mirror, mirror

who: @soclearwater where: rodolphus’ office, level two, ministry of magic

Long gone were the days where Rodolphus could expect to get through the days uninterrupted. The Ministry being The Ministry, the central location for all things bureaucratic, used to be enough to keep his vexations at bay. When one spent more time in the company of self-righteous windbags, family felt forgotten. Or so, Rodolphus supposed they did as Rabastan had been spending all his free time (of which he had far too much of) determined to ruin the peace and sanctity of his older brother’s workplace.  It was clear the moment he walked through the doors, shutting them and effectively silencing Greengrass’ tittering. The smell of citrus overtaking the notes of bound leather, parchament, and tobacco Rodolphus hardly registered any longer until they were stomped upon. “Penelope. How has he bought your affection this time?” From his spot at the door, he barely glanced in the direction of the permanent fixture of his office. The young woman had wormed her way (or had the promise of knowledge lured her in?) into the inner sanctum quite effectively. The deal they had struck was a farce, Rodolphus never surprised that his brother found a way to gain entry into his wards. The real prize in his eyes was the education in provided. For both a wayward layabout and a promising young Ministry worker. Her wards were growing more complicated by the week. Pen would be ready for more complicated ventures in the coming weeks.

The short distance to his desk only showed more signs of Rabastan’s presence. Papers strewn about, drawn symbols done in the sole purpose of attention, and crumbs. That was new. “You let him eat in here.” His tone conveyed the first sign of disappointment since his arrival as he observed his desk with a sharp gaze, cold eyes assessing every inch of newly created mess. Publishing the court times was one of Wizengamot’s many follies. A sharp turn of his wrist re-organized the papers and vanished the signs of consumption. It was the opening of his liquor drawer and the retrieval of his most-drank cognac that truly drew his ire. “Have you grown tired of winning already or is Rabastan proving too much of a challenge for your resolve?” Pouring two glasses, he floated one to the table nearest her coveted reading spot before partaking in his own. 

She’s come to know this library like the back of hand-- the richness of the wood, the heavy, hardcover books that lined the shelves. Any one who knew her, even tangentially, ought not to be surprised that she had taken refuge in such wonderous collection of knowledge. In a place that felt so dreary and monotonous, the library had become her secret escape, where her mind could wander far past the confines of the ministry’s walls. And though the library made for a lovely lunchtime escape or late afternoon research session, at the end of the day, she would have to return back to her cramped office and endless stacks of paperwork.

It’s perhaps why she enjoyed prolonging this game she inadvertently fostered for herself between the two Lestrange brothers-- after all, there was no better reason to avoid her frivolous work assignments than with a little challenge and the opportunity to procure herself some rather lavish perks. When the owner of the library strides through the doors and into her line of sight, Penelope can’t help but allow a small smirk to play at her lips, “I suppose it doesn’t truly matter, does is?” Pen ponders aloud languidly, “I do worry for poor Bash, as with each little gift, my expectations rise and my tastes become more refined. I can reassure you, my affections are anything but cheap.”

.

Rodolphus had always been clever. Setting up trap after failsafe after trap to keep Bash from straying off of the preferred path and, in equal measure of late, from straying into the places that he would rather keep private. It was the privacy that bothered him more than anything, the secrecy that made him wonder what it was that Rolf was so desperate to keep a secret.

It wasn’t books that he was hiding away — Rolf knew better than anyone that Rabastan had never held much interest for knowledge that could be found inside dusty tomes or boring equations. So what was it? Not Pen, surely — his brother was not fool enough to risk incurring his wife’s wrath over another woman and Pen did not seem the type. If it was simply space that Rodolphus was looking for there were ample amounts of it to be found across any number of their properties.

No, it had to be something else, which meant he needed, once again, to get past the gatekeeper. 

