[mp] [ministry] i live my life a quarter mile at a time [danny]

"You can't catch me~!" Jeremy hollered as he rode on top of his coveted mail cart.

At first he'd thought life as a paper pusher at the ministry would be nothing but boring mundane tasks day in and day out but as with all things he'd made it more entertaining. Of course he hadn't done it alone. Having his best mate there too had made it that much easier, of course. The red head skidded along down the marble corridor of the ministry hallway, bits of parchment and letters flying out after him like after burn. Sure they were supposed to be delivering this mail but racing their carts was sooooo much more fun.

He wailed with laughter as he nearly hit a middle aged witch who seemed way too into her own reflection in the shiny marble walls of the hall way. Turning on a dime, and losing quite of bit of correspondence in the motion, Jeremy headed into the final stretch of the course they had laid out for today's race. He turned the corner, his tie flying behind his face and flapping in the wind that his enchanted mail cart made. "Yeah take that!" He shouted behind him, too preoccupied with gloating to notice the statue that was dead in his way. Crashing into it Jeremy made noises a human shouldn't make as his cart and it's contents flew up into the air.

"You're gonna eat those words!" Danny shouted back as he chased his red-headed friend on his own mail cart.

They raced down the corridor, Danny picking up speed as he cast a speed charm that he had nearly perfected for just this purpose. Their boss was out to lunch and Danny had almost died of boredom so of course he had said yes to this idea. Sure, it was a little ot of the ordinary in the stuffy Ministry offices, but at the end of the day, he and Jere were the two best mail deliverers ever. Ever ever. They had even gotten an award last year for it. It was self-nominated and self-awarded, but they both had shiny crystal awards sitting at their work stations and had gotten many compliments on them from those who ventured down to the pits of the mail room. It had taken a good chunk of change out of the money that was supposed to go to rent, but it had been worth it.

"Sorry Matilda!" Danny called out as Jeremy nearly ran over a middle-aged witch. "Tell your wife I loved her lemon bars!" he shouted over his shoulder as he tried to take over the lead, but Merlin -- he looked down at his mail cart and yelled in fury. "Heyy!! You gave me the dodgy cart!" The wheel on this cart was always wobbling and on the verge of falling off. That cheater had rigged the race.

As if on cue, the wheel started wobbling even more, sending the cart shaking side to side and Danny had to jump off to avoid totaling the cart and upsetting all of the mail they would (eventually) deliver. But.. looks like his best friend fellow award-winning mail deliverer wasn't as smart as he was. No surprise there. Jeremy had technically won, but he had also been bested by a statue. Danny laughed as he pushed his cart closer, the wheel squeaking loudly, as he put his hands on his hips and looked down at his friend. "Well now, see what happens to cheaters?" he said before offering his hand to pull up his friend.

Howling with laughter as he raced ahead of his flat mate Jeremy was sure he had this thing in the bag. He had thought of everything, he'd made sure to grab the cart with the good wheels, he'd added extra weight on to Danny's cart, and he'd even greased his own wheels for extra slickness but of course as always something came up. "Out of the way!" He shouted as Mrs. Matilda as she came out of no where like an obstacle on a solemn ready to ruin his whole day. Of course, the witch didn't matter because as soon as he took his eye off the ball Jeremy messed up, and was quickly colliding with the stone statue at the end of the hall.

Some bangs, and booms, and cries for help later, Jeremy brushed a bit of angry mail off of his chest and out of his hair. The letters and notes did not like being taken for this sort of a ride. His whole cart seemed to be in a tizzy by the time he'd picked the last airplane shaped note out of his wild mane of red hair and sat up. He huffed, looking at the mess around himself in a daze, and then shaking his head at Danny. "Prove it loser." He teased, finally standing up and starting to collect all of the envelopes of bits of parchment he'd lost.

