[dma&c holiday party] it's the most wonderful time of the year [edith, open]

Kendrick cackled and rubbed his hands together as Bridget levitated the last string of lights to the ceiling. It was Monday, November 26th, and decidedly too early for Christmas. However, in the three years since he'd become head of the department, Magical Accidents and Catastrophes was always looking for the best way to squeeze the holiday party in under the nose of @Percival Ignatius Weasley. Percy was really not a bad boss, and more lenient than they had any right to expect, but he was still too serious and it was a fun kind of game for the office to latch on to anyway.

This year, they'd decided that having it before he thought to put it on his radar was the way to go. Everyone had done their part, organizing decorations and food and music so that their drab cubicles turned magically and momentarily into a winter wonderland, festooned with baubles--and a healthy dose of mistletoe, to serve as office gossip fodder. The theme was "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," according to the singing invitations Beardy had designed that were, like his beard, much too covered in glitter for their own good. What Percy didn't know but would certainly figure out shortly was that the most wonderful time of the year was actually thirty days of glorious office pranks.

Turning to Edith, Kendrick held up one of the last ornaments to go on the tree. The nice thing about his squad was that they had a whole host of talented and creative spellcasters; this one was a hollow crystalline ball that Callum had enchanted to have eternal snowfall inside. As he hung it high on the tree, which was tall enough that even he had to tiptoe to reach the top quarter of it, he declared, "So this is how it's going to go: he's going to get out of that meeting in 30 minutes, come back and find the party in full swing, and we're just going to say, 'Hi Percy, happy Christmas month! Every day something new will happen in the office, it's going to be really exciting. We planned everything without you because we know how busy you are, and we couldn't burden you with anything else to plan!' Totally foolproof," he joked. Actually, though, it was more or less what he was planning to say when he inevitably did come into the office.

For now, the party was close to being ready to go: the fact that it was Monday helped, as not a person in the office was in the mood to work instead of set up. Kendrick had strategically maneuvered himself into tree duty because the table with all the food and drinks on it was adjacent, and the thirty-year-old still loved food as much as he had as a growing fifteen-year-old. Liz had turned to laugh at something Oglethorpe did, turning her back from her duty of guarding the table from people like him. Kendrick stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth in concentration as his hand snaked over to pluck a pair of miniature snowman cookies from the top of the artfully arranged platter, popping one in his mouth and offering the other one to the Obliviator as he surveyed the drinks. After the tradition established in their occasional after-work outings, he'd taken to trying to match her at these events in the name of building up his tolerance, not that that ever lasted for long. "So what are we starting with? Butterbeer, hot chocolate, wassail, eggnog, punch, mulled wine?" Boswell must have brought the wassail: they'd probably be rewarded with his loud, off-tune rendering of the carol about a-wassailing at some point. He was obsessed with it for some strange reason.

@Edith Holthouse
@Percival Ignatius Weasley you are 100% encouraged to crash hahaha

This idea had been floated around the office for quite sometime, though no one had started taking it seriously until about a week ago. There had never been such amazing teamwork as when everyone came together to throw everything together so last minute. Call it a Christmas Miracle, maybe. Edith Holthouse wasn’t one for bringing work home, but she had happily agreed to string together popcorn for the tree during her free time. She typically wasn’t a very celebratory person outside of football, but she made an exception at Christmas.

She gave an enthusiastic thumbs up as Kendrick showed her the final ornament before placing it on the tree. Taking a step back, Edith admired their handiwork, which was a brilliant combination of nearly everyone’s holiday aesthetic. Almost a bit of a mess, really, but that worked with the surprised theme they were going for, after all. Grinning, she followed along with the instructions that were being handed out, most excited for day fifteen when there would be a mince pie buffet included amongst the festivities.

The food today was perfectly acceptable though. She happily took the offered snowman cookie, taking its head off with her first bite. “Hmm.” It was still technically morning, so she really ought to start with something more innocuous, like butterbeer, but it was also the first holiday party of the season and she didn’t want to out-Scrooge the boss by not partaking. “We don’t have to sing if we want wassail do we?” If it was the same as last year, it would really only take one large cup before singing didn’t seem like such absurd idea. Maybe she should wait and save the travesty that was her singing until a little further down the line.

