ante up [frida] [ddc]

august 2001

It wasn't often that Edith had to have a face-to-face with a department head. It was already too much work to avoid her own boss, let alone someone else's. It was with heavy feet that the woman walked down to the sixth floor, a paperclipped stack of papers clutched in one hand. She had recently been the lucky Obliviator on call for an incident involving a muggle and a broom, specifically a muggle riding a broom. It was a fairly innocent situation, yes, as no muggles were harmed in the making of this magical mishap. Or irreversibly harmed, anyway.

As it turned out, muggles aren't very good at steering their possibly stolen, definitely magic, flying objects away from the trees. He was fine -- fine-ish -- and had luckily crashed in a small hamlet of wizarding families.

But still, muggles aren't allowed to have any fun per Ministry standards and Edith had done a fine job of modifying his memory after he had been relieved of his broomstick (apparently a nice one, according to her partner). At least it was just one muggle and one memory, making for a very clean and simple obliviation afternoon. Now the muggle was under the impression that he had spent the afternoon at a garden party instead and had taken an unfortunate tumble into a water feature, perfectly explaining the little headache he had acquired in his collision.

She thought that filling out the paperwork upon her return to the office was the end of that until a few days letter when she was greeted with a peppy little memo on her desk when she arrived to work. Now inquiries were being made into who owned the broom and Edith had some sort of an eyewitness account to the situation. She had never been a fan of flying, watching people fly, or talking to people about flying, so the prospect of having to recount the situation with someone in charge of a whole department about flying was absolutely riveting.

It took her an extra few minutes to find the right office, not an overly frequent visitor to the Transportation floor. But unfortunately she found the correct one, door propped open, and she knocked lightly as stepped one foot inside. "Er, you wanted to see me?" She indicated the stack of papers in her hand, her compiled report of the incident. "I'm Edith Holthouse, the Obliviator with the broom thing?" she added as clarification, just in case this woman had too many other exciting meetings to keep straight that afternoon.

@Frida Trickett

The majority of Frida's days at Broom Regulatory Control were spent dealing with broom companies, broom shops, registering people to purchased brooms and testing new designs of brooms or faulty brooms that had been sent for further investigation. On a very rare occasion, a muggle came along to spice things up a bit and make the Trickett's life even more fun than it already was. That was such the case as the Hufflepuff alumna began work that morning.

She had been filled on the basic details of the case and the broom in question was currently residing in the test room with Kentigern MacFhionnlaigh, arguably the best flier in the whole of Broom Regulatory Control, who claimed that the firebolt they had seized needed 'testing' to make sure it hadn't been damaged. Fri realised that Kent just wanted to fly the thing, it wasn't often they got hold of a firebolt, and so she willingly agreed, hoping that she'd find some time to watch him. As it was, the brunette had already discovered that the firebolt was a 1993 model, quite old but in very good condition, had a few birch twigs missing but was still a formidable broom and the golden registration number made it easy to track. Frida had contacted the makers of the broom and the shop which was registered to have sold it immediately, but while she was waiting for them to get back to her Fri wanted to get an eyewitness account from the obliviator who had been the first ministry official to come onto the scene.

Having just sent out another employee down to the atrium to fetch some more tea and cookies, the Trickett was having a very pleasant morning thus far. She was sat at her desk in her office, writing out and sending inter-departmental memos faster than a cheetah when a quick knock at her door caused her head to sharply look up at the source of the noise, and a huge, bright smile spread across her features as Frida picked up her wand and flicked it, mentally performing the summoning charm so that she could relieve the obliviator of her stack of papers. Grabbing the papers, shuffling them and setting them down on her desk, Fri smiled at Edith once more. "Hi," she greeted Edith cheerily, "My name is Frida. Frida Trickett." The Hufflepuff alumna waved her hand at the empty seat opposite her exclaiming "come in, take a seat!" Grabbing the plate of cookies that she had left, Fri offered "Cookie?" before wiggling around in her seat and beaming at the other witch once again.

"It is so nice to have a guest here! We don't see your department often round these parts," she giggled, before waving her wand once more to summon some parchment and a self-writing quill seemed to take the opportunity to hover slightly above it, twitching in anticipation to record some information. "Let's get down to business! First, just give me a general overview of what the situation was when you got there, particularly with the funny muggle and the broom."

Edith let the papers leave her hand and offered a small smile of thanks for the gesture. “Hi,” she repeated back, caught a bit off guard by the pep in the other woman’s voice. She did as she was told and took a seat, sitting a tad awkwardly on the edge, not wanting to get too comfortable in fear of staying any longer than absolutely necessary. But her steely, uninterested resolve faded as she was offered a plate of cookies. The were chocolate chip and she took one without hesitation. Who had this woman — sorry, Frida — talked to in order to know that the best way to have a cooperative Edith was food or drink? “Thanks,” she said quickly before filling her mouth with the cookie, not bothering to take a dainty or even close-to-appropriate-sized bite.

She nodded quickly, covering her mouth with her hand as she finished chewing the cookie. “Yeah,” she started before stopping, having to swallow again to actually clear the cookie away. “Well the muggle wasn’t that funny,” she started with a shrug, “But okay.” She cleared her throat before starting her story at the top, nearly reciting word for word the description she had written up earlier in her report. “Said muggle, Randall Walpole, found a broom, though he was unable to relieve himself of the information as to where he got it, not really in the right state anyway.” She paused and reached for another cookie. “D’you mind?” She didn’t wait for the okay before picking one up and taking another bite, this time much smaller and much more manageable.

“S’anyway,” she continued, “He flew into a tree, but had somehow managed to pick a tree that was surrounded by the homes of wizards on all sides. He had some cuts and bruises, nothing that a mediwizard couldn’t tend too outside of St Mungo’s. We got him cleaned up and I modified his memory and confiscated the broom.” She nodded and took another bite of the cookie, giving herself a moment to figure out if she was missing any important details. “Oh,” she said, mouth almost empty, “Straight line from his home to his tree was all over fields and there haven’t been any strange sightings reported so we’re fairly confident Mr Walpole was the only muggle involved.” Minus the muggles that Edith had told about this situation, her parents, who had gotten quite a kick out of her story.

The obliviator shrugged, wiping her hands together to clear away the cookie crumbs. “That’s about where my part of the story ends. I sent the broom to you lot and I’m not sure what’s to be done after that. I’m not even sure what kind of broom it was, though I heard it was supposed to be a pretty nice one?” She was rather curious what would be happening to the witch or wizard who had so carelessly let their broom get stolen, but maybe she wasn’t privy to that information.