come what may

What had changed? It was a good question. One that Fabian didn’t have the answer to. “I don’t know,” Fabian admitted, somewhat disappointed in himself. Of course, there was no way he could reasonably know, if even the leaders of their organisation hadn’t seen this coming, but still, it felt like some kind of failure.

He nodded in agreement with her hypothesis. “Probably a bit of both. They’ll have a goal, but if I were them, I’d want to cause as much chaos as I could to disguise it.” Which wasn’t a particularly reassuring thought. Were you wasting your time if you got distracted patching up the small wounds all whilst there was some huge internal haemorrhage going on? But how were you expected to ignore the little wounds when they could be Death Eater’s torturing innocents, killing them. An impossible situation, and one that did not get easier the more you thought about it. In times like this he had to rely on instinct and hope for the best.

“Good.” He glanced down at her again. Merlin, she was so small. Over a foot shorter than he was, and whilst he knew that was no indication of how powerful or competent she was, it still made his heart constrict to think of her in danger. “Good.” He repeated. He was glad she was safe, at least for now. 

With her question about elsewhere he was reminded of his personal quest to find Gideon. “I didn’t catch too much trouble on my way here. The atrium was struck pretty hard, but whatever they want, it’s not there.” He hesitated for a moment. “Do you know the way to the Department of Mysteries?” He asked. For a moment he considered being transparent with his wish to find his twin, but it felt too selfish to say out loud. “Lot’s of dangerous stuff there. Powerful things. It could be the target.” It wasn’t a lie, just not the whole truth.

So they were all going in blind. Hestia’s objective for the day expanded; the first priority was still to stay alive, but if they could find out what the Death Eaters were after, why they had decided to move from the shadows… If she could go back to headquarters with anything more useful than battle stories, that was a win.

It felt like one of the riddles her father had used to give her, only with lethal consequences. The prize was no longer a candy bar or a new book, and failure would be met with more than a disappointed look. And Fabian was right. If they were clever, and unfortunately they were, they’d sow enough chaos to keep the Order from putting it together. “They wouldn’t attack just to do so,” she agreed. “Make one area chaotic enough, people will flock there, leaving other places undefended. The rest are free to move as they please.”

The atrium was a clever landing spot. It was always populated enough that it was where the collateral damage would be the hardest, and those coming to help would get stuck in the fighting. Part of her wanted to go help, her mind immediately going to the civilians, but Fabian was right.  Hestia had no idea what was at the Department of Mysteries, but whatever it was – she didn’t want it in the hands of the Death Eaters.

“I can get us there. Shouldn’t be too far, actually, but if that’s where they’re going, it’ll be defended.” For once, she was grateful for having spent the past year running errands. The countless runs had left her with a feeling for the maze. She considered the quickest route. “This way.”

Ready, set…

Fabian had gotten to the ministry as fast as he could, but it still felt too late. The chaos had clearly spread out from the atrium to the other floors of the Ministry, and it was that realisation that drove a spike of fear through him. Gideon would have been at work today. He would already be here. What if he’d been taken unawares. He guarded dark magic, dark secrets, what if he was standing right between the Death Eaters and what they wanted.

There was only so much good he could do here, help the public to flee, fend off the foot soldiers the Death Eaters had left behind to guard exits. The worst of them would already be seeping out like poison through the corridors of the Ministry. Fabian had to stop that poison before it reached Gideon. For everything he owed his twin, if he could save him just one more time, perhaps it would make up for it all.

So he set out, hasty, but not uncautiously. If only the Ministry wasn’t so maze-like.

He’d been searching for a little when he suddenly heard his name. It wasn’t the deep and familiar voice of his brother, but it still lightened his heart significantly. “Hestia,” he sighed, lowering his wand just slightly. He could tell only a moment after spotting her that she was shaken. Of course, she must have been here when the invasion began, she wouldn’t have had any warning.

“The Death Eaters are staging some kind of coup- I think.” It was hard to know exactly what the Death Eater’s plan was, he’d only heard Snape’s warning second or perhaps third hand.

As glad as he was to see Hestia, he didn’t want to stop moving. Hanging around in hallways made them sitting ducks. With a protective hand on her shoulder, he ushered her onwards in the direction she’d been heading before they’d met. “The Order are coming, we had some warning, but there was no time to co-ordinate. I don’t know how many of us are already here, you’re the first person I’ve seen.”