Bash’s smile broadened as he lifted the pair of passes before him, wiggling them in the empty air before the gap in the door and raising an eyebrow as he replied, “A shame — I’d picked just the one from the stables as well — but perhaps these will suffice instead?” He turned the passes towards her with a twist of his fingers, “Have you been to the June festival at the Rowley Mile? A week of showing and races leading up to the big race and celebrations for Midsummer. The champion’s lawn is very exclusive, lots of big hats — wix have been known to kill for these tickets.”

He plucked them back out of the air towards himself with a broad smile, “But if you’d prefer, we can leave the Abraxans and the champagne to poor, deprived, six-year-old Pen’s dreams and I’ll find someone else to give these to. I hear the regulatory lot in Magical Creatures have been poking their noses in about the construction of the track again. Every year. You’d think they’d learn.”

-

“As much as I enjoy a fine, feathered horse, I can’t say I’ve been to the festival before,” Penelope smiles, “When it comes to family outings, we’re a bit more of a Quidditch family than a racing family, I’m afraid.” The Clearwaters certainly loved their Quidditch, opting for the unbelievably pricy courtside tickets every year. While the unparalleled proximity to the pitch and players was certainly an exhilarating experience, Pen had long decided she had a preference for the Minister's Box, ever since the first time Bash had brought her tickets. 

She simply preferred wearing dress robes and sipping champagne, while her parents dodged buldgers and chatted up coaches, former players, and whichever other odd celebrity was seated beside them that game.

“I’ll admit your offer is wonderfully tempting and I would quite like the opportunity to purchase a new hat, however, you know as well as I, that I’ve spent quite a while researching and setting up all these defenses. It would be quite an effort to take them all down,” Pen replies, feigning exhaustion, “Would you care to sweeten the deal, Bash?”

Normally, the tickets alone would be a decent offer, but Penelope wouldn’t be herself, if she didn’t even attempt to bargain. After all, anything too easy just wasn’t fun. Penelope craved a challenge the way most people craved air. She needed one to have any semblance of fulfillment in life. “I’ll take the tickets,” Pen smiles devilishly, “...in addition to a luxury stay by the course and exclusive naming rights to the stable’s next foal born. I suppose, if I cannot have my own abraxan, I owe it to 6-year-old Pen to at least name one.”

“Although, if you do decide to turn me down, I should warn you that the regulatory lot make for terribly dull company. If you’re truly desperate for an uptight, enforcer of rules, you can’t do much better than a former Head Girl,” Pen jokes lightly, “At the very least I can discuss something other than knarls and nifflers.”

.

Puddifoots was, in the Tonks family’s reckoning, a national treasure. There was something about the ambiance of Puddifoot’s — the doilies and frilly curtains and gloriously kitschy decor — that had always, in some deeply shameful way, appealed to Tonks.

They had only the fondest of memories about this den of ill-fated dates and espionage.

It was the antithesis of everything Tonks was and yet somehow wasn’t — tasteless and brash and so overbearingly, cloyingly sweet that it veered past sickly and straight back into grandmotherly chic. Tonks had loved it, apologetically, since they were five years old and their dad had first dragged them to the absurd little tea shop for the meringues he’d been obsessed with since his own Hogwarts years (an auspicious day where they’d smashed three tea-cups and been nearly banned from the place. Tonks had been mildly obsessed with Madam Puddifoot ever since.)

Anxious energy had been brimming beneath their skin all morning and the scones smeared in jam and untouched cream (fuck Charlie and his guilt-tripping-in-absentia) had not dulled the anxious edges. Penelope’s greeting sent the teaspoon jammed into the dish of cream clattering from the table and across the floor with a startled jerk of Tonks’s hand, their head jerking up as they hissed, “Pen.” An overreaction. “Hello,” a worse one still, if only for the frozen expression on their face that seemed to veer between shame and well —

They had nothing to be ashamed of. Fuck the Ministry. “Fuck the Ministry,” she echoed beneath her breath like one of those stupid affirmations the assigned therapist had brandished at the department every six months. “I meant — how’s the — how are you? Aside from, you know, bored without me.” Their eyes dipped, suspiciously, to the croissant perched upon Penelope’s plate. Were they attracting vegans now? Some kind of vegan support group that Charlie had concocted to make sure that Tonks hadn’t relapsed into eating like a caveman while he — no, the pastry would be full of butter. Not a vegan. A vegetarian? Either way, this was Charlie’s fault, somehow. “Any fun crime— cases — things happening in the lab lately?”