“Punch.” Enough to make her feel like she wasn’t at work, but not too much to make her feel like singing. She clapped her hands together, rubbing them back and forth. “We don’t have to wait, do we?” Edith was already stepping closer to the beverages, clearly not intending to wait whether or not they were supposed to. She finished off her cookie as she  ladled out two cups full to the brim, handing one to Kendrick before taking a healthy sip from her own. A bowlful of shiny paper caught her attention and she wasted no time before investigating, coming back with a gold-wrapped Christmas cracker. “These aren’t the special reserved ones, are they?” She knew there was a stash of crackers there were only to use with Percy and she didn’t want to waste any of those before he arrived.

Kendrick turned to look over his shoulder for Boswell, attempting to do so sneakily but not exactly succeeding. "He's all the way on the other side of the room, so I think we could get in and out without him noticing and demanding some kind of price," he said, accidentally catching Liz's eyes as he turned back, the snowman's top hat still clutched in his hand. "Aw man, she noticed," he muttered as she rolled her eyes exasperatedly. "Kendrick, are you five years old? You couldn't wait two more minutes?" "The answer is no to both of them!" he shot back, defiantly crossing his arms as Edith ladled out the punch. "Cheers," he grinned as he threw his head back a little further than he had intended. Punch tasted better than when someone made him drink straight liquor, though, even if it felt warm going down.

Eyeing the cracker, he shook his head. "I'm pretty sure they have them in the other room." As if on cue, Oglethorpe jumped on top of a chair and waved her arms to get everyone's attention. "All right everyone, setup time is done! T-26 minutes to Mr. Weasley's arrival. As a reminder, the special crackers are in the break room. At your leisure, please put one in a pocket to differentiate them from the regular ones and feel free to offer him one at an opportune moment. Additionally, if anyone is particularly close with someone from Magical Maintenance, could you come speak to me?" Something must have gone wrong with whoever they'd pinned down to agree to turn Percy's office into the site of a miniature snowstorm for a day and the rest of the office for an hour. Kendrick snickered. "I heard Percy hates hats - can't wait till he sees the one with the fez. And the one with the beret. And the one with the bonnet." Quite a lot of them involved glitter, as well.

"Oh, by the way," he lowered his voice, "I'm warning you ahead of time, don't wash your hands in the floor's bathroom next Friday, but don't tell anyone else about it either. You'll be glad to see what happens." Not all of the pranks were public knowledge: ones like the pie buffet were, because they were more for everyone's happiness than not, but Friday's Santa-beard-generating soap was a secret because of the absurdity it would surely generate. Taking another sip of punch, he gestured to the cracker, tapping the base of it. "Want to open this one, then?"

ooc: let me know if he should just tug instead, sorry it's short

“Kendrick, are you five years old?” Edith rolled her eyes as she mimicked Liz under her breath before stuffing the rest of her own cookie in her mouth and happily munching away, exaggerating her chewing movements in Liz’s direction. But she had already turned away, shaking her head in her usual ‘kids these days’ fashion, and Edith swallowed her mouthful with a grimace. She took another swallow of punch, chasing snowflake sprinkles with something much more enjoyable.

She didn’t have time to dip her hand into the cracker bowl before Lonnie jumped up with his announcement. She glanced at her watch without thinking as he mentioned their twenty-six minutes left, giving a little nod toward Kendrick as his cracker theory was confirmed to be true. But she stopped paying attention, refocusing on her handful of punch instead, only somewhat reminding herself that it was a Monday morning and perhaps she shouldn’t start off the week punch drunk. “I hope there’s one of those Napoleon hats. Y’know the real wide one with the,” she used her free hand to draw out a curved shape above her own forehead, “Y’know.” She could picture it perfectly, but that didn’t mean she knew what she was talking about.

Leaning in as Kendrick lowered his voice, Edith arched an eyebrow, rather intrigued at the prospect of a secret. “Joke’s on you, I don’t wash my hands.” She tried to keep a serious face, but she didn’t make it more than a second before snorting into her punch. “But I gotcha. Won’t be telling anyone.” Except when she invited Elias up to the floor on Friday morning, sure that whatever could possibly happen to him would be absolutely worth it.

“Yes, let’s,” she nodded fervently, switching her glass to her left hand to get a better grasp on her end of the cracker with her right. “Ready?” She pulled as soon as Kendrick gave any sort of indication that he was, half expecting something innocent like a paper hat, the other half knowing better than to expect magical crackers to be anything but loud and obnoxious. True to form, a flock of sparrows, red and green and white, burst from the seam of the cracker as it gave way. Edith backed out of the way, noticing that she had the shorter end anyway, sloshing a bit of punch over her hand and her robes (but they were black, so who would notice?)