Although his eyes were still scanning the corridors for danger, his gaze would occasionally linger on her for a second. “You’re okay? It must have caught you off guard.” He was silently very impressed, and very relieved to find her all in one piece. You couldn’t take anyone’s survival for granted in a battle like this. 

Hestia’s mind was racing. He only confirmed what she’d already had guessed, but didn’t want to accept. A coup… Why else would they move so openly? The confirmation only amplified the questions that buzzed through her mind, all too quick to really settle. “What’s changed?” she asked out loud, musing rather than expecting an answer. “What’s happened to make them move so openly?”

She shook her head, letting him lead her onward. No, this wasn’t the time for questions or letting her mind wander. Anything other than vigilance could mean death in a situation like this. Hestia tried to empty her mind –a feat rarely done- and moved on. If they survived this, and that was a big if, then she could try to unravel the motivation of the coup.

For now, the priority was survival. Survive and get as many out in one piece as possible. She lifted her wand arm as they moved, ready to lash out at every turn.

“Good,” she said, nodding. If the Order was here, that meant that they might actually have a chance. “I haven’t seen anyone either. Not many Death Eaters either… Maybe they’re headed for somewhere in particular. Or just spreading out to cause chaos.”

Hestia bit her lip. This wasn’t the time to start rambling or nervously chatter. She had always thought that if she was in a life or death situation, her body would freeze up. Instead, she found herself fidgety. It was an effort not to bounce with every step.

Hestia nodded again. This time she risked a glance up at him. “Yeah, I’m okay. Wherever they hit first, I wasn’t there. Everything just sorta… trickled down, I suppose.”

She considered for a moment. With Fabian by her side, she felt a bit braver. And now that she knew what the situation was, she could deal with it. The Order had come to help and that included her. So she glanced up at Fabian again.

Ministry of Magic

For @a-glasshalfempty

This was the second time Hestia had been caught unaware, and it was equally terrifying. Maybe even more so this time around. Whenever she was with the Order, she was always on alert in a sense. Not expecting the windows to get kicked in, by any means, but aware on a wholly different level than usual. The Ministry was supposed to be the safe part of her life but now her two spheres had crashed violently into each other. And even worse, this time she was alone when it happened.

There was nobody to lean on as she bounced through hallways, wand at the ready, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The first silver mask she saw had almost stopped her heart. This wasn’t happening. Maybe had she been any braver, Hestia would have stood her ground and fought. The part of her brain that was constantly weaving excuses figured that nobody could connect her to the Order; she was simply defending the Ministry. But this was way past being an Order member, and Hestia was alone. So she had stunned and bolted.

Once familiar hallways now seemed foreign in the chaos as she slunk through them, desperately trying to orient herself as to what was happening. Her adrenaline was so high, she almost flung a spell at Fabian the second he came into her line of sight. Hestia let out a shaky breath.

He did have a lot of respect for prefects. To so readily give up their free time and take on all those responsibilities, it was truly admirable. And it was hardly a surprise either to learn that hard-working, dedicated Ministry intern Hestia had also been one. It made perfect sense! “Of course, of course,” Dedalus agreed easily. “And not that I would know anything about it, heavens forbid, but common rooms weren’t even particularly inviting when it came to drunken break-ins. Gryffindors with their tower and its horridly long staircase, Slytherins with their dungeons – I mean, even sober, who would want to go down to the dungeons? And of course us, Ravenclaws, with our lovely riddles that just don’t lend themselves well to a mind hazy with alcohol. So much effort and so little pay-off,” he sighed and shook his head. “Honestly, Hufflepuffs should’ve been much more popular when it came to break-ins if you ask me.” And their common room was just so cosy and inviting. Dedalus had only been there once or twice but he still remembered those fondly.

Hestia’s barrage of questions only managed to silence him for the briefest of moments; after that it was as though he couldn’t get the words out fast enough in his excitement to explain. “It does have its own sentience! Not to a conversational degree, I’m afraid, so not quite like the talking mirrors, but when you give it your schedule, what happens is that it actually remembers all the events and when to remind you of them. And it stores that memory away even if they’ve passed so months later, if you need a reference of when you’ve done what, it has all that information and is able to provide it for you! Now, as for the voice, yes and no. It’s not somebody’s voice – not that I know of, anyway – but rather a combination of a bunch of voices that’s been heavily modified to sound pleasant but also distinct enough that nobody could claim I’d used theirs specifically. Which was a challenge in and of itself, let me tell you that! A lot of initial attempts just sounded like white noise. But I persisted and here we are!“

In contrast to the almost tangible pride he felt as he spoke about his invention, the talk of books and libraries was ridiculously out of his depth. “Oh,” he could only say as he realised he’d forgotten about the existence of librarians altogether. Perhaps because he didn’t see them as a source of help and information in the first place; as far as he was concerned, they were just there to look after the books. “Good, good! And I’ve been meaning to talk about my friend, Ryland, about this too, he has some experience with this sort of thing. Well, not this in particular, wouldn’t that be convenient! But I’m certain he can be of great help regardless! Do you know him? Ryland Greengrass, he’s… in our shared club.”