Looking to his left he noticed the name on the statue, not that he knew who it was or would remember, and then turned back to Danny. "We need statues." He said like it was as normal as saying 'we're out of milk'. Jeremy and Danny were far from normal, they had always had their own ways of doing things, like the self-awarded trophies on their desks. Jeremy abandoned his project of putting his mail back together in his cart and quickly climbed on to the pedestal that held the stone statue. Making a regal pose, hands on his hips, he stood still for all of about twenty seconds before he couldn't do it anymore. "How do I look, statue-like?"

Standing three feet taller than normal Jeremy was awarded a direct line of sight to the end of the hall and past the mess he'd made, past Danny and his cart, past Mrs. Matilda looking annoyed, and the other people moving about the hallway, he saw their boss bee-lining toward them. "Shit, shit.." He said as he scurried down off of the base of the statue and started shoving papers into the cart as fast as his freckled hands could muster. "He's coming!" He whisper shouted, panic setting in.

"I'm not worried, it's only Tuesday. We have all week to settle the score," Danny said nonchalantly as he flapped his hands at some of the pesky memos acting all upset about the disturbances. He paused for a second and slid a perplexed glanced at Jeremy. "Or is it Wednesday?" Hmm. His Harry Potter (aka The Chosen One aka The Boy Who Lived) magical bobblehead that sat next to his employee of the month award usually reminded him of silly things like that, but it's not like he carried that thing around with him everywhere. It had been a gag gift at one of their holiday parties and Danny had spent more time than he cared to admit trying to charm it to say rude things to people as they walked by. In the end, it just said rude things to him mostly, but there were a few helpful things like "Hey prat, it's Monday!" It was a good thing the mail room didn't get very many visitors.

Danny corralled the memos back into Jere's cart as he glanced up with a grin, looking between his friend and the statue, nodding sincerely. "Big ones. Humangous big statues," he said, just picturing it, grinning as Jeremy jumped up and made like a statue. A doofy looking one, but a statue nonetheless. "Yeah, sure, very presidential. The hair makes it work."

But then he saw a look of panic on Jeremy's face and at first he wasn't sure if it was real or fake. And yet, Danny still fell for it, glancing behind him as he saw the tall frame of their perpetually annoyed boss. "Shit! Get your stuff!" Danny whispered, hauling armfuls of angry little  memos, some of which had decided to peck impolitely at his face to express their displeasure, causing him to mutter "Ow! Stupid little buggers!"

"Operation get the hell out of here!" Danny told Jere as they finished piling up all the mail and he grabbed his cart, the squeaky wheel protesting loudly and beating feet down the hall, turning at the first corridor, chucking some envelopes in the general direction of the right offices as he went.

Rounding up every bit of aggravated mail that had waterfall-ed out of his cart upon the great collision Jeremy turned it upright and nodded a quick thanks to Danny for his assistance. As much as they might have teased one another, pranks and the like, when it came down to it Jere knew the other lion would always have his back. And there would always be another day for racing. Today they had to figure out how to not get fired, which was like seventy percent of their tasks every day. He took off with his cart in front of him. One foot on the back and the other kicking off he put his racing skills to the test and pushed the cart to it's limits around the next corner and down another dark marble hallway until he was sure they must have lost the older wizard.

He managed to toss a few packages on the way but he'd have to make another trip later. "Hope none of these are time sensitive." He said to Danny with a wiggle of his eye brows as he exhaled loudly and leaned up against the cold stone of the hallway. The ministry, at least this part of it, still looked much like it had before. Near black marble stones with doorways cut right into them glimmered and the light from floating lanterns flickered off of them casting shadows. Jeremy checked himself out in the reflective surface of the other side of the hall as all of his weight leaned behind him.

He hadn't noticed he was leaning up against against a button that served as a magical fire suppression system. It was bright red and clearly said "Do Not Touch Unless Emergency" but he was like really busy fixing his hair. He leaned further into it and heard it click, turning he had a few seconds to see where he was before the rain started pouring out of magical pipes lining the ceiling. Shouting came from down the halls, the whole wing was raining, and they were about to have bigger problems than Jeremy's hair.