“Fuck, I hate the ones with the birds,” she said a little too loudly, catching Liz turning in her periphery and giving her a look, clearly reprimanding her for her language. Edith shrugged, not bothering with an apology, her attentions back to Kendrick as she did her best not to laugh at herself, wiping her hand on her robes. “How is this not a prank one? Like what do you win? Wizards, pfft.” She refilled her sadly-empty-but-not-because-she-drank-it-all glass of punch before holding out the ladle to offer Kendrick a refill, too.

Kendrick imagined Percy wearing a whole succession of hats in a row and chuckled. "Oh, yeah, that one. I think it has corn in the name maybe, but whenever I start thinking about it I get hungry and don't figure out the rest of it." He made an aghast face at the idea of Edith not washing her hands. Even though he knew she was joking, he shook his head. "Jokes on you, I'm not taking any chances with you," he said seriously, with a well-timed sudden "Scourgify!" directed at her hands followed by a Tergeo to clean up the mess, nearly mispronounced in the midst of laughing at his own antics.

Nodding his readiness, Kendrick tugged hard on the cracker, which exploded with a number of birds which didn't disappear for a while, releasing a little bit of poop around the room, which various people Vanished as necessary. "You know, I never can get over the fact that we didn't use to have toilets before the eighteenth century." He wasn't entirely sure if Edith knew that tidbit, remembering that she was Muggleborn--it had definitely gone round Hogwarts once when he was a teenager, becoming a lively reference among teenagers who just enjoyed talking about poop, but he and Edith had missed each other by a few years at Hogwarts so he wasn't sure if it had turned into a subject of discussion again.

Looking into the big end of the cracker, which he'd won, Kendrick pulled out a miniature card deck with various department personnel serving as the face cards. "Nah, there's more in here," he said. Kendrick snickered as he fanned through them in front of Edith so she could see, looking at Donald, who had clearly been caught for the photograph in the middle of something important and looked very put out. "Amazing. I hope there are more of these, and that they pop up around the office for the next full year." The hat was just a tiny paper one, all the interesting ones being in Percy's crackers; he tossed it on a table. Holding out his cup for the refill, he immediately took a sip. "So, holiday plans yet?" he enquired casually. It was a month away, but worth asking. "Are you just taking the eve and day off or are you gonna use vacation days?"

Corn… cob? Cornucopia? Edith shook her head as she ran through her corn related vocabulary, sure she wasn’t landing on the right word for the hat. Instead, she dropped the subject and shrugged off the (probably jokingly) shocked look she received after her hygiene revelation. She wasn’t expecting the charms and nearly dropped her drink as she snorted and moved to cover the contents of her cup with her free hand. She could retaliate lest she sacrifice her drink, so she settled on muttering, “Gobshite,” as she snorted again.

“That’s disgusting,” she said with a laugh, directed more at the bit of trivia about the toilets rather than her spilled punch. Wizards were a weird bunch, that was for sure. Birds in crackers, no toilets.. what next? She didn’t have time to think too much about it as one of the sparrows circled back around the room and she was forced to duck out of the way.

Edith watched with mild interest as Kendrick fanned through the deck of cards, realizing that that was an even worse prize than the sparrows. A deck of cards with her coworkers on them? No thank you. That would be another thing she could bin together with the cracker birds and toilet trivia. At least Donald’s photo was mildly entertaining. She shrugged, her eyes following the paper hat as it was discarded on the table, wasting no time before scooping it up and placing it on her head. This was the best part of the cracker, but she wasn’t about to implore Kendrick to wear something that she wanted for herself. She could already tell the hats would become a permanent part of her uniform until the holidays were over, maybe even longer.

She refilled their cups and took another large sip from hers, her other hand tugging down on her hat to make sure it was rightly askew. “Er, well, I don’t have any days left,” she started, quickly adding, “Just taking what they give me, then.” She didn’t want to get into how she had used all her time off (and then some) during those two months after the Dome, rather pleased that her leave of absence had seemed to slipped Kendrick’s mind. “Going to Lunt, seeing my parents, it’s a whole thing. They put on ‘A Christmas Carol’ every Christmas Eve but every year they have a different ending. Mum says this year has a big twist, but I can’t see how they’ll top last year’s ‘Scrooge was dead the whole time’, really.” She didn’t stop to consider that Kendrick might not know what she was talking about, but she had stopped caring about prefacing her talks about muggle things with any sort of explanation.