Hestia laughed, eyes twinkling. It wasn’t something she admitted too loud –Merlin forbid she’d be teased until the end of days about it- but she had stopped by common rooms other than her own a few times. Escorting lost first-graders and drunk seventh-ones was always a good excuse. “I’ve always found the Hufflepuff rooms to be the most inviting,” she agreed. “Location aside, it’s just very cozy. But I’ll always prefer our tower, of course, riddles and all. Now that I think about it, there should have been a way to hear all the creative solutions drunken students came up with. I bet the door has heard a lot of interesting answers over the years.”

She nodded eagerly as he spoke, reverting to her default way of showing enthusiasm. Every question he answered spawned two more – she hadn’t felt this invested in learning about something since she started her job. She was about to bombard him with questions about sentience –how was it created? Could you trust it?- when his next bit of information stopped her. Her line of questions halted as the part of her that had spent months getting acquainted with the justice system took over.

“Wait, it can remember where you’ve been and what you’ve done?” Hestia asked, slowing down a bit. She could see why it was a great feature! But also how it was a walking liability. For most people, having a reference to where you’d been was nothing more than a fun titbit. For anyone part of an illegal group… If such a thing came into evidence, no amount of fiddling with the case could save that. “Have you considered what could happen if you were caught wearing that, and it said you’d been places where you shouldn’t have? Does it have a fail-safe or way to discretely delete the information?”

Despite having already pointed out both to himself and to Hestia that it would perhaps be smarter if he kept some secrets of the trade actually secret, he couldn’t help but nod, enthusiastic. “Exactly! You get caught up in all the fun colours and the potential for fun mix-ups that you hardly even pay attention to the beans themselves! Or whenever someone would try to guess, they hyper fixate on the beans to the point where they don’t even notice the tells. Which aren’t that obvious to begin with, I feel I should add, Bertie Bott is a genius when it comes to colours and textures. But about half of it, maybe more, is more of a mental thing than anything. You didn’t hear any of that from me, though, those beans are still very much a best-seller.”

And she might’ve been onto something with her theory about professors and leniency, he suspected. While he liked to think that it was purely his charm that had won over most of his tutors, he felt that would be a disservice to his creativity, which was also something he prided himself on. “Oh, most definitely! And not just professors, too. There was this Head Girl I had who would sometimes come across me in the middle of some… experiments, let’s say, that might or might not have been breaking a couple of rules, you know how it is. And she would take some points, naturally, but then the funniest thing happened where she actually ended up giving me points too, for constantly managing to surprise her with new ideas.”

The praise was very much welcome and Dedalus let himself bask in it for a moment before responding. “It has its own voice and everything,” he confirmed. “It’s a modified version of the enchantments they put on talking mirrors. And it has an impressively extensive vocabulary, if I may say so myself! Well. For a clock. Which I suppose isn’t an especially high bar, but you understand what I mean.” He took the watch back, making sure to delicately put it back on the table. It was a sturdy thing, he didn’t think it was in any danger of breaking, but he was too attached to it to handle it with anything but utmost care. “I’ll be sure to start working on yours as soon as possible then! I can probably try a different voice too! Oh, I’ll see if I can get a couple of different versions, see which one you like more; after all, you’ll be listening to this thing all day long.”

He was very relieved to leave the theory to someone else – and someone who, it would seem, wouldn’t try to turn this back on him and make him do his own research. Unlike Severus and his dirty little tricks. “This is a very good point! There are so many books on so many topics, though, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Surely there are some authors and theoreticians who are considered better and more renowned, but I’m afraid I have no clue. So your help would be greatly appreciated, indeed!”

“The games made up using the beans are more fun that the beans themselves could ever be,” she agreed, nodding. Most of her experience with the sweets was through her dormmates, when they would get together after every Hogsmeade trip to bite through an entire pack at once, giggling over the flavours and trying to guess what they were. She was also certain that she’d seen them used in drinking games a fair few times. “It’s clever, playing on the mental aspect. There are a million chocolates and biscuits, but only one Bertie Bott. He’s absolutely brilliant.”

