[DoMGaS] Tomorrow's Score (Emma, Jonathan)

[div style="width:50%;opacity:0.5;font-size:0.85em;border-bottom:1px solid #ffffff;"]TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2000, 8:54 AM[/div]

Damn. It.

Jonathan Gardner threw his quill down on his desk in disgust. Here it was, already into September, and he still didn't have the schedules for the British & Irish Quidditch League's 2001 season ready. Mind you, the schedules and letters that they sent to the team captains didn't actually have to be out until the October Bank holiday, but Jonathan had always preferred to be ahead of the game.

This was ordinarily not a difficult task, as he effectively used the same 14-team rotation every year but assigned each team a new identification number with every new season. But making sure that the spread of 91 games over 24 weekends didn't double-book a team or schedule too many teams for too many consecutive Saturdays was a task that required patience and finesse. Jonathan was well-known for the latter, but lately the former was in abeyance.

A missive folded into the shape of an origami crane flapped through the door, capturing his attention. Mentally grumbling, he cleared a space on his desk for it to land. The crane floated down and then unfolded itself to reveal a travel expense report from one of his underlings, who had been the British representative to the International Summer School and been involved in the ill-fated lawn chess tournament. The woman was also requesting time off for counseling - apparently the students were rowdier than she expected.

Jonathan frowned, curled his lip slightly in disdain, stamped an approval on the expense report and a denial on the time off, and tapped the paper with his wand to refold it into a jet which zoomed out of his office quite quickly. "And no more distractions," he grumbled in the general direction of the door." He was about to wave his wand again and shut the door, but the fact of the matter was, he needed a second pair of eyes on the gross spreadsheet he had been scribbling away at.

"Fletcher--" he started to call, then realised that his senior assistant was on vacation for the week as his wife had just given birth for the second time. That he had completely understood, having three children of his own, but it left him confoundedly short-handed. Damn it again. Fortunately, he was not the only person immediately under Jonathan that could be called on for assistance. "Hennings!" he called instead for his junior assistant. "Hennings, come in here."

Despite the young lady being a former Slytherin, Jonathan had never had any problems with young Emma Hennings and she had proved herself a reliable member of the department. Now perhaps he could put her to the test of trying to sort out the upcoming schedule and see how she handled herself with logic problems. While he waited for his young assistant to poke her head into the office, he summoned one of the chairs along the wall closer to the desk for her to use.

@Emma Hennings

How was it only Tuesday? Ugh.

The tall brunette barely resisted the urge to press her forehead to her desk and close her eyes for a moment; instead, she propped her elbows on her desk and rubbed her tired eyes before massaging her cramping quill-hand. She must have written, what, a two-hundred place-cards for the Gala by now? But the pile marked ‘complete’ looked so much smaller than it should…

Suppressing a wail of frustration, she returned to her tedious task, cerulean blue eyes narrowing as she scanned the list of outstanding items. Emma felt that she had only just recovered from the tornado flurry of activity regarding the Quidditch Ball that had all but consumed July and August, and now with the disastrous events at Hogwarts barely four days ago and the Quidditch Gala nearly upon them, the Slytherin alumna was feeling more than a little mentally fatigued. Between the two Quidditch events, she had worked so much overtime that she could probably take at least a month off without pay and still be financially sound. When it came down to it, though, she really didn’t mind – as grueling as some of the work was, it was well worth it to see the final event come together successfully.

Though, the work goings-on hardly compared to the stress she felt over her alma mater. As soon as she’d heard that Hogwarts was in trouble, Emma had desperately wanted to help as she had for the Battle – but the Ministry was adamant that no one but trained Aurors and select Aurors-in-Training were to be allowed on the grounds, or even in Hogsmeade. So she had waited, anxious and tense, all day Saturday as the news trickled in for the final report. Thank Merlin she didn’t typically work weekends, or else her productivity would have been shot to hell and her boss probably would have chewed her out for it. Emma had managed to steer clear of Jonathan Gardner’s bad side thus far and didn’t much fancy ever getting on it. He took his job seriously, which Emma could sincerely appreciate. She liked her job and she liked working for him, so it only made sense for her to be as productive and helpful as possible… even if it meant that some of her days (like today, so it seemed) would be spent writing until her hand fell off.

So when the Department Head summoned her, despite her weariness the twenty-year-old got to her feet without hesitation and made her way to his office across the room. Sincerely hoping that he would assign her a task more fulfilling than penning place-cards, Emma gently rapped her knuckles on the open door before peeking in over the threshold.

