accidents happen [edith]

Kendrick stuck his head into the bubble of space that surrounded Edith Holthouse's desk. "Morning, Edith," he said, the tall man easing into her space gingerly. "The good news is it's," he checked his watch, "10:49 am, I do believe we have a new record for the longest time between incidents for the month!" He flicked his wand at the board in the office that held the record, laughing. The last one had been at 6:51 am, with the night crew he was blessed to be too old to be a part of. "Andddd the bad news is, Donald just sent me this memo and we're on for a case in, um. Cum--Cwym--well, I don't suppose he wants you because you speak Welsh, do you?" Kendrick asked pleadingly, dropping the memo with CWMTWRCH written in bold letters under Location on her desk, complete with a picture for the purposes of Apparition. "Because frankly if I give this a go it's going to come out sounding like something rather obscene. Anyhow, there's signs of Muggle involvement, so he wants me to bring you instead of Boris." Kendrick approved of how freeform Squad teams could be, depending on the situation. The best part was, Edith's fabricated memories were always excellent hits at the water cooler, so he was rather looking forward to it, as long as the incident wasn't too disgusting otherwise.

Stuffing the usual forms into his Ministry robes, Kendrick checked his wand in his pocket out of habit and then followed the younger Obliviator to the elevator down to the Atrium. "Only other thing I know is I think the village is pretty small. Wizard involved is probably the only one in miles. Older gent, single. Any bets on what he got himself into?" He grinned at Beardy who had gotten into the elevator with them, who rolled his eyes at the two younger employees and scratched his copious whiskers. Stepping out into the Atrium, he glanced at the photo again, then cracked his neck. "See you on the other side?" Preparing himself for the awful pressure--for someone who really preferred walking or flying to Apparating, Ken had certainly picked himself a job that was rather demanding of it--he vanished with a pop.

Emerging with a rather larger crack on an isolated gravel road in the middle of a rather agricultural-looking area, he squinted into the distance. The first sign of something wrong was more often than not some type of unnerving discharge. Oftentimes, smoke. Turning his head in the opposite direction, away from what looked like the stone buildings of a village center, he caught sight of an enormous cloud of dust emanating from somewhere further down the lane. "Ah. That looks like trouble."

As they drew closer to the rather opaque dust cloud, a rumbling started to fill his ears. "Huh. Creature issue?--" he had time to say before a gray-haired, bearded wizard practically sprinted into the road from the field, wearing open paisley pink robes and what appeared to be a nightgown underneath. "Whoa! Excuse me, sir, we're from the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad--"

"No, no, I've got this all under control!" shouted the wizard, raising his wand. "Incarcerous!" Ropes flew out of his wand, dragging out one very bedraggled-looking sheep from the dust cloud. Upon closer inspection, Kendrick noted, it was rather larger than a normal sheep. It also appeared to have…fangs? Within seconds, the baa-ing creature had chomped down upon its ropes and was struggling and rather succeeding in getting free. From somewhere behind the dust cloud, the terrified shrieks of someone else, likely the Muggles reported, pierced through the rumbling.

"Seriously?!" This was going to be a long job.

@Edith Holthouse

ooc: took the liberty of moving them around to get this going let me know if I should change something

“Morning, Edith.” The girl’s head popped up as she instinctively shuffled the paperwork on her desk around. She had attempted to create the illusion that she was hard at work and it would be hard to keep that up if anyone saw the parchment full of doodles she had actually been working on. “Mornin’,” she replied, a grin spreading across her face as she listened. “Nearly four hours!” she agreed, nodding along as Kendrick proceeded to tell her the bad news. Personally, Edith loved the out-of-office work much more than the in-office kind. Plus, Kendrick was one of the more fun colleagues to venture out with, rather than some of the serious, I’m-too-old-for-this colleagues that they had in their department.

She dipped her head down at the information about the location, stifling a laugh as she looked at the name. “I hardly speak English, mate.” Where were the vowels? Welsh had too few, French had too many, but that was neither here nor there. “Sounds great,” she nodded again, standing up swiftly and stretching her legs. “I’m much better than Boris.”