“You, though?” She asked before taking another gulp of her punch, leaning back against the table so she didn’t have to worry about standing up straight any more. She glanced around, half wondering when the boss would show up, half being totally fine if he stayed away the rest of the day.

Kendrick snickered at her response, feeling self-satisfied. "Alastor would have slipped in a 'constant vigilance' right about now," he concluded, although he thought Edith might only have known the impostor version of him. It would have been more painful for him to say a few years ago, but it was going on five years now and Kendrick felt that fondness served the memory of former comrades better, even if the old Auror tended to at least pretend to act dismissively about him.

"Yeah, yeah, don't knock it till you've tried it. Beats digging holes when camping," Kendrick winked mischievously. "And those magical tents that might as well be houses don't count, that's fake camping." Taking another sip from his recently refilled cup, a small voice in the back of his head suggesting that maybe he ought to slow down considering the time of day, he frowned, trying to think of when Edith had used all her vacation days. Kendrick had already forgotten by now that the events of the Dome had occurred in that calendar year, and even at the time he'd really thought that Edith's absence was due to some strange assignment or a family health emergency and not at all affected by their leave policy.

"You know, I once pulled a day where I told Donald I'd be doing something for Percy and Percy I'd be doing something for Oglethorpe and Oglethorpe I'd be doing something for Donald and spent the afternoon at the open mic competition in Birmingham, so there are ways to, er, orchestrate an extra day if you need," he mused. As for her story, Kendrick had taken Muggle Studies all through Hogwarts but he'd only earned an A on his NEWT, and it had been over ten years now. "Er, is that the one where the one bloke is three ghosts, except he's not dead yet?" He ventured, taking a hilariously wrong stab at it. "I always had so many questions about that one, I mean. We'd be so overpopulated with ghosts if one person could be multiple ghosts, and then only wizards can be ghosts, so why couldn't he keep it warm in his office without spending money?"

Kendrick shrugged. "We're due for Christmas in Hackney this year. I've only been once, so I'm still figuring out what's an every-year thing. Truth is, I don't know Jo's siblings as well as she knows my sister, so it's a bit of a work in progress. You might know her sister Ryann, actually? She's around your age, Gryffindor too." Kendrick was about to say that they were a bit young for him to get to know that well, but it would be a little hypocritical considering who he was talking to. "No idea who we're going to leave Bo with, though," the thought occurred to him. "I don't think puppies his age should be Apparated or Flooed, but I can't exactly, er, drive from Craven to London or anything."

“Iiii’ll keep that in mind.” It was her standard answer for acknowledging that she had heard someone’s advice but was most likely planning to ignore it. Edith wasn’t exactly a camping sort of person; she had realized just how much she preferred having a roof over head after her time spent in France and she had no plans to realize it again just for some sort of recreation. That, plus the mental image of Elias roughing it in the woods was so laughable that she almost shared the thought with Kendrick. Instead, she shrugged and took another gulp of her punch, welcoming its warmth.

Edith nodded as he told he tale of the tangled web of lies he had woven to take an afternoon in Birmingham -- though why he only did it for an afternoon or picked Birmingham to do it in, she didn’t know -- and she laughed. “Unfortunately, it looks a little fishy to do that right after two bank holidays, but I will definitely be doing that soon.” United played matches during the week and if she had left the building to watch them, she usually just created a new obliviation case she needed to tend to. It was almost worth the extra paperwork she had to fill out stating why the call turned out to be a false alarm, in the end.

“Pretty close, yeah.” Edith smiled before taking another swallow of her drink, always keen to hear wizards’ takes on muggle things (within reason, of course). This one promised to be a good one, and Kendrick didn’t let her down. She nodded along seriously, though she was on the verge of laughing. Still, she did appreciate the logic of it all. “I think it’s for the moral, y’know? Don’t be a greedy bastard or you’ll ruin Christmas.” She heard Liz scoff from a few feet away, and Edith rolled her eyes again, decidedly not apologizing for her use of the word ‘bastard’. In a more hushed voice, she added, “People like Liz are why the term ‘Scrooge’ is still used today. Ruining all our fun.” She rolled her eyes one more time for good measure.

She shrugged. “I don’t really keep in touch with anyone from school, minus the ones in this room, really.” She eyed Liz again pointedly even though she had been well ahead of Kendrick in school. “And sometimes not even them,” she finished with a smile and cup-finishing swig of punch. Edith perked back up at the mention of the dog. “I know I literally just said I’ll be in Lunt, but I’d stay if you need someone to watch your dog.” It wouldn’t be the first time she had missed Christmas with the Holthouses, but the reason for missing it a second time would be so much better than the first if there was a puppy involved.