“Sir?”
Ever one for practicality, she left out the classic ‘You wanted to see me?’ Of course he wanted to see her… otherwise, he wouldn’t have called her name.

A subdued knock prefaced the appearance of Emma in the doorway. She stood there attentively, mature, resolute, and looking more weary than she probably realised. Jonathan hoped that she hadn't taken his peremptory tone for displeasure. "Come in, come in," Jonathan said, indicating the chair opposite his desk and waiting politely for Emma to do so. He chose his words carefully, not wanting to deter her from the good job she was doing. "I want to say how much I appreciate your dedication to your work, especially in light of the recent events at Hogwarts," he began. "I'm sure there are still students there that you knew while you were in school and I'm sure you're more distracted than you let on. All the rescue reports appear to be good news, however, so there's that."

He stood up from his desk and starting pacing slowly. "I want to give your wrists a break and exercise your mind instead. As you know, Magical Games and Sports also oversees the British and Irish Quidditch League. We review team applications to join the league, arrange the season schedules, send introductory letters to the captains, supply referees to the games, organise the play-offs, and of course maintain press releases and adverts for the season."

Jonathan stopped walking and looked at Emma again. "This year we have fourteen teams, same as last year. Every team playing every other team comes out to ninety-one games for the season. We begin in January, finish in June--" he cut himself off and said with a more relaxed tone, "I know I'm probably just reviewing what you already know, but I promise it's quite relevant. At any rate, we give the teams the last weekend of June as a buffer between regular season and the play-offs, as well as in the rare case of a rescheduled game. We also don't play on Easter Saturday, which this year is on April the fourteenth. So that leaves us twenty-four weekends to spread those games across. It comes out to three to four games, usually four, every weekend.

"The problem arises when we try to avoid duplications, as well as too many played weekends in a row for a given team. A four-game weekend means eight teams are on the pitch, and, well, two eights is sixteen, more than the fourteen we have, if you catch my drift," he went on, starting to pace again absent-mindedly. "There's generally a pattern that we can follow to ensure that the games are evenly spaced out, but we still have to be careful because two 'rounds' of play may fall on the same Saturday, and a team might be initially scheduled to play two simultaneous games. That," he turned sharply and put his hands on his desk, "is where I need your assistance."

He sat down and turned the large ledger upon his desk around for Emma's ease in reading it. "My eyes are getting tired of poring over this. I think a fresh set of eyes - yours, to be precise - would benefit this poor schedule, as well as giving you a break from the Gala invites. I'll re-allocate Minch and Kinburgh to assist you with the remaining writing this afternoon, so you don't fall behind in your own work." He pushed the ledger closer to Emma and then leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. "Tell me what you see there, Hennings."

Emma offered a smile in greeting as Jonathan ushered her in, taking her seat opposite him at his desk as he had indicated. A wave of relief washed over her as he offered her praise. She couldn’t imagine he’d find fault in her efforts, if she did say so herself, but it was still welcome reassurance.
“Thank you, Sir – it’s no trouble at all,” she replied sincerely, sitting up a bit straighter in her chair. She felt a pang of sadness at the mention of Hogwarts. Not all of the reports had been positive, she knew: she had heard from her Auror friends that there had been casualties, many of them underclassmen and from her own House as well as Hufflepuff. But now was not the time to dwell on or dispute such things, so she simply nodded in silent acknowledgement.

Her ears pricked at the mention of a new task that would allow her to keep her wrists intact, listening intently and nodding when appropriate. He was right, much of this was already quite familiar to her – and a good thing, too, otherwise she would have had difficulty following him as he delved into the intricacies of scheduling matches, pacing as he did so.

Emma’s blue eyes widened slightly as Jonathan abruptly turned and placed his hands on the desk, getting to the core of why he had summoned her. Her gaze dropped to the ledger as he turned it around for her and felt a flutter of excitement in her stomach. He wanted her to proofread the upcoming season’s schedule? Excellent. She loved logic puzzles and she loved editing, and this was a perfect blend of the two. Her dad had always joked that she had editor’s eyes, able to find grammatical and spelling errors in just about any published text. Granted, this was a bit different, but the concept was more or less the same. Emma couldn’t wait to stop by his office later that day and tell him she’d had a hand (albeit a very small one) in scheduling.