They were out of the office and into the atrium in no time, not sure if she was more eager to do her job or just get outside. The small village with one wizard scenario was one of her favorites — less explaining she had to do, really, more opportunities for obliviating, more memories to make better. A nod, a thumb’s up, and a turn later and they were in Cwmtwrch; it took a few seconds for Edith to regain her bearings and stand up straight. The village looked very similar to the one she hailed from and she had to remind herself they were in Wales. The farm smell was overwhelming.

Edith followed Kendrick’s gaze, grimacing into the distance. “Yikes.” Trouble, yes, but also a bit of fun. Something somewhere was getting destroyed and there weren’t any obvious screams of pain piercing the air and that was always good news. But once the wizard had appeared, she was able to finally focus on the seriousness of the situation. She was by no means an expert on sheep herding, but she was fairly certain they didn’t get that big, didn’t have pointy teeth, and didn’t need to be tied up to subdue them. She sighed, her grip tightening on her wand. “Wizard, sheep, muggles, in that order, then?”

She moved to busy herself with subduing the sheep as Kendrick disarmed the wizard, who clearly wasn’t helping the situation by having a wand. The aim of her full-body bind was spot on, hitting the sheep square over where she presumed its heart was.

There was another scream and Edith broke into a run, the petrified sheep bobbing along in her wake, its face frozen into a rather menacing snarl. The dust cloud was getting bigger, though it was clearly centered in a rather small, fenced-in field. Of course, the muggle fence was really no match for the flock of bewitched sheep, but it was nice that someone had tried.

“I bet I can get more sheep than you,” she called out, figuring out the best plan of attack. The dust was too thick and more was being kicked up by the minute, obscuring any chance of getting through without taking care of the sheep first.

Kendrick nodded at her serious inquiry, but couldn't hold back a laugh as he took a second look at the wizard. Seriously, the paisley pink was just too much. "Sorry, mate, gonna have to relieve you of that," he said apologetically to the man. "Expelliarmus!" Catching it neatly with only slightly rusty Keeper skills, he stashed it in a pocket. "Don't worry, you'll get it back once we've cleared this mess. Although sir, I'm afraid we're going to have to get someone from the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures down here to determine whether this is a violation of the Ban on Experimental Breeding." The wizard glared at him and Kendrick winced. When the perpetrator was belligerent there was always a chance they'd have to get Law Enforcement involved. Fortunately, it appeared that after a bit of mumbling the wizard went to sit down curbside and await the resolution of the incident. and Kendrick went to go help his colleague.

He laughed at the sight of the sheep bobbing as well. "Deal, loser buys the drinks in the inevitable recovery excursion." Of course, even if he won, she'd probably end up buying a total of one drink. Kendrick never could hold his liquor. Dragging another sheep out with ropes, Kendrick shot a Stunning charm straight at the sheep. It was knocked back for a moment, then appeared to shake it off and, oddly, puffed up to a larger size. He couldn't really tell whether it was the entire sheep or just its fluffy covering that had expanded, but regardless, it appeared that stunning wasn't exactly going to work. "What was he trying to do, get the world's biggest wool harvest? Watch out, looks like they're resistant to direct damage." He'd probably tried to make them invincible in case someone tried to harm his flock.

Kendrick started to send out relevant spells in rapid succession. "Petrificus Totalus! Levicorpus! Immobulus! Oooh--Locomotor wibbly!" A few sheep fell out of the dust cloud, unable to rampage, baaing angrily instead, He wasn't convinced that they wouldn't end up with supersheep strength in the legs after a moment, though. "Accio mutant sheep!" One of the fluffiest ones zoomed out toward him and then began to roar in a rather ear-splitting fashion. "Ugh. Silencio!" It fell silent, and he grinned. "Okay, that's five." The dust cloud wasn't getting very much smaller, and he wondered whether they should try to go in rather than stay out. "D'you reckon we should try going in? Bubble-head charm maybe? I don't really know what's going on in there, might be worth a look..."

The inevitable recovery excursion was more of a mandatory recovery excursion in Edith's book, but she nodded nonetheless. "Deal." Her grin was quickly replaced by a furrowed brow as she stared into the dust cloud, pointing her wand a little haphazardly considering she didn't know where, exactly the muggles were. But at least no spell she would be firing their way would cause any actual harm. She used the body-bind jinx a couple more times, but as Kendrick joined in and started shaking things up by varying his choices, she followed suit. She wasn't exactly a walking encyclopedia of sure-fire sheep shunting spells, but she wasn't about to lose out of free drinks. She took an extra few seconds to add a temporary 'E' to the wool, just in case he tried to claim any of her sheep as his own.