Even if was about to start looking like a wet dog.

"Well that's not great..." He said, staring at Danny as his pitiful excuse for a tie and collared shirt began to soak up copious amounts of water.

Danny zipped along after his best friend, the wheel of his cart squeaking loudly until he pointed his wand at it and cast a silencing charm. He perked his brows and nodded as it quite pleased with his work as they left their boss behind them. "He's going to kill us later if we don't get all of this delivered today," Danny said gleefully. He couldn't decide if he wanted to see the shocked look on his boss's face when they told them everything was delivered, all packages accounted for, and all help tickets process to the correct departments or if he wanted to see how red Reg's face could get when he was telling them about the importance of work ethic and timeliness. It could honestly go either way.

He was currently counting and visually checking how many packages he had left on his cart. A few that smelled a little funny for the Patents Office, a couple of broom shaped ones for Transport, one looked like it was written in Gobbledegook so he'd have to have one of the blokes in the Goblin Liaison Office translate it for him. He knew Jeremy 'claimed' to speak the language, but he didn't believe him in the least because he had the same expression as when he said he paid the rent 'on time.' He didn't need Veritaserum to figure that one out.

But then he heard a click and then rain. "What the.." he muttered looking up at the ceiling and then his eyes found Jeremy. Pressed up against the emergency sprinklers. "You dolt!" Danny said shoving him away from the button and pointing at it. "You pressed the button. Were you staring at yourself in the reflection again? Merlin!" Danny cursed as he held up one of the packages above his head to block the water from getting in his eyes as he glanced down the wing.

"Do you remember the charm sequence for shutting these off?" he asked, shaking his head as he grabbed his wand and went over to the panel, trying to fiddle around with it. His clothes slowly starting to get water-soaked, sticking to his skin. He knew he hadn't showered in a couple of days, but this, really? He could only start to laugh as he tried to focus, prodding the panel, trying to get it to turn off.

Jeremy may have done this once or twice before, but certainly not enough times to have learned from his mistakes. No he'd need at least three or four before it really began to sink in. He never understood the repercussions of his actions, it was part of why they were usually served a final notice before he remembered to actually pay the bills. He shrugged, hands up in the air, cheeks red, but there was no denying it. He was clearing doing the same thing he always did. And here they were, again.

"I can't help it...." he started, still paying too much attention to the marble stones and not enough to the sprinkler system. "It's just.. soooo shiny. How do they get it so shiny?" He mused out loud, watching little streams of water streak down the glistening marble and pooling near his feet. His hair was starting to mat down against his neck and forehead, much like a wet dog, and he shook it out forcefully.

Turning around he saw Danny fiddling with the button with his wand out and Jeremy's head tilted to the side. He pulled out his own wand, did some mumbling, and then stepped forward to push Danny out of the way. "Wait I know this one!" He said. Waving his wand, muttering an incantation that was almost certainly not the right one, Jeremy stepped back as something in the wall clicked.

This was either going to be very good for them.

Or very, very bad.

Danny cursed loudly as he started to feel the water seep through his robes, making him shiver as his skin got damp. His friend pushed him out of the way and he wasn't quick enough to stop him, shouting, "Wait, no! Jere--" before he muttered an incantation Danny had never heard before and wondering if it even existed. Danny hadn't been top of his class in Charms, he was far too lazy for that, but Merlin, Jeremy wasn't too far ahead of him in that department. Dude should've just stuck to "Herbology".

The wall clicked and Danny had hope for a tiny sliver of a second.

And then it started hailing. Giant gobstone sized balls of hail raining down on them, pelting them and it stung even through his robes. "Ow! Merlin! What did you doo-ow!" Danny said as he grabbed at his shoulder and this his left eye as a piece of icy water hit him in the socket, pain radiating all over. "Reverse it, you idiot!!" Danny yelled as he heard the commotion of other Ministry witches and wizards voicing their outraged complaints.