“Absolutely – thank you, Sir, that would be great,” she added as he arranged for two of the interns to assist her with the remaining Gala place-cards and invitations that afternoon. She had made decent progress by herself so things would certainly move more quickly with the extra help, which would leave her with the opportunity to pick up additional tasks. Emma smiled – productivity was a wonderful thing, indeed.

She studied the schedule in front of her. Lightly tracing a finger down the columns, she looked for any blatant discrepancies, frowning slightly in thought. Thankfully she always carried a spare bit of parchment and a self-inking quill with her, so she took them out and set to making notes. First, she double-checked that each team was indeed scheduled to play the required thirteen matches each (and that each team did in fact play every other team). Then, she ensured that the home-to-away ratio was either 6:7 or 7:6 for each of the fourteen teams. Next, she made certain that no team was scheduled for two matches in one day, and finally checked the distribution for number of consecutive weeks each team was slated to play.

After perhaps fifteen minutes of puzzling and scribbling on her parchment, she spoke.
“Well, the good news is all teams are accounted for and playing every other team exactly once, with a more-or-less balanced ratio of home-to-away games. And I don’t see any teams playing twice in one day, so all looks well there. However…” she paused, glancing over at her notes, which consisted of several tallies and tables with checkmarks.
“The Kestrels have a stretch fairly early in the season where they play five straight weekends, which is the most of any team: the maximum seems to be three, though I’d probably prefer two but I’m not sure that’s logistically feasible here. The main option I see is if we swap out ‘Kestrels @United’ on March 3rd – which is the Kestrels’ fourth consecutive game – with ‘Pride @Bats’ on June 9th. This leaves Pride and the Bats with three consecutive games to round out the season, but at least the Kestrels aren’t exceeding three consecutive games. Finally, United has a nice little three-game break from May into June, and this would fit right in the middle, so they're all set as well.”

She glanced up to meet her boss’s gaze, offering her notes in case he wanted to check her work.
“Does that seem reasonable to you, Sir?”

"Quite reasonable, quite reasonable," Jonathan waved off Emma's offer of looking at her notes. He wasn't really a man who cared about how you got to a solution so long as you could produce good results. And her instincts seemed spot-on -- this was almost a viable solution. It was impressive that she had been able to pull spare parchment out of some pocket and start jotting down the notes she needed to give the schedule a thoughtful once-over. It occurred to Jonathan that, despite their two years association, he had not yet given Emma a serious examination as one of his employees. This was most certainly a good start. Just one thing really bothered Jonathan, and that was the three-week long break that Puddlemere United would get.

"I'd like to make your proposed changes permanent," he began, wanting to compliment her work - deservedly, not out of any soft notion to "make her feel good about herself." These were legitimately constructive suggestions that she had made. "Good work."

Jonathan ran his fingers up and down the ledger columns as he went on with a hesitant pace but a confident tone. "But, let's move the United @ Falcons game from Week 15 to Week 20, right in the middle of that three-game break. I don't mind three consecutive games being played quite as much as I mind three consecutive bye weeks. The teams need to maintain action. We can swap that game with Bats @ Falcons, but..." He chewed his lip and clenched his fist. "That would put the Bats playing two games in a row before their three games in a row stretch."

He stared at the ledger, scanning the different weeks and existing games, trying to make the word "Bats" jump out in his mind every time he saw it so he could focus on their schedule. Then he banged his fist on the desk triumphantly. "Unless we swap out Bats @ Griffins with Wanderers @ Griffins, weeks 20 and 21. That avoids the Bats' three-game streak... I think, as you said, we're stuck with both the Kestrels and the Pride of Portree having such a streak, but since neither club play in the first week of the season I think it works out to be acceptable."

With a few taps and drags of his wand tip across the ledger, all the changes that he and Emma had proposed moved into their proper places. "All right, Hennings, give it another once-over and see if we both missed anything. If it looks good to you, I'm prepared to submit this as the finalised schedule for the season."

His praise elicited a swell of pride in her chest, and she allowed herself a small smile.
“Thank you, Sir,” she repeated for the third time in the past twenty minutes. The uttered ‘but’ sent her gaze flying back to his face, and then back down at the schedule as she followed the focus of his attention. Ah, yes… the Falcons’ resultant three-week-long bye. She had taken fleeting notice of that as she was rearranging the matches, but neglected to make a tangible note in that moment… and promptly forgot all about it.