She moved back to the full-body bind after a couple more sheep, preferring the very easy to manage outcome to the sometimes unexpected ones with the other spells. She made a little corral to stuff the sheep in, a large-ish bubble floating a few inches off the ground to her left. That should at least contain them for the time being in case any charms wore off, giving whoever showed up from the Beasts Division an easy task of doing his job. They could thank her later.

The gentle calls of baa baa baa from the regular, non-magical sheep across the lane were being drowned out by the much angrier, much more mutant ones and Edith rolled her eyes as she brought one up in the air, muzzling it and dropping it neatly into the pen. "I have at least seven," she motioned her head over towards the little area with a handful of sheep with 'E's emblazoned on them, bobbing about in the air inside the bubble.

"How about you go in? I'm not technically necessary until there's confirmation of muggle presence." She raised her eyebrows and nodded knowingly, ushering him in with an encouraging wave of her hand. "I'll be right behind you, though." But just as she was making her excuses for not galavanting into the dust cloud full of who knew what, another scream pierced the air. She shook her head as she sighed, cast the bubblehead charm on herself and ran into the cloud.

She cleared a couple more sheep out of her way, not bothering to brand them as she made her way towards the scream and the -- laughing? Edith attempted to siphon out some of the dust, still unable to see more than a foot in front of her face.


[ooc: hogwarts hurry task; metaphor, alliteration, onomatopoeia]

Kendrick was aware that his methods weren't the most efficient, but he was having fun, and his bank account could stand to take the hit of a few drinks. He went out rarely enough that he thought this one would get a pass from Jo. Levitating his sheep off the ground like Edith so he wouldn't turn around to see them breaking out, he nabbed a few more and tossed them into his. "Everyone knows skins are better than shirts," he commented, laughing at her meticulous labeling of the sheep. Glancing at his own, he gave a frown. "Looks like they're breaking out of the body-binds. I guess they're a little bit resistant. Enclosure's holding, though. And..." Kendrick did an alarmed double-take. "I think that one's trying to eat the other one..." Sure enough, a bit of blood was dropping to the bottom of his bubble. "Ewww..."

Well, he was just more determined to go into the cloud and get to the root of the problem. Probably he should have questioned the wizard more to see what they were up against, but he seemed rather belligerent. "Thanks a bunch," he said drily in response to her eager volunteering of him, and did a rather larger version of the bubblehead charm to encompass his torso as well. It wouldn't do to get his hands incapacitated by a man-eating sheep monster. Immobilizing his count of sheep, he walked into the dust.

He held up his hands reflexively even though the dust wasn't about to pierce his bubble. Sheep thundered around in all directions. It seemed rather aimless to him at first, although on closer look it seemed that they were all stampeding around after one another. Maybe it was just cannibalism, but it didn't seem like any of the sheep were any faster than the others. As he pushed farther into the cloud, he heard another scream and a laugh. Kendrick squinted and just made out some sheep that appeared to be rather docile standing in the center. There were also two figures dressed in Muggle clothing in the center of the docile sheep circle.

As he broke into the middle, he looked upwards to a patch of blue sky in the middle of the dust cloud. "Eye of the hurricane, huh?" Inspecting the sheep, he noticed that they, too, appeared larger than the others. But he didn't notice the same engorged fangs present on the other ones. "Multiple types? Oh man, Experimental Breeding's going to get him so good, poor man. Probably trying to charm them into self-defense." Some of the sheep were little more than lambs here in the center. Pushing through to the Muggles in question, he realized that he was wearing Ministry robes still. Oh well, this would all be gone in a moment anyway.

