come and go, go and come [mary]

some café in london | 28 march, 2003

For the first few years of his tenure as department director he’d held meetings of this variety -- i.e. a tête-à-tête about their coworkers -- in his office, where they could enjoy the coffee or tea he brought from home, and the stuffy, deep-underground atmosphere. It wasn’t that it was an unpleasant place to meet, but it wasn’t a good one.

And his wife was only buying peppermint tea, lately, and Dominic hadn’t yet gotten to the market to buy anything properly caffeinated. It was only fair that whichever employee he met with had a wider range of options.

And so, he’d been trying every café in reasonable Apparition distance from the Ministry on his lunch breaks -- partly to have coffee and not peppermint tea, and partly to scout out the ones with the fewest Ministry workers and best cover from eavesdroppers -- and settled on this one, which was especially good for today’s purposes, because it was unfeasibly cheap. Mary had a penchant for enjoying her office expenses -- lunch was out-of-pocket, and he wanted to be safe.

They’d exhausted their (her) personal gossip already, which he figured was a good enough segue into something like workplace gossip— “How’re you feeling about our new recruits’ performance?”

This was @Alex Regan and @Hermione Granger — they were closer to Mary’s age than to most of the others in the department, and he’d worried a bit that there would be undue competition between them because of it. He’d considered separating them— he supposed he would reconsider it in a bit, depending how Mary felt. The follow-up question, of course, was how was she feeling about their new recruits’ personalities -- whether they seemed trustworthy, hardworking, personable. In a line of work like theirs -- or, he amended, in his specific vision of their line of work, it was good for them to get along.

@Mary Hunt

Mary tilted her head one way, then the other, her mouth still full of apricot Danish and her eyes focusing on the ceiling as she considered Dom’s query at her leisure. After a good minute or so she swallowed. “Fine,” she answered with a shrug, holding the rest of her pastry just in front of her mouth, ready for another bite -- which she took after a moment’s pause.

“They both get the work done,” she said around her food, chewing and setting her sweet down so that she could pick up her coffee instead. Palate cleansed she looked at Dominic; she knew he wanted more than that from her. Really, if she had a genuine problem with either of them she would have made a point to tell him so by now (as she had done in the past). “Alex is fun, nice chap. I like him,” she said, as though this were the most important quality to have in a team such as theirs.

Hermione was a law unto herself, though Mary was at least satisfied she was on the right side of it -- hard not to be, being besties with The Chosen One (ugh). Mary sipped at her coffee again, then pulled her second plate closer and picked up a fork. “Hermione is…” she paused, working out the best way to tackle her fettuccine, spinning the plate around slowly for a better angle, “well, Hermione Granger,” she offered, finally stabbing into a bit of chicken rather fiercely.

She ate, half-smiling at the man across from her through her mouthful. “Marvelous,” she announced -- the chicken, not Hermione -- and moved to swirl some pasta onto her fork. “She’s alright,” Mary revealed her opinion finally. “A bit highly strung, but I’m working on it,” she smirked at Dominic. The Auror rolled her shoulder, another shrug of sorts; “Not sure what her cutting out clippings of boy bands has to do with her work though,” she said airily, stirring the pot.

Dominic raised his eyebrows wryly and didn’t comment to her first, noncommittal answer -- they both knew there was more to be said than whether they got the work done. (Besides, if they didn’t get the work done, they wouldn’t have lasted so long.)

“That’s good to hear, I like him too,” he said; she probably had already heard, one way or another, that he’d trained Alex back in ninety-seven. Dominic had always had a soft spot for a fellow Slytherin, any Slytherin with their head on straight and their priorities right and their morals intact. They seemed rare lately, but he had become ceaselessly grateful for every one of his old house he’d added to his team, for every one that numbered among the Aurors. A little breath of fresh air, a reminder that one’s history and upbringing and ambition didn’t make him a Death Eater.

“He’s funny,” he added. “That’s always good to have around.” With the loss of Quigley they’d needed a bit of a morale boost.