-

Somehow between the teaspoon mishap and the not-too-quiet curses, it almost felt like nothing had changed at all. It was just as though they had crossed paths in the hallways or in one another’s cramped Ministry offices. Needless to say, that despite the aching familiarity of the interaction, the truth of the situation was that much had indeed changed. Worlds that once collided on the regular were now in two separate orbits, only occasionally passing by one another in an oh-so-pink cafe or two. And Pen supposed that’s merely how things went in an ever-changing world. 

Anything else would be rather dull.

She chooses to ignore the first statement that falls from Tonks’s lips, if only because she’s not sure how she should respond to the disapproval of their once shared workplace. Truthfully, Penelope supposes the “Fuck the Ministry” sentiment is universal, even among Ministry’s most loyal. Nobody actually liked paperwork. Regardless, based on everything that had unfolded between Tonks and the Ministry, comparing her current companion to a Ministry loyalist would arguably be in poor taste.

“I’m well,” Penelope responds with the casual shrug of her shoulders, “the papers are stacked high as ever on my desk and I haven’t heard so much as a ‘thanks’ in an eon, but that’s what comes with the territory, I suppose.” It’s an honest assessment that ought to surprise no one who’s spent more than a minute in the dreary building. “I’m afraid I can’t comment on any ongoing investigations,” Pen adds with an apologetic smile. Unfortunately, Pen was keenly aware of the difference between gossiping within Ministry walls and spilling to someone who was distinctly not. 

“But, I doubt it would get me into too much trouble to tell you that I recently had to complete a request for a report on the hibernation habits of toads. Apparently, there’s been some recent debate around the validity of talking toad alibis.”

A harmless anecdote. 

Looking around the bustling shop Pen motions to the empty seat besides Tonks, “May I?”

WHO: @soclearwater​ WHERE: Rodolphus Lestrange’s Office, Level Two, Ministry of Magic. WHEN: 23 April 2003.

Even all these years after their exoneration, there was still an underlying thrill to walking openly and boldly through the halls of the Ministry of Magic.

There had been a time when the rabbit warren of offices and cubicles that made up the main hub of magical governance in their country would have been of as little interest to him as the people who inhabited them. Their tedious and dull existences had never held any particular interest for him, despite his father’s most convincing arguments, and his brother, in their father’s absence, had fared no better. 

What had captured his interest increasingly of late (which had no correlation whatsoever to his brother’s increasing interest in Rabastan’s own business) was his brother’s Ministry office. Or rather, the extent to which Rodolphus seemed intent on keeping him out of it.

Nothing ever succeeded in making Rabastan want something quite the way that trying to deny him of it did. The Wizengamot offices were grand, in the sad, faded, Ministerial kind of way, and Rabastan’s feet took him to the right door of their own accord, rather than go for the door handle however, he raised his hand politely to rap twice upon the door frame and tugged his bribe du jour from the inner pocket of his jacket to wait.

The woman who inhabited his brother’s office for large parts of the day (in a curious arrangement that Rabastan might have looked twice at, if he were anyone else) was a curious creature, but Bash had always had his mother’s knack for charming people. Elaborate schemes and concocted hexes may have passed the time, but he suspected she enjoyed the research more than the prospect of actual success. The passes were proffered first as the door cracked open, his smile second as he offered, without a pause, “Hello again, Pen. How do you feel about Abraxans?”