Looking down, he realized that they were little more than teenagers, maybe about sixteen, not that Kendrick was very accurate in telling ages. One of them was lying on the ground, straddled by a sheep twice as big as him, and the girl next to him was laughing her head off at his predicament. He seemed rather terrified. "Excuse me, sorry, are you two all right?" The sheep appeared to be licking his face, rather like a large husky. They turned to stare at the spectacle he made, robes and wand and all. "Get this thing off me!" yelled the boy. The girl just shrugged and said "yeah, but the other ones are kind of scary. What are you, some kind of circus performer?" Kendrick eyed them, then shrugged. "Wizard, actually," and levitated the sheep off of the boy, setting it down on the outside fringe of the inner circle. Her jaw dropped. "What---what---"

"Don't worry about it, I'm just here to help and you won't remember this tomorrow," he said, looking around for Edith. As she approached, he shrugged. "Can't tell why all the other ones are running in circles, all that's here in the middle are some tame ones. Maybe we do just have to keep bagging 'em? Found your Muggles too, but I bet there'll be more onlookers the longer this dust cloud goes on."

“Ack--" Edith stopped short as a sheep darted past her, barreling out of the dust cloud and narrowly missing her. She sidestepped as another came at her from the other direction, clearly recalling the blood dripping from the fangs of the sheep in the pens outside the cloud. But the sheep wasn’t interested in her, bounding after the sheep from seconds ago. Edith quirked an eyebrow, about to go investigate further, when she heard the muggles again, this time an equal mix of screeching and laughing.

The sheep could wait; they weren’t technically her job, after all, even though she was fairly invested in winning this competition to corral the most. She pushed aside yet another sheep with her hand and it ambled away, not phased at all. She followed the combined sounds of the muggles and Kendrick, either talking to himself or the muggles or the sheep. She wasn’t sure which option was the most out of the ordinary in this situation.

It took her a minute to fully gather just what, exactly, was going on. The dust had cleared as she pulled up beside her partner, who turned to look at her. At his mention of the muggles, Edith looked over to the pair of them and waved, offering a half-hearted smile. Neither of them were sporting any wounds or obvious magical deformities, so that was at least a plus in favor of the wizard hanging out on the other side of the cloud. She looked from the confused and awestruck faces back to Kendrick, grinning as she asked “Are you showing off?”

She waited a beat, crossing her arms across her chest in thought. “Well thankfully, the sheep aren’t my job.” She snickered, looking from the muggle on the ground back up to the muggle still staring at the Ministry folk. “You two like corgis?” They were in Wales, after all. She didn’t wait for them to respond (and she might have been there all day waiting if she had as they had apparently forgotten how to speak) before she continued. “‘Course you do. Who doesn’t?” She nodded to herself, uncrossing her arms and taking a step towards them.

The girl took a step backwards and Edith rolled her eyes. “Just helping, chill out.” She didn’t take her eyes off of the muggle girl as she called back to Kendrick. “I’ll obliviate them if you round up the rest of the sheep. Bet that will clear up the dust, too.” She used her wand to silently conjure a bench for the two muggles and she encouraged them with her hands for them to follow her suggestion.

Kendrick made his best affronted face. "Am not. If I was showing off I'd have added a bunch of bangs and sparks or something. Or turned it into a bird or something instead of levitating it. Isn't that what you Muggles think of when you imagine magic?" Kendrick actually quite enjoyed assignments with an Obliviator. Their memories would be wiped in any case, so it was a rare moment where he didn't need to worry about the Statute of Secrecy. It wasn't often that people were impressed by magic when everyone possessed it.

"Oh come on, what happened to the bet," he said with a laugh. It was true, they were his problem. "All right, I'll go take care of them." Stepping out thoughtfully now that he knew that the sheep weren't about to do any damage to him, he took a deep breath and faced outward in one direction from them. Concentrating, he conjured a single glass sphere the size of a small house. It was a very difficult conjuration due to size, but the uniformity helped, and Kendrick's long practice with wand magic. It was good for something other than being an Auror after all. Lifting it up and stepping outside of the dust cloud, he proceeded to shrink the sphere until the sheep didn't have enough room to rampage within it and floated it off with the rest of them. He repeated this successively with smaller and smaller numbers until the last three sheep, which he full-body bound instead.

"I win," he announced, turning back to face the three figures in the middle. Moving his wand in a twisting motion, he brought all of the different containers together, praying that a few of them would still be alive for them to haul back to the Ministry for inspection. "Should we try and get Experimental Breeding on site, or should I Apparate back with one? Someone needs to talk to that guy," he jerked a thumb in the direction of the sitting wizard, who stood up and started to approach. "And I guess we have to get all of these cleared up before you take care of those. Also," he squinted. "I think there are some other people over there who are looking. Think you need to handle them too or can the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee wave it off as an unnatural tornado?"