Before she had much of a chance to kick herself mentally her boss was already on it, puzzling through the various options aloud as Emma followed along. The fact that he could merely look at the schedule and mentally rearrange multiple things was impressive – Emma had learned early on that she personally needed to physically write or re-write things to keep them straight in her mind; hence the reason she always carried around a spare quill and parchment, especially at work.
Then the older man had an epiphany, banging his fist on the desk and startling her slightly. It took a moment for Emma to visualize and process his proposed changes, but once she had she nodded in agreement. With a few flicks of his wand the schedule rearranged itself to reflect the pair’s changes, and the Slytherin alumna did as requested and read it over once more.
“Yes, good catch… I think that does it,” she murmured after a long moment, her dark blue gaze flicking from the new draft to her notes and back again as she ran through all of the important bullet-points again. And, for good measure, skimmed the whole thing over once more. “Everything seems to check out,” she confirmed brightly, offering a polite but nonetheless warm smile.

There was a somewhat awkward pause while she tried to determine if she should remain sitting or rise to leave. She didn’t want to be rude and linger, of course, but also did not want to give the impression that she was in a hurry to be dismissed.
“Is there anything else I might assist with, Sir?”

Jonathan watched Emma look over the latest changes, observing that she was in fact carefully checking the names and dates rather than simply skimming the document lightly as other workers might do. Once again, Emma had not failed to impress. At last she too pronounced it satisfactory, and asked if there was anything else that needed to be done.

"No no, this is all I needed for the time being," Jonathan replied after a long^* moment of review. "Didn't mean to pull you away from your Gala work, after all. Take an early lunch, on me," he said in a tone that brooked no argument, "for your continued hard work in the midst of all this craziness. Tell Kinburgh where you left off before you leave the building so he can pick up where you left off. When Minch gets back in he'll join you and Kinburgh for the rest of the afternoon. Oh--" he added as an afterthought - "use Fletcher's desk if you need the space for all the invites. Dismissed." [span style="display:none;"] @Emma Hennings [/span]

So saying, he picked up the document and quickly strode past Hennings before she could stand up, exiting his own office with the schedule in hand and robes already flying behind him at his rapid pace. With the practise season having already begun, and the schedule just now getting finished, it was time to file a report with Minister Shacklebolt that his department was on track once again and the Quidditch season would proceed as planned. Before he passed the last rows of his department, he took his wand and zapped the parchment one more time, adding "Edited by Emma Hennings" to the bottom of the page. He could already see big things in her future and she deserved the credit for all her assistance.


^{*Like, an over two-months-long moment of thought.}

“Not at all, Sir,” she replied sincerely when he apologized for detaining her. The Slytherin alumna’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch when he insisted she take an early lunch as a thanks for her assistance. Reflexively, she opened her mouth to politely decline and insist that she was quite able to return to the Gala invitation so as not to delay matters, but the note of finality in his tone made the words stick in her throat. It was interesting how some people had the uncanny ability to command such authority so subtly, especially when they were neither particularly large nor imposing in stature.
In any case, her concerns about falling behind were assuaged by his next orders – and she was caught completely off-guard when he offered her the use of Senior Assistant Fletcher’s desk when she returned from lunch.

“That would be most helpful, thank you,” she managed to get out. And before she could say anything further, Jonathan had dismissed her, gathered up the schedule, and strode briskly out of the office.
After a few heartbeats, once she was certain he was safely down the hallway, Emma allowed her politely grateful smile to give way to a positively radiant one. To an outsider, his abrupt departure could have been construed as an impolite gesture – but the brunette was becoming accustomed to his demeanor, enough to know that he was simply eager to get on with his responsibilities. Jonathan Gardner, she had learned, was a man with a love of deadlines and efficiency. In that context, his praise and his request for her assistance in the first place made her feel that much more appreciated, that she was actually contributing to something; if he had been displeased with her efforts, he was the type to say so.

Rising from her chair, she took a moment to arrange her expression back to one of pleasant neutrality: the brunette reveled in praise, but was not interested in gloating or appearing outwardly smug about it. Such behavior tended to foster less-than-pleasant feelings between colleagues, as she had witnessed on a few separate occasions. Composed and, admittedly, quite hungry, Emma made her way towards Kinburgh’s cubicle to relay the plan of attack for the afternoon, allowing herself one last small smile. Being a fully-fledged adult was still mildly terrifying, but it was comforting to have the reassurance that she was doing something right.