at Hogwarts; we didn't know he was a werewolf until after he'd been dismissed." Adrian shook his head sadly. "Anyroad, he's the one I'm least worried about for himself, for all that his case is the most complicated. It'll get sticky later because it always does with werewolves; it's the nature of the curse and the grieving process for the free, uncursed life they lost. But he's aware of the risks, especially as they intersect with his professional life, and he was already working on taking the right steps before I encountered him." From Adrian this was high praise, though Audrey had no way of knowing it.
"But he's tied up tightly with Singleton and Staunton-Perksmoore, and, as I recall from the case notes, Knight and O'Brian. All of whom are trouble in their own way. And the pack instinct is already kicking in for him."
Pack, she thought placing a hand on her stomach. Audrey knew something of that. “He is a bit more self-actualized than the rest. Outside of his relationships, I would say his challenge is making personal sense of his new status and how that can impact his work.” And from what Audrey saw, he did well so far. “Of course that in part depends on how his romantic relationship with Singleton plays out.”
"They may be stuck with each other. It's not always true that wolves, or werewolves, mate for life, but the possessive instinct can be there. And the nature of the curse means that the traits of werewolves are generally twisted toward the negative. He's a better man than I am, though. I'm not sure that I'd look romantically on the colleague who ditched me and left me to be eaten by a werewolf," Adrian confessed. "It's not inevitable, though, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing if they're bonded for life, as long as it goes both ways. The worry for him is more if her affection fades, or if she's motivated by guilt, or something along those lines."
“It is certainly complicated, which is apparently par for the course with this lot.” No office was perfect, but as the biggest NYC did seem to attract a type. “And the more nuanced side of it would fall to his personal healer. Although I will still have to write up my formal recommendations for how Singleton and Hastings should and can work in the field, which at this point feels different than some of the other couples who work in the field.”
"Yeah, definitely, both because of the history and because of his lycanthropy. As long as she's confined to a desk, it's not as much of a problem, but in the field, they should avoid working together if at all possible. If they break up we're going to have a situation on our hands, but I'm not sure it'll change that directive, though." The idea of dealing with it, and what it would do to poor Miles, was enough to give Adrian a headache, so he let it go. God would provide.
“Let us first worry about the known challenges and complications on the table now before borrowing future worry.” Not that they needed to ignore it, but there was more than enough to work through and a lot of it was dependent on how current cases unfolded. “If you don’t have anything else to run off to this afternoon, you’re more than welcome to hideout in here for a while longer. You were my last obligation for the day.”
Adrian grinned. He generally looked forward to conferring with his colleagues, because they were usually the only ones who understood why he needed to hide out in their offices. "I believe I'll take you up on that plan, thanks."