"Guess I've found my heart and decided to give you the win," Edith called back one more time, still not taking her eyes off the muggles. The muggle on the ground had stayed put and didn't look like he would be getting up any time soon. She took a step forward towards him, her wand out and pointed at the girl standing to the side. "Help me, won't you?" It was more of a command than a question and the girl obliged after a few seconds of hesitation, her gaze fixed on Edith's wand. The both knelt down and hoisted the boy up by his elbows, tipping him back onto her previously conjured bench. "You too," she motioned to the girl, watching with a nod as she finally followed directions.

Edith took a step backwards and cleared her throat, the veneer of friendliness spread across her face. "Hi, I'm Oprah," she started, spicing up her usual spiel she used to distract muggles as she put up a barrier around the three of them, just in case either of the muggles found their legs again. "Apologies for the sheep, but that's Wales for ya, isn't it?" She laughed at her joke, not taking any offense when her hilarity wasn't fully appreciated by the other two. "Usually people tell me what they actually saw, do you want to do that?" Again, silence. Edith sighed, turning her back to the muggles to check on Kendrick's progress.

"Oh, well done, you." His winning pronouncement was met with a roll of her eyes. "Yeah, take it back. And I guess we should take that guy with us." She glanced over to the paisley-clad wizard, still sitting and sulking as silently as ever. He should be easy enough to convince that he should come with them. "These two aren't going anywhere, but I should take care of them. I can clear about ten minutes of future memory so that should be plenty of time, right?" She nodded, answering her own question.

"Right," she continued, quickly conjuring a bird with her wand, again as a distraction. As usual, their attentions were focused on the magically appearing bird instead of the witch in front of them. A quiet but forceful "Obliviate" was the next thing to leave her lips. The gazes fixed on the bird quickly glazed over and Edith continued, every ounce of seriousness she had present in her voice. "You were out on a walk and stumbled upon a field of wildflowers from which you heard cute and unavoidable barks. Upon closer inspection, you found a literal herd of corgis and you whiled away the afternoon frolic in the field with your stumpy-legged companions." She sighed, dropping her wand arm. She had taken the last couple hours and a smidgen of future as well.

She vanished the bird, the bubble, and the bench, helping the muggles back up to their feet and wishing them a safe journey home. "Wizard time?" Edith jabbed her thumb at the guilty party, ready to get out of there and pay up for losing her bet.

Kendrick eyed his rather large bundle of sheep. There had to be at least 40 in the flock, and 40 sheep made for a rather large volume. Muttering to himself, he set about casting a temporary Extension charm on his bubble, and then shrinking its evident size down to a manageable under-arm bundle, silencing the sheep for good measure. Extension charms were heavily Ministry-regulated, but it was a temporary object that he'd conjured in the first place so the charm would dissolve with the bubble, and it wasn't exactly as if this was private use. He'd have a row with old Mugwort if he tried to get him cited for this one.

"Yeah, that should be plenty. I'll tie him up if he resists, he knows he can't do anything." Heading over to the wizard, he couldn't help casting a glance back to Edith as she started with her memory fabrication. He attempted and failed to stifle his laugh as she mentioned a literal herd of corgis. "You know, I wouldn't mind getting a corgi memory one of these days if you're going to make them this cute," he called back in her direction.

Looking the wizard up and down, Kendrick pulled his wand back out and proffered the handle to him. "Here's this back, sir, but in exchange we're going to have to take you in to the Ministry to have a chat with some folks there. I'm not above using force if you try anything funny, but if you come along quietly we might be able to mitigate the issue. The Muggles don't seem to be harmed so that's in your favor, but man, you really should dress better if you're going to be in a Muggle village and avoid breaking the Statue of Secrecy." He laughed. "Look, I'll take you to Experimental Breeding first, and maybe we can avoid getting you hauled down to Law Enforcement about the Statute, mmkay?"

