A Thief to Catch a Thief; a Death Eater to Catch a

At precisely nine o’clock, every Monday, the aurors held a quick meeting to go over the ‘boring stuff’ that got in the way of their jobs. They held almost constant briefs and debriefs before and after missions, so Mondays was just mundane.



“Ok, any apologies for absences?” Asked Hermione, having to actually start this meeting by the book as Percy Weasley was taking the minutes. Everyone then proceeded to ignore him and carried on as usual.



“Yeah, Clearbright is still in Saint Mungo’s – they’re keeping him in for twenty-four hours just to make sure – he was hit by six cruciatus curses and they want to keep an eye on him.” Said Joe Adkins, a recently qualified auror, Matthew Clearbright was his partner on missions, and a brilliant mentor for real auror work, Matthew was close to retiring and would be sorely missed by the team.



“I have one, Steve’s wife is fine, and the baby arrived at half-past-five this morning. They’ve had a girl, they named her Tara, she came in at seven pounds six ounces. Mother and daughter are both doing well, and Steve said thanks for the card and presents.” Piped up William Magoon, Steve’s twin brother.



“Awww.” Sighed Jessica Lippencot, an auror who had graduated at the same time as Hermione, but who’d actually trained for all four years, but that hadn’t stopped the two women becoming great friends “What do you think of kids, Herms?”



“Couldn’t eat a whole one.” She replied with all seriousness before looking at her meeting plan. “Right, first item on the agenda – this month’s tea-club galleon needs to be given to Lucius today – or there will be no tea, coffee or chocolate biscuits for anyone who doesn’t pay.”



There was a general shuffling as the aurors reached into their pockets for the money.



“Malfoy, can you cope with it all in sickles? I can get rid of this pocket of loose change then?” asked Will.



“Of course, it spends just as well as a large coin – and pettycash could do with the change.” He said calmly ticking people off in the little blue book where the tea-club money was recorded. “I’ve been saving and investing any left over money when I invested some of my capital, the Christmas party is pretty much paid for; and its only June.”



“Nice – are you booking it this year, too? I think you’re the only one with the patience to organise it.” Said Jess, she liked Lucius, he was her ‘big brother’ in the world of the aurors, and her partner on missions.



“Well, if I don’t book it, we’ll end up in a second-rate restaurant and eating food-poisoning off the plates! I was thinking of booking the one of the spear and arrow’s function rooms.” The spear and arrow was a conference facility that was used by many wizarding businesses and by anyone wanting to hold a conference – they were also brilliant caterers and you got quality food for a reasonable price.



“Right, next – can you please store your brooms in their appropriate racks in the broom cupboard, rather than under your desks, please – health and safety went barmy with me for that – ‘it’s a tripping hazard’.” Hermione said with sarcasm; the aurors generally gave Health and Safety panic attacks, usually because they purposely went out risking their lives.



“Can we trip them up for meddling?” sniped Kingsley. Everyone laughed, Percy looked horrified and made a note in the margin of his parchment.



“Next – I had another meeting with the Minister about the position of the apperation point – it can’t be moved from there, its been there for seven and a half centuries… but I did ask to move the office closer to it – as in practically on top of it…” Hermione said, watching as her staff’s faces lit up. They were sick of running down a flight of stairs and half way across the entrance hall before chasing dark wizards.



“And?” asked Harry, looking at his cup of coffee as if it held the answer to the meaning of life, he was still knackered from last night’s mission.



“He said, quote: ‘It will be too expensive to completely re-model the entrance hall and build a new department, there isn’t enough money free at the moment to do that’, but, we are on the list for when the money is available.” Hermione said, sighing. The run wasted energy and time, and she was fed up of it.



“How much are we talking?” Lucius asked.



“Somewhere in the region of half a million galleons to set it up how we want it – three quarters if the planning department do it…” Percy Weasley looked shocked before making a note in the margin.



“The planning department couldn’t plan a piss up in a Firewiskey distillery!” yelled Catherine Wetherwax, who had a huge grudge against the planning department after they wouldn’t let her extend her house – even though the plans were in perfect order. Percy made another a note in the margin.



