WHO: @lepouxinfernal / Ted Tonks
WHERE: Births, Deaths and Marriages, Administrative Registration Department, Level Two, Ministry of Magic, Whitehall, London.
WHEN: August, 1972
Journalism, as it turned out, wasn’t all tracking down sources, clandestine meetings and uncovering deep-rooted government conspiracies. There was, apparently, a great deal of waiting involved, in uncomfortable Ministry-standard chairs while Mae from records tried to pretend she wasn’t acknowledging your presence but would, eventually, slide a discrete folder across the desk because you had an arrangement. That was a big part of the job, he’d soon discovered. Knowing people in the right places.
There was also a surprisingly frequent amount of getting punched in the face.
And so, Fabian waited, a days old Prophet turned to the half-filled in crossword in his hands and his foot jiggling absently where it was balanced carelessly across one knee. The mundane drift of progress as people approached the desk, categorising the sum of life and death and all the quiet joys in between on little certificates until, as Fabian pencilled in Scamander into a 7-Across, a familiar voice caught his ear.
He glanced up over the top of the newspaper, tapping his pen against his lower lip as the familiar voice met up with a familiar face in perfect, twattish harmony. That absolute twat.
Tossing the paper aside Fabian rose to his feet, meandering over to lean heavily against the doorframe that served as the only exit to wait. If Ted was so determined to avoid him he’d have to do it to his face this time. “I hope you know you’re a giant twat.”
Working in Radio shouldn’t lead one to spend so much time in the depths of the Ministry of Magic but Ted was learning (slowly, unwillingly) that being at the bottom of the job ladder meant time spent in the depths of the Ministry of Magic. He had somehow bumbled his way into the good graces of the Administrative Registration Department on Level Two. (Somehow meaning an easy-going smile and the gift of non-coffee cart coffee accompanying him on his trips to London.) Today, however, his business wasn’t related to fact-checking for the Wizarding Wireless Network News and the spring in his step wasn’t well hidden over that fact.
Mae was a witch he had never met before today (his usual Administrative Registration Department witch, Gleda, was nowhere to be seen and the soup he had brought her after hearing the cough on her during his last visit had now been claimed) but was turning out to be utterly delightful for a first time conversation, a talented conversationalist. “Dragon Pox? Bit serious, isn’t it? Did she say where she’s doing treatment or is getting a secondary opinion? You know Mungo’s just opened up an outlet in Wales if she’s not feeling up to traveling so far. Haven’t been there myself but we’ve been covering their first few weeks like mad and I haven’t heard a single story coming out of there about misdiagnosis like you hear from the main hospital.”
Fifteen minutes later, with his paperwork filed and a folder lighter, assurance Gleda was going to get a second opinion, and a new friend made, Ted backed up from the informational desk with a bright grin and a wide wave of goodbye. Only to turn straight into a man he had been pointedly avoiding like never before.
Coffee down both there fronts, Ted pulled a napkin from some pocket seeming out of thin air and began dabbing at the spill on Fabian’s front. “Be glad Gleda’s not here. She’d hex your, you know, clean off if she heard you saying that kind of thing in her office.” It was a bit of business, the overly rough job he did of sopping up lukewarm latte and cream and sugar (so much sugar), but Ted hoped it would give him a second to think of some kind of excuse. “What’s got you in such a mood then? Missed me that much? You’re a hard man to find, you know. Prophet must be running you into the ground.”