Mary pulled her plate of pasta in front of her to light into; Dominic watched as she considered the dish, his lips curved downward with amusement. (Eating cheaply had been a good choice, apparently.) “She sure is,” he said. “And, truth be told, she’s much more Hermione Granger than I’d expected her to be. I don’t think I was prepared.” He speared a few wilting greens and regarded them melancholically, made a mental note to order dessert.

Apparently, Mary found the other woman highly strung -- kettle, pot, he thought, but it wasn't too bad to be highly strung in this kind of job. “Boy bands?” he repeated, unsure he’d heard right.

This was wholly unexpected -- some part of Dominic had assumed that Hermione Granger, if she listened to anything, listened only to old recordings of Wizengamot courtroom proceedings, in case there was anything new she could bring to the table, or possibly smooth jazz. He took the bait-- “What boy bands?”

Dom liked Alex too -- Mary would have to tell Alex. The man was prone to thinking he was about to be ousted the minute he slipped up (in truth, he had made an offhanded comment one time and Mary was reading into it), and if Quigley hadn’t been let go after all of his minor discretions, then Alex would surely have to do something fantastically bad to be demoted back to being just an Auror. Mary wondered, idly, if she were to ever hypothetically be ‘released’ from her duties with the ICU, would they obliviate her? And if so, how much would be removed from her memory? She supposed resigning was different, if she got that far.

“Isn’t that why you hired me?” she smiled at him sweetly. “But yes, he’s not all doom and gloom. Makes a change from Robinson.” Mary grimaced.

Hermione Granger, indeed. “I don’t think any of us were,” she commented. Mary had certainly heard all about her, and had subsequently formed her opinions ready. Hermione in the flesh had proven some of those expectations wrong, and others so very right. Mary didn’t hate her, at least. And, oddly, felt like she could trust her.

Boy bands? “Oh, yes.” She nodded enthusiastically between shoving long tendrils of pasta onto her fork, then into her mouth. Almost finished chewing, she continued; “She had all these pictures of Charlie Baker from Banshee all over her desk,” she swallowed, “you know, Liam’s band.” So enthralled in her food, Mary didn’t recognise what she had let slip. “He’s not even the best looking one,” she added, “and what he did to his wife.” Mary shook her head, bit into some chicken. “Awful.”

“Anyway, she said it was for a case, apparently,” she shrugged.

“Now, oddly enough, I didn’t really know how funny you were until I had hired you,” mused Dominic; unlike Alex, Mary hadn’t started as an Auror, but had been recruited for actual anti-corruption. He smiled a little wryly -- “It’s why I keep you around.”

Poor Robinson; though Dominic was loath to badmouth any of his employees to any of his other employees, he couldn’t say he found Robinson any more fun to be around than Mary seemed to. To avoid having to reply to the slight, he drained his tea and called the waitress over to ask for a refill.

“Banshee!” he repeated, enthused to have any idea what she was talking about. (Too often had she or Joseph brought up something that no explanation could remind him of; what was worse, sometimes when he asked his wife, she didn’t know either. It was appalling that his oldness had made him even more out-of-touch than his wizarding family.) “I know of them.” He’d even met them, once or twice.

Apparently she knew he knew them; her next comment was that it was Liam’s band; Dominic nodded and accepted his refilled tea. “Ah, I’ve told you about my nephew, then?” said Dominic, pleased that she’d remembered. It must have been a while ago, back when she’d first started working under him. He’d fallen out of the habit of bragging about his famous nephew once Harry Potter had joined the Aurors, and every single MLE official could claim to know him personally.

(He did rather imagine that, someday, he’d love to be able to tell people that Hermione Granger had worked for him -- oh, sometimes it was difficult to head an office built around secrecy.)

“What case?” he said; “There’ve been no criminal charges regarding them, have there?” There’d been an issue, ages back, about a stalker -- but hadn’t that been resolved?