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Order Only: Two good ones gone
Oct. 25th, 2013 05:25 pmI was personally forced to sack two excellent employees today. The reasons were despicable. But the vacancies may open an opportunity.
The Muggle Detention Administrative Office is small, but may be very useful to us. It's about punishing Muggles Behaving Badly (and in the Protectorate, you know, that may mean something as simple as someone being brave enough to stand up to a guard and tell him 'bugger off.' Or to leave his wife alone.)
Anyway, I was going through reports from that department today, and ran across an error, a miscalculation in a spreadsheet that caused a cascade of other errors. I approached the employee quietly to see if we could quickly fix it, because it fed into a report Mulciber would be receiving today, and I knew it would throw some of HIS figures off.
The woman who made the error was Becky Spring, who has been with the department since leaving Hogwarts. (Tonks, wasn't she in your class?) There's never been any complaint about her work, but she happened to transpose some figures, and the mess just multiplied from there. A mistake anyone might make. I came over to see her, which made her at first very nervous and then actually frightened when I pointed out the error. But I calmed her down by offering to help her trace back the error to its source, and with a little luck, I could regenerate Mulciber's report with the correction, slip it in, and no one would be the wiser.
I wasn't quick enough, blast it.
Mulciber came barrelling out of his office, waving the bloody report like it was a writ of execution and stormed up to Becky's desk. He didn't even bother with questions or denials or stammered explanations; he just pushed up his sleeves and pulled out his wand. Everyone knows what that means and scattered. He'd had her under crucio for about ten seconds when the woman at the next desk shrieked: 'You can't, you just can't! She's pregnant!!'
That did stop him, surprisingly. He turned slowly to the mousy middle-aged woman shivering three feet away and grinned at her. Not a nice grin. 'You volunteerin', then?'
The poor woman looked appalled, as well she might, and then looked at Becky and nodded vigorously. Mulciber started on her at once and held her under for about two and a half minutes. She tried not to scream. Bit on her hands. Becky staggered to her feet and would have blundered forward doing Merlin knows what, except I held her back. She kept trying to fight me until I said in her ear fiercely, 'She's trying to protect your baby! Don't let it be for nothing.'
When Mulciber finally lifted the wand, he had that sickening look of euphoria on his face. 'Sack 'em both, Weasley. I want 'em both out of the building by tea break. And find someone that can be sitting in their desks within a week.' Off he went back to his office, slamming the door so hard that the glass broke. The last I heard from him was a muttered 'reparo' which shivered it all back into place.
So I helped them both to a conference room and did my best to act like Mum. Becky Spring is two and a half months pregnant, and her husband barely makes enough as it is. This is a terrible blow to them. Opal Oglivie was just a year from retirement. I am going to do whatever I can to make sure she can keep her pension. I just hope that Mulciber can't be bothered with the details.
They cried a bit, from the hurt and the shock both, I think. I had just restocked my lemon supply, so I made Opal a cup of black tea with lemon, and I slipped a few drops of the pain potion into it. I figured she'd bloody well deserved it.
What happened to them is rotten, and Mum, you and I should sit down to see what we can do quietly on the side to help them. But meanwhile: two places in this department have opened up, and it might be useful for fudging records and shifting muggles around, particularly ones with skills we can use.
I left them in the conference room to go get someone from Personnel who could go through the final parchment work and escort them from the building. Just before I closed the door, I heard Becky say to Opal, 'If my baby's a girl, I'll name her after you. Thank you.'
The Muggle Detention Administrative Office is small, but may be very useful to us. It's about punishing Muggles Behaving Badly (and in the Protectorate, you know, that may mean something as simple as someone being brave enough to stand up to a guard and tell him 'bugger off.' Or to leave his wife alone.)
Anyway, I was going through reports from that department today, and ran across an error, a miscalculation in a spreadsheet that caused a cascade of other errors. I approached the employee quietly to see if we could quickly fix it, because it fed into a report Mulciber would be receiving today, and I knew it would throw some of HIS figures off.
The woman who made the error was Becky Spring, who has been with the department since leaving Hogwarts. (Tonks, wasn't she in your class?) There's never been any complaint about her work, but she happened to transpose some figures, and the mess just multiplied from there. A mistake anyone might make. I came over to see her, which made her at first very nervous and then actually frightened when I pointed out the error. But I calmed her down by offering to help her trace back the error to its source, and with a little luck, I could regenerate Mulciber's report with the correction, slip it in, and no one would be the wiser.
I wasn't quick enough, blast it.
Mulciber came barrelling out of his office, waving the bloody report like it was a writ of execution and stormed up to Becky's desk. He didn't even bother with questions or denials or stammered explanations; he just pushed up his sleeves and pulled out his wand. Everyone knows what that means and scattered. He'd had her under crucio for about ten seconds when the woman at the next desk shrieked: 'You can't, you just can't! She's pregnant!!'
That did stop him, surprisingly. He turned slowly to the mousy middle-aged woman shivering three feet away and grinned at her. Not a nice grin. 'You volunteerin', then?'
The poor woman looked appalled, as well she might, and then looked at Becky and nodded vigorously. Mulciber started on her at once and held her under for about two and a half minutes. She tried not to scream. Bit on her hands. Becky staggered to her feet and would have blundered forward doing Merlin knows what, except I held her back. She kept trying to fight me until I said in her ear fiercely, 'She's trying to protect your baby! Don't let it be for nothing.'
When Mulciber finally lifted the wand, he had that sickening look of euphoria on his face. 'Sack 'em both, Weasley. I want 'em both out of the building by tea break. And find someone that can be sitting in their desks within a week.' Off he went back to his office, slamming the door so hard that the glass broke. The last I heard from him was a muttered 'reparo' which shivered it all back into place.
So I helped them both to a conference room and did my best to act like Mum. Becky Spring is two and a half months pregnant, and her husband barely makes enough as it is. This is a terrible blow to them. Opal Oglivie was just a year from retirement. I am going to do whatever I can to make sure she can keep her pension. I just hope that Mulciber can't be bothered with the details.
They cried a bit, from the hurt and the shock both, I think. I had just restocked my lemon supply, so I made Opal a cup of black tea with lemon, and I slipped a few drops of the pain potion into it. I figured she'd bloody well deserved it.
What happened to them is rotten, and Mum, you and I should sit down to see what we can do quietly on the side to help them. But meanwhile: two places in this department have opened up, and it might be useful for fudging records and shifting muggles around, particularly ones with skills we can use.
I left them in the conference room to go get someone from Personnel who could go through the final parchment work and escort them from the building. Just before I closed the door, I heard Becky say to Opal, 'If my baby's a girl, I'll name her after you. Thank you.'