There’s was something to be said for the peace and quiet of Rodolphus’s office library, at least when Daphne was on her lunch break. Today, she was dealing with a particularly difficult case, one that involved proving the feasibility of a new spell using a number of complex arithmatic equations. When all her regular channels of research had failed to provide and new or unique insights, she figured a wander through the Lestrange library couldn’t hurt.

It was an unexpected arrangement that she had developed with Rodolphus, but she supposed the less she dwelled on it, the better. After all, why ever would she complain about nearly unrestricted access to the library of her dreams in exchange for a few creative hexes and experimental jinxes?

Thus, as she wanders through the shelves, Penelope finds her hunch was proving to be a solid one, as she came across a series of advanced arithmancy textbooks she was unfamiliar with. Stacking the first five volumes in her arms, she moves to one of the plush chairs, which she notes is significantly more comfortable than her current office seating. 

She’s plunged deep into the second volume, mind racing with a number of possibilities when her concentration is interrupted by a small knock at the door. For a moment she wonders if Daphne’s returned from lunch, but the girl had never exactly been one for knocking. Looking up, Pen comes eye to eye with face that seemed to be growing increasingly familiar since she began spending hours at the library.

“Bash,” Pen greets with a small smile, unable to contain her curiosity as to what he’s brought her today. “Fancy seeing you here again.”

Truth be told, Pen wasn’t strapped for cash-- she had a healthy trust fund, that remained largely untouched and could even get by on her ministry salary, in needed. But Bash always seemed to be able to offer her more, he seemed to have unfettered access to the kind of experiences money couldn’t buy, prolonging their constant game of keep-out-- not that Pen ever really minded. There was a special sort of fun to their game, the kind that kept work just exciting enough for her to keep coming in each day.

“My thoughts on, Abraxans, you ask?” Pen muses aloud, “I suppose I find them to be rather impressive creatures. Not to mention, their hair makes for a wonderful bonding agent in many potions. But, if you’ve come to offer me one, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. While 6-year-old Pen might have loved the prospect of a new pet, I doubt a full-sized abraxan would fit in my flat.”

location: Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop, Hogsmade Village

when: may 1st, 2003, midday

Penelope doesn’t normally wander this far from work, certainly, not when the requests for new testimony and research are endlessly piling up on her desk. But for the Beltane deals, Penelope supposes she can make an exception. It’s not as though she really needs the 50% off a spinach artichoke croissant and her favorite cup of tea, but it’s alluring enough to drag her from the confines of her dreary, ministry office. 

Looking around the tea shop, Penelope inhales the pleasant scent of tea leaves, doing her best to not focus on the abhorrent color of the walls. It’s been so long since her Hogwarts days, that she’s nearly forgotten the kitchy, frilly atmosphere. Despite the décor not being to Penelope’s particular taste, she could at least appreciate the food and drinks the place offered. After all, no one, save a handful of lovelorn couples, went to Madam Puddifoot’s for the ambience. 

In the mildly crowded shop, Penelope attempts to find a place to sit, her gaze eventually falling upon a once familiar face. “Tonks,” she greets, offering them a small smile, “It’s been a moment since I’ve last seen you. Your keeping well, I hope?”

It’s more of a polite query then anything else, for from what she’s heard, the circumstances of Tonks’s suspension were arguably less than ideal. Certainly, there were rumors swirling around the office, but Penelope was unable to find even the most outrageous gossip to be terribly shocking. In Penelope’s eyes, no matter what had happened, Tonks was a rare bright spot tucked somewhere between the career politicians and suffocating bureaucrats that the ministry seemed full of. 

“I have to admit my office has been an endless array of dull visitors without your occasional visit to liven things up.”

Detailed Character Analysis Below

;; At a Glance

Name: Penelope Clearwater

Faceclaim: Ashika Pratt 

Age / Birthday: 27 | July 3rd, 1976

Gender / Pronouns: Cisfemale / She/Her

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Occupation: Head Researcher at the Improper Use of Magic Office 

Affiliation: Neutral