Hestia laughed at his story, trying to imagine how she would have reacted if she’d found someone breaking the rules by doing an experiment. Joined them, probably, Prefect duties forgotten. The promise of learning something interesting was enough to bribe her with. “Honestly, speaking as a former Prefect, she was probably just relieved to find someone breaking the rules doing anything other than snogging in a closet, or drunkenly trying to break into someone else’s common room. I know I sometimes looked through the fingers if someone at least was doing something interesting. Plus, sometimes when searching for knowledge, you have to be creative.”

Her eyes followed to watch with interest. Every sentence he said made her think of a million new questions, all brimming and trying to fight their way forward first. Hestia had never been one to hold back anything –least of all questions!- but she did try to not overdo it. Somehow, she had a feeling that Dedalus wouldn’t mind being peppered by them. “Did you have to find a voice to lend it? And do you have to teach it words? Or does the spell give it some semblance of sentience? That is even more fascinating – where does it come from?” Hestia bit her lip, stopping herself from going down a long line of questions regarding the creation of intelligence in inanimate objects. They would end up standing there all day, and probably most of the night as well. She gave Dedalus a warm, grateful smile instead. “Thank you! That would be amazing! Could you use an already existing watch, or do you have to work from scratch? And could I- well, not help, I don’t think I’d be a very good helper, but could I be there for some of it? I’d love to see the process, and it might make me understand the mechanics more.”

References

Frank pulled the chair to her desk while she cleaned off her desk; he understood those long tea breaks, though now he wondered if he could use it as an excuse next time he needed away from his desk for less innocuous reasons. He finally put the pile down, spreading them out across the space she had given.

“I’ve got a few different piles—I’ll let you take your pick.” 

He pointed at each of them, describing their contents as he went. “One—these are arrest reports; we need to find anything suspicious, any names familiar to us. Two—we have witness statements, most of them are from the Rosiers’, and we’d be looking for anything that’s been tampered with. Most of the time that’ll look like the witness sounding like they had been confunded. Three—Ministry inventory. A few things are off, but I haven’t had a chance to look at what’s missing.”

He finally took a seat and leaned back as he took out his wand. Frank wasn’t going to cast any magic, so much as he was just using it to guide him while he was searching. He wasn’t sure if this was going to take less than an hour, but it sounded like Hestia was up to task with how excited she had sounded when she greeted him. That didn’t mean Frank was going to spend the next hour in total silence either.

“So—how about that giant—er, sign… of James Potter’s name on the side of the building?”

Hestia listened as he went through the piles, head tilted as she considered them one by one. At first her mind was wandering quickly through steps, mentally organising and categorising the upcoming steps for each pile, but then she hesitated.

“Oh,” she said, the sound slipping from her as she figured the red threads. It was like one of the games that her dad used to give her as a child: here are five unrelated things – how do they connect? It wasn’t as outright as handing her five blue things, but Hestia’s senses still tingled.

She looked back at the files. Arrest reports, witness statements and inventory. The only way to figure out if they all did connect was through digging in. Hestia looked back up at Frank, her previous work mentally regarded for the day.

“Let’s start with the Rosier party and work our way from there. I suppose that might be the most urgent one, with everything still being sorted out. At least my department will need those quick enough. Anything tampered with – let’s see…”

Hestia’s wand can, just like her, be described as ‘dainty’. It’s ten and a half inches, with slick, dark wood made from ash tree and a unicorn hair core. A stubborn wood for a stubborn owner, the two of them bonded quickly.  While some might be displeased with such an ‘ordinary’ want, Hestia has been most happy with hers. It is a loyal, steady thing that has always served her well and given her consistent magic. She never has to doubt that it will do what she wants, or fail her when she needs it. It is her first.

Hestia, like most other wix children, was eleven when she got her wand. She’d spent the weeks leading up to the event doing what she did best: reading up on the topic. Walking into Ollivanders, her mind was swarming with thoughts of woods and cores. Would she be chosen by a remarkable wand? What if one with a tendency towards dark arts picked her? Or, even worse, what if no wand chose her at all? The fears were all silly, of course, but she still walked in with butterflies in her stomach. This was a defining point in any wix’s life!