Jere wasn't listening and even if he had been he still would of screwed up the spell. Still would of made it worse. That was just the Jeremy way, he always complicated things, always made them even more ridiculous than they had been. And despite the rain that was pouring down on his hair, wetting his hair and making it stick to his face in weird little spirals he was smiling that stupid smiling of his. He howled with laughter as the hailing started.

"Not what I meant to do!" He said between laughs and began pushing on the button he'd accidentally set off. There was no fire, it was obvious, but he didn't know how to convince the system of that. He watched the bits of hail fall to the floor, where there was a good inch or two of water already, and burst into another fit as they turned to foam and began to suck up the water. As a fire suppression system it was pretty good, but that wasn't the point right now.

"Wait look." He said, pointing as the little pellets started sucking up the moisture on the floor but they couldn't keep up because it was still raining. He raised his wand "I have another idea!" but then he heard those classic footfalls of Reginald, his shiny shoes clicking on the marble, and his idea quickly changed.

"Run!"

He glared at Jeremy laughing as he got hit on the cheek with another hail piece and then grabbed one of the packages from their carts to hold over his head as he shoved his friend out of the way with his other hand. "Let me try, you dolt!" he said as he pointed his wand at the control button and did a cease charm. Didn't work. Merlin. Clearly he hadn't read the emergency protocol handbook that Reg had given them both on day one.

He looked over his shoulder as Jere said he had another idea and his eyes widened a bit. "No, don't do anything!" Danny said, pulling Jere's arm down from where he had lifted his wand. He did not want it to get any worse than it already was and he knew that neither of them had the faintest idea of how to fix this. He never knew more than he did right now about why they had not been considered for a promotion, not that Danny had been really concerned with that in the first place.

Then he heard a familiar click clack of steps coming closer. Reg, coming their way. Shit! "Let's beat feet," Danny said trying to hold the package over his head to dodge the hail and grab on to his cart with the squeaky wheel, pushing through the puddles of water on the floor. "Hurry up!" he called as he rushed down the hall in the opposite direction of their boss.

Jeremy would of kept on ignoring Danny's plea for him not to break anything more if not for the familiar sounds of their boss headed their way. It was sad how they knew exactly what Reginald's footfalls sounded like at this point. It just went to show exactly how much time they had spent not doing their jobs. Sometimes Jeremy wondered how they even still had jobs. He knew they caused a lot more trouble than they fixed but some how they kept skating by. He wondered if they were actually valued employees, they were pretty funny after all, or if they were just stupid lucky. Either way he didn't have time to ponder life's big mysteries right now. Reggie was coming!

Taking off like a snitch Jeremy raced down the hall with his cart in tow. He tossed boxes onto desks as they passed open doors in the hall way, kind of actually doing his job, but only to the barest amount, as they escaped the crime scene. His button up shirt was soaked so deeply like the pale gray material was becoming more transparent by the second. It showed off the tye dye tank top he had underneath, his secret way of sticking it to whoever made them wear button up shirts to work. His tie dangled limply and his hair was sticking to the back of his neck. For the moment it was smooth, weighed down by the water, but soon enough it would turn into a frizzy curled mess.

"Head back upstairs?" He asked Danny when they finally got to a safe spot and could slow down. He had about half of his packages left, but some of them were actually for the floor they'd started on and he'd missed them. Jeremy was far from efficient. It was a wonder his cart ever emptied at all.

He had ran down the corridor after Jere, his shirt soaked through, his head sticking limply to his forehead. He saw Jeremy tossing packages on desks but between his cart with its squeaky wheel and the fact that it was prone to veer off course if he wasn't two-handing it, Danny was much more behind on his deliveries than his friend.