The wizard clearly weighed the options and decided that getting his wand back was better than not. Not that Kendrick had the authority to actually permanently strip him of his wand, but he didn't suppose the wizard knew any better. "I was just trying to protect my flock," he muttered grumpily and took his wand back. "Yeah, yeah, I know," said Kendrick in his best understanding voice. "Come on, if you cooperate this won't be too long, okay?"

He took another look around the area, checking his watch. He supposed it hadn't taken quite as long as he had feared, and he was slightly reluctant to go back and deal with all the paperwork. There was a fresh scent in the air, newly cut grass from the next farm over wafting into his nostrils. Even the settling dust felt more natural than the office, and the early afternoon sun cast a warm light over the pastures and the splintery wooden fences that separated them. A faint haze in the distance amplified the sensation of isolation in place and time. He didn't blame the guy for wanting to settle here; a blanket of quiet had settled now that the sheep had been silenced, broken only by a faint summer insect buzz and a distanct moo. The trampled grass crunched beneath his feet as he walked back to the road, kicking up small brown dirt particles in his wake from the soft ground below. If only he'd been able to normalize his living situation the way the Muggles around here did it.

Kendrick kept a firm grasp on the guy as he Apparated back into the Atrium. "I'll get this guy and these," he waved the bundle of sheep "handled if you get the Obliviation paperwork done," he said to Edith. "Shift's almost up for you too, right?"

Edith nudged the muggles toward the correct direction (or so she assumed) and turned back to Kendrick while making a face. “Yeah, just keep calling them cute.” She stepped over to him and the other wizard, her wand still trained on him even though her job was technically over now. She almost wanted him to do something, to maximize her time outside of the office, but he seemed, unfortunately, rather agreeable to his whole situation. Sighing, she followed them back down the lane, glancing around a bit to make sure she didn’t have any more work to do.

They were back at the Ministry with a quick turn. “Oh, yeah, absolutely.” Edith nodded fervently, planning to get right on that paperwork. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. The muggles didn’t remember anything, and it wasn’t like they were going to remember anything more or less in the couple days it would take her around to filling out the three pages of forms, front and back. Plus, she had never exactly been the shining star of promptness for anything not involving football and she really didn’t want to tarnish her reputation now.

“Should be, yeah.” It would be another couple of hours until her shift was officially over, but she was mentally done for the day. “Drinks tomorrow, though?” There weren’t any football matches and it was not one of Elias’s quidditch nights and her roommate was going to be out all evening so she was otherwise preoccupied. “I don’t know if I really trust your count, but if you say so.” She grinned as she offered a small wave.

Edith moseyed up to her desk to leave herself a little note about the sheep and the muggles and the corgis to jog her memory once she got around to following the proper paperwork protocol, but that was about the extent of her efforts. Still, no one in her department noticed her or stopped her or inquired after the sheep or Wales so she slipped out, back to the atrium, and headed home.

"Oh I will," he shot back, undeterred and grinning widely. "The water cooler will mysteriously hear all about it tomorrow I'm sure." Really, was the kind of thing their department liked to do to keep everything in perspective. Otherwise, they might go crazy at the collective incompetence of British Wizardkind. That was on the Accidents side. Sometimes there really were Catastrophes, but that was another, more sober matter entirely.

Kendrick nodded amiably. "Sounds good, I'm game. Anyway, you have to, look how much effort you spent branding them and you still can't prove me wrong," he pointed out jokingly, jerking his head toward the small bundle underneath his arm. The wizard gave him a funny look, as if he didn't approve of his precious sheep being treated as instruments in some sort of game. Kendrick shrugged and waved him along towards the watch-wizard who weighed the man's wand with a dry voice. Turning back to Edith, he returned her wave and her grin. A productive morning, really. It had been pretty enjoyable all things considered, and it had taken a good long while.

Now, he just had to drag out the processing and his own set of paperwork until the end of his day, avoiding Hodgson who would inevitably tell Donald that he was back. Kendrick liked his job, but he'd been in it for enough years that he wasn't about to risk being put on something that would take more hours than were left in his shift to finish just for the novelty. Adopting an officious stance as he walked behind the wizard, arms crossed, he guided him to Level 4. "Hullo Sharpe, got a little somethin' for you," he said, tossing the older man the package of sheep, which baa-ed at a quiet high pitch. "Process this for me?" Before long, he was checking his watch. It was about time to go.