“Great!” Maddy beamed and genuinely meant every bit of that. She’d missed Hestia, she realised now, and hearing her agree to come over so easily and so willingly felt good. “They’re both really cool, we’ll have fun! Wait.” And she rummaged through her bag to find a piece of paper to write down her address. “Usually we pop in a film afterwards, or play some cards. Why? Is there anything you want to listen to? Here!” She handed her the address.

Maddy’s mouth fell wide open. “That was Dorcas?!” She couldn’t believe it. That was so typical! So irresponsible! So stupid! “Does anyone else know?! Is there going to be repercussion?“

“The Ministry!” Maddy laughed, doing an excited bounce. “Now, that suits you, you beast! I leave you alone for a year and you’re already taking over the government! Good on you!” A gasp. “Oh! Does that mean you have lots of secret inside knowledge now?”

She did a dramatic bow, grinning from ear to ear. “Thank you, thank you, I do indeed think I’m being brilliant.” She nodded. “The products are mostly the same as in Hogwarts, right now. Just Muggle stationery for the kids, but, hey! If you’re at the Ministry, maybe I can give you some stuff for you to parade around! You know, once the shop is open, and then you can say where you got it from! But yes, I do think about expanding the product-list but for now I don’t want to invest in stuff I don’t know will work. While, you know, erasers always work, so they’re safe.” The brand question had her pause and ponder, though. “What do you mean with brand? Like, a real name for the business? With a little icon?”

“Great,” she echoed, beaming. Balancing work and Order was a task that often left her completely drained. While it sounded paradoxal to add another element, Hestia figured that the best solution was to go out and be social. Constantly bouncing between stressors… No, she needed something else. And curling up with friends, just listening to the radio – that sounded perfect. It took her right back to study breaks at Hogwarts. She accepted the note with the address on it, putting it in her pocket after giving it a quick glance. “No preference! Although a game of cards afterwards sounds fun – it’s been ages since I’ve played.”

Hestia gave a sigh. It was easy to let a sigh escape when the topic of Dorcas and her trio came up. “I don’t know – nobody’s pointed any fingers, or announced anything as far as I’ve heard, which means that either it’s being handled privately or it’s being forgotten about.” 

“Taking over, one cup of coffee fetched at the time,” Hestia laughed. Saying that she was a long way from taking over implied that it was where she was headed; for now Hestia was just concerned with getting a full-time job. And fixing up some dearly neglected and outdated laws. “Well, that depends on what you consider inside knowledge. If you can work with information about minor settlements or how much of a car you can enchant before it’s legally declared magical, I’m happy to be bribed!” 

Hestia laughed in agreement. She’d missed Maddy more than she’d realised. It was like eating and suddenly figuring that you’d been hungry all day, only becoming aware of it after the fact. Order meetings were looking a lot better going forward. Listening to Maddy talk about her plans, it felt like no time had passed at all. Like they weren’t waiting for a secret, illegal meeting to start, but rather had run into each other at Hogwarts.  

References

Legalities that Frank needed deciphering—except technically what Frank needed to have done wasn’t exactly legal under the strict definition of what his responsibilities were. Unless the deciphering was code for yes, let’s make sure the Order keeps its nose clean—in spite of the fact that Frank was beginning to doubt that it was possible at all to keep the Phoenix group from being further noticed, or whether it was even worth the trouble at this point.

“Yeah, there are a few of these that are still waiting to be closed out and archived—I just wanted to make sure that all of these were accurate through both of our departments before I signed off on them. Can I take a seat? I can go over the things I have questions on.”

He didn’t expect Hestia to pick up on his subtext—but rarely were Aurors so thorough that they needed to make sure they needed to ask about the minute details of anything unless they were the ones in trouble for something. But he did just need a little quiet and away from where anyone else could hear them.

In his files were reports regarding a few street fights that had broken out, a few arrests that involved neither group (though didn’t hurt to check), and folders of Ministry inventory—a few items were reported stolen. It was a lot to sift through sift through, but it wasn’t like Frank was planning to sit in silence: Hestia had gone to school with Dorcas and Benjy, right? Could Hestia have an opinion too on what the Order’s supposed to do?

“Yes, of course!” Hestia said with a smile – a real one in this instance, not just her work smile that turned on whenever someone popped up near her desk. She leaned forward in her chair, starting to move away her sea of papers, notes and books into semi-organised piles at the edge of the desk. It didn’t matter how hard she worked to keep a neat system throughout the day: she always ended up swallowed up in her work, and suddenly her desk looked like a battlefield. Maybe the neat-looking desks of her older co-workers was something that would come to her in time.