When they got to a safe spot, free of the hail and rain, Danny sighed and tried to wring on his clothes, creating a new puddle at his feet as he grabbed his wand from his pocket. He tried to do a drying charm, once, twice, and then gave up. His shirt was half dry. That was enough. It just looked like he had a minor fight with a restroom sink. And had lost that fight. Oh well. He was sure he had shown up looking worse for wear plenty of other times.

Danny shrugged at Jeremy's suggestion flicking through the packages they still had on their carts. Many of them for this floor. Reg wasn't really a big fan of carts returning still full of packages considering that their job was to.. deliver them. But hell if he wanted to go through the hail storm again. "Maybe we can send a memo to Corner from here, yknow 'anonymously', and get him to come fix it?" he suggested as he glanced at Jere.

"Yeah, we could try that..." Jeremy agreed as he spun his long red locks into a bit of a tail and tried to wring them out. His hair was sopping wet, looking darker than usual, and starting to frizz up quite the storm. His shirt was wrinkled, half-transparent, and not showing off his shapely form very well. He pulled his tie off of his neck, the wet fabric irritating him, and balled it up before tossing it in the half-empty cart. "I'll let you handle that magic, though, mate." Jeremy resigned, knowing he'd just end up making things worse, he was pretty off his game today, and honestly, his game didn't start that high to begin with.

"At least it's almost the end of the day, right?" He finally mentioned after he'd finished with his hair and dumping out one of his soggy sneakers. "Hey, we should get nachos tonight?" Jeremy acted like it was some grand, rare notion when it reality they had nachos more than their digestive systems probably preferred. "That place with the weird guy who yells in the kitchen about not using real vegetables."

It was a good day: someone had left lemon bars out by the coffee machines, Darius Lowry had gotten a Howler, and Michael had managed, for another day, to steer completely clear of the HnHR rep, who -- he suspected -- wanted him to babysit an intern when Hogwarts let out for the summer. God willing, Michael could avoid him ‘til July and the intern would go to Clarence. It’d been a good enough day that Michael didn’t even mind that it was, apparently, hailing on level four.

He had his suspicions as to why it was hailing on level four, and -- sure enough -- Jeremy Edwards and Danny Willbond were hunkering in a side corridor dripping wet. As he passed, he thought he heard his name. Michael loved to eavesdrop on people talking about him, but as a consequence of a common first name and a surname that was also an actual word, he got a lot of false alarms. This was not one: he detoured quicklike to walk through their conversation and say cheerfully, “Lo.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder -- “It’s hailing.”

He couldn’t stay long, on account of the weather, but they were dripping all over the floor -- never mind that drying them off would vindicate them, the mop on his floor was sulky and he hated dealing with it. “Can I dry all this off?” he added.

Danny nodded as Jere agreed and then grabbed one of their memo notepads from his cart. It was a little soggy, but it would still work. He wrote the issue and location as per their usual protocol, addressed it to Corner since he was the most easy-going of the team and probably, hopefully, wouldn't mind fixing another one of their little issues. Again. He had it charmed and zooming off down the corridor within moments and he sighed as he pushed back his damp hair off his forehead.

He shrugged at Jere's question as he heaved another sigh. "If it's not, can we just pretend like it is," he muttered as he glanced at their two packages. It was definitely a nachos kind of night. Today hadn't gone as planned at all. "Oh yeah!" Danny said as he glanced as his friend, his eyes lighting up as he remembered the place and more notably, the guy in the kitchen who was always yelling out across to the waiters. He and Jere specifically asked for chairs along the bar counter just so they had prime viewing seats for that kind of entertainment.

As Corner popped out, seemingly out of nowhere, Danny's brows perked up. Wow, memos were not usually that quick. "Oh is it?" Danny said deadpan as Corner commented on the hailing before he couldn't hold back the little smile turning up his lips. "Be our guest," he added with a swoop of his hand, gesturing toward the puddles. "Is it just me or is it always hailing on this floor..." he tacked on, with a glance at Jere, as if it wasn't completely their fault for this little weather abnormality.