It had been more than two years since Darby began working at the Ministry of Magic as an Obliviator for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Most of her assignments were easy: modify the muggles memory of this magical event, blah, blah, blah. Darby still enjoyed those assignments, as planning how she would accost the muggle she had to obliviate was her most favourite thing to do. She spent hours planning her every move, ensuring that her target absolutely did not see her coming. But every now and then she was given an assignment that tugged on the heartstrings a little bit, and made it harder to do her job. She had yet to fail on an assignment, priding herself on her 100% obliviation rate (this was something of a running joke within the department – everyone battled for the highest rate).
She had completed one of those more difficult assignments today. It was the obliviation of a child that watched his mother be tortured using the Cruciatus curse preformed by his father. The boy’s mother had then forcefully taken her own life, to end the pain. The difficultly was not the actual obliviation itself, which was easier whenever the witch or wizard was less experienced, and extremely easy in the case of a child. No, the difficultly stemmed from the entire situation and reason for the requirement of her services. Darby’s childhood hadn’t always been wonderful, but at least her father was a loser and never came home, as opposed to being a loser and torturing her mother. She tried hard not to put herself in the shoes of her assignments, but sometimes it was hard shutting the emotion out of her work. Imagine being a four-year-old boy and watching a horrible thing like that happen, and then being obliviated to the point of forgetting that you even had parents; of being placed into a wizarding orphanage and forced to create new memories of their childhood. Darby didn’t know what was worse.
She had performed her service as required, right at the orphanage where the boy was now living. Darby could still remember the look of pure sadness in his eyes when she arrived. It was heartbreaking. She didn’t stay long after obliviating the young wizard, and instead apparated directly into the back alley behind the Leaky Cauldron. Darby pushed open the door and gave a less than warm wave to the barman before pulling up a stool at the end of the bar. “The usual, Tom,” Darby said half-heartedly, managing a weak smile as he passed her a tall glass of firewhisky. Glancing around the pub, it was quite full for a Saturday around midday (Darby requested to perform this specific assignment on a weekend, so that she was free to return home afterward and not be forced to go back into the office). She let herself relax upon the stool, but staying mildly aware of the people coming in and out of the bar as she sat alone.
@Harlan Bellamy