A few loose notes still lingered, along with a few way-side pens that had rolled away from her throughout the day, but at least there was room for Frank to put down his pile. Hestia waved a hand towards the newly cleared area. “Here we are! You can steal a chair from the desk over there,” she added, gesturing to where her neighbour usually sat. “He went for tea ten minutes ago, which means it’ll be free for the next hour.”

Hestia smiled again, leaning back into her own chair. This was a nice break from the numbers she had been snoozing over, although it was also a somewhat unexpected one. Aurors usually just stopped by with whatever they needed for trials. It was a nice change of pace.

It was hard to draw laugh out of Bran, even more so a proper one, even more so on a battle field. But when Hestia’s whole body began to … shimmy, her eyes widened, her lips pressed together, and then a laugh broken forth.

In training sessions, she never put much thought into which spells she used. Most of them were non-descriptive knock-over spells, akin to the ones kids produced before attending Hogwarts. Just whooshing around her wand until something came out of it. But apparently here, her mind had gone a little farther. What was this? A jello spell?

“Well?” she asked, somewhat managing to hold onto her laugh. “Fight, then! If you can still see me straight, that is.” And she was indeed moving slowly but surely in a great circle around Hestia.

Hestia had expected pain, had expected to leave the field bruised and worn down but this scenario had never even crossed her mind. Never before had she found herself feeling annoyed with a teacher figure, but as her entire body wobbled and threatened to fall over, Hestia did feel a sliver of annoyance building up.  

So she gripped at that feeling, deciding that it was the closest she’d come to wanting to go on the offensive. Channelling everything into her wand arm, Hestia managed to jerk it up in a quick movement, and before she could lose aim, fired off the first spell that came to mind.

Height: 5.0 feet / 152 cm

Hestia Jones is, by most standards, tiny. She was always the kid that got physically picked up, and needed to sit in front when it came to classrooms and school assemblies. That led to her being exceptionally good at climbing up things.

“You haven’t yet?!” Maddy asked, without judgement or upset, but rather delighted. “We listen to it every night with my flatmates! Gerry and Charlie, do you still remember them?! Gryffindor Gerry and Ravenclaw Charlie?! You should come by tonight and we can listen together!”

It felt so, so good to finally have an ally. Dorcas had Emma and Benjy and even Efa, and it was beyond wonderful to think that Maddy finally had someone on her side who didn’t like Dorcas either. A friend. Not just a mentor, not someone who was much older and was willing to make friendly conversation with her, but a friend. “They’ve set buildings on fire?!” she exclaimed. “What?! When?!”

She beamed. Proof of the same. Maddy had never taken pride in being normal, but coming from Hestia, it was like a knightly accolade. “What are you working? Gosh, we have so much to catch up on.” It was probably all Maddy’s fault, having thrown herself in her business and failing to keep in touch with anyone but her flatmates. “Remember my little Muggle trinket business I had going?” She grinned. “Yeah, I decided to actually make it a thing now. I’m currently looking for empty spots in Diagon Alley to rent. It all seems too expensive for now, so maybe I start out in a collaboration with some other shop firsts. But that’s okay, we all got to start somewhere, and if anything, it might even be better that way! That way I can build a clientele before I expand and try my own shop.”

“I keep meaning too,” Hestia said. It had vaguely been on her mental to-do list since she’d heard of it, but time kept getting stretched too thin. She had figured it an opinion-channel, akin to a newspaper column, but if it was used as a recruitment tool… Maybe it was time to move it up on her list. “Charlie, I think I remember! Gerry, a bit less. “ Hestia grinned. “That would be lovely! You could catch me up to speed as we listen. I’m done mostly around five during the weekdays, anything broadcasted after that?”

Hestia dragged her breath for a dramatic sigh – or at least more dramatic than she normally went for. The argument with Dorcas was still fresh in her mind. “After, well, the entire Ainsley situation. James Potter’s name was blazed into the Daily Prophet building – you might have read about it. Open for muggles and everyone to see. Technically, I don’t think anyone’s officially blamed them, but Dorcas was practically floating the day after. Besides, who else would think it would be a great idea?”

“I’m interning at the Ministry!” Hestia said, always happy to talk about her job and infinitely happier to talk about that instead of vandalism. “At the Department of Magical Law! It’s amazing, and I’m hoping they’ll take me on as a proper employee after summer sometime.”

1. Dorcas, no doubt. 

2. (I feel like Dorcas would report her back) Emma, on behalf of Dorcas