“Why couldn’t you drive?” she asked, shaking her head as soon as she had posed the question. “Never mind, don’t answer that, clearly I’ve had too much punch already.” She set down her empty glass on the table, only hesitating a few seconds before picking it up. “Then again,” she mused, refilling her cup, “It is a party, after all.” She nodded, agreeing with herself. “When is he supposed to be here, again?”

Kendrick glanced around at their coworkers. "You know, you'd be surprised how much goes on under people's noses. I mean, Percy still hasn't figured out what we cooked up this year, and he's supposed to know what's going on in this department--more or less, anyway." Unwittingly, he was also referring to himself and his complete lack of awareness about Edith's leave earlier in the year. "Besides, I think some people," not Liz, he implied, giving the older woman the side-eye, "seem to care enough about us to turn a blind eye." Sometimes the Ministry could be a really terrible place: office politics and jockeying for favor, unnecessary bureaucracy, confusing and contradicting directions, little incentive to overperform. But sometimes, like today, it was full of people who cared about one another, and Ken could live with that.

Kendrick couldn't tell whether Edith was laughing at him or not, but she didn't contradict him so his idea of the classic Dickens story remained unaltered. "Okay, okay, but don't we all know that already? Even our ambitious leader doesn't usually shut down our Christmas fun," he emphasized, ignoring Liz but angling his speech slightly in her direction. He laughed a little, then sighed. Liz was actually a very efficient person and she was actually the one who organized mini-fundraisers when anyone had a baby or a sick parent, but she was just so severe about it.

He shrugged. "We're kind of in a weird spot, aren't we, there aren't that many Wizarding jobs and it's a small country and yet we don't necessarily want to keep in touch with people." His eyes lit up at Edith's reaction to his comment about Bo, and he laughed. "No no no, I can't have your disappointed parents on my conscience. Or be the cause of you missing this year's big twist in the play. But," his eyes twinkled, "do let me know if you'd be available some other time. Jo and I do get out. Once in a while."

His eyes grew round at the idea of him driving. "Yeah, you know," he said, answering it anyway, "I think it's a combination of needing to be licensed and not wanting to throw my life in the hands of a mechanical death machine whose innards I can't comprehend," he said cheerfully, ignoring the fact that magic seemed to have even less rules, especially for someone who hadn't pursued Arithmancy. Watching her finish yet another glass, Ken glanced around at the other drinks. "I think I'm going to go for the wassail," he declared. It was the fast-track to a truly festive afternoon. He checked his watch. "Any minute now, I think. We should go grab the other crackers," he remembered.

Three minutes later, Kendrick's face had acquired an unflattering reddish tinge and his pockets had gained some weight. "I think," he huffed, "they put something weird in it this year?" A hush then fell over the room as the door opened. "Happy Christmas!" he yelled with the rest of the department, grinning from ear to ear as they swarmed toward their Head. He shrugged towards Edith before they were separated in the crowd. "We'll see who's more drunk in half an hour?"

The best time of the year.

“Yeah, real weird,” she replied with a nod, averting her gaze to keep her from rambling on about all the reasons she had to not stay in touch. Edith rolled her eyes and nodded rather disappointedly as Kendrick refused her generous offer to skip Christmas in favor of his dog. “Fine, fine, if you insist.” He was right, of course, she really couldn’t miss the play, not after her mother had promised her a good twist. “I’m always available,” she said immediately. Did Elias like dogs? Eh, it didn’t matter. “Seriously.” She nodded excitedly. That might save her from her every-so-often-recurring notion that she needed a puppy of her own.

Edith just shrugged at the mechanical death machine comment, not sure if that really said more about him or the car, taking another swallow of punch instead of offering an actual reply. She nodded again, agreeing to his wassail plan. “I think I’ll stick with the punch,” she offered unnecessarily, already well into her third glass, each one progressively easier to drink. She glanced down at her own watch, nodding again at Kendrick’s cracker suggestion.

She readjusted her own hat before she grabbed the trick crackers, snorting as the true nature of the wassail made itself known. She was cut off from telling him that the new something was probably just extra alcohol by the sudden quiet in the room. Ah, well, he’d figure it out eventually. Edith slipped toward the back of the crowd, taking advantage of the abandoned treat table as everyone moved to greet the boss, but not before agreeing to show Kendrick how successfully drunk she could get in thirty minutes.

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