“Tell the minister the department has private funding and I’ll get Draco to draw up the plans for us and his contractors to put it all together – I should get some family discount.” Lucius said, Draco had become an incredibly successful magical architect and his designs were in high demand.



“Do we still get a Christmas party?” asked Jess sheepishly. Everyone chuckled.



“Yes, that’s almost a definite, I just need to book the establishment. Funding for the new department won’t tap into the Christmas fund.” Lucius said with a smile, Jess had turned out to be a lovely girl, who he was trying to match up with Draco – his son, however, was proving to be a work-a-holic and had no time for companionship.



“Next – The inter-departmental quidditch match last week was won by accounts – seeing as our team had to depart for an emergency raid half way through the game.” Hermione said, “We lost two-thousand-and-ten to one-hundred-and-forty… The department of Magical sports and games are organising a re-match, and the re-match will be at the Chudly Cannons ground, as per usual.”



“We were winning one-hundred-and-thirty to nil when we left – how the heck did we score another ten points when we weren’t there?!” Asked Harry, looking puzzled.



“They scored an own-goal by accident.” Laughed Jack Fabian, snorting his cup of tea as he read the score sheet over Hermione’s shoulder.



“Bless their little cotton socks.” Said Jess sarcastically, her ex was their seeker, and she’d love to grind his adulterous balls into the quidditch pitch sand with a pair of stilettos.



“He isn’t worth hexing.” Hermione said, reading her friend’s body language.



“I was thinking of castrating him manually – without magic.” She said with an evil grin.



“We’ll do it for you if you want.” Said Kingsley, the male aurors were highly protective of the five women when they weren’t on the battle field or training rooms; the ladies were live wires and fierce when faced with an opponent, but it didn’t stop pricks treating them like shit so they could brag to their mates that they’d bedded a witch-auror.



“Nah – we’ll just kick the shit out of him at the re-match.” Harry said, rubbing Jess’s arm.



“Won’t we fall over in the showers doing that?” asked Will, cracking his knuckles, Will and Steve were beaters that would rival Fred and George.



“I was referring to on the pitch…” Harry said with a grin.



“I wasn’t.” laughed Steve. Percy made another note in the margin.



“You might as well write it all in the centre of the page – you’ve written more in the margin!” Lucius chuckled, flicking a forked tongue at Percy. All the aurors were animangi, and Lucius flicked partially into his dragon form when he was bored. He also enjoyed tormenting the poor sod who had to take minutes for them.



“Yuck.” Percy commented.



Lucius removed one grey glove to reveal a green scaled hand and extended six inch black claws, he waved at a shocked Percy Weasley and smiled to show the long dragon incisors now in his mouth. Harry suddenly sprouted antlers; (evidently the stag was a hereditary ainimagus form, it wasn’t a common trait, but it did happen.) Jess’s eyes became owl eyes, as she hooted; Jack had a long tail, mouse ears and a pointed nose with whiskers; Catherine had a scaley hood over her head and hissed, another forked tongue joining Luciu’s in the intimidation; Will had eight tentacles instead of legs, and he used the suckers to grab Percy’s quill and parchment.



“Alright, now we’ve come to tormenting the minute taker – behave children.” Hermione laughed, Percy didn’t know what to do with himself.



“Yes sir!” shouted David Kirwan, standing up, stomping and saluting in Hermione’s direction, one rabbit ear flopped over his eye as one stood straight up.



“I assure you, I’m female. The trousers are tight enough to show that!” Hermione retorted. “Though, the male trousers are just as tight, and you don’t seem to have much down there…”



“It’s a really good dissalusionment charm!” he said still stood at attention, but retracting the ears back to human form. The five ladies in the room proceeded to stare at his crotch.



“I thought if you stared at a disalusionment charm when you knew something was there, that it became visible?” asked Jess.



“It does.” Hermione answered, grinning.



“Can anyone else see anything in his pants?” she said, frowning. Percy Weasley had managed to fight his parchment back from the octopus tentacles and was making another note in the margin.



“Nope.” Said Catherine laughing.



Harry stood and walked around the back of the flabbergasted Dave, he tucked his fingers into the other man’s waist band and with a tug brought out the waistband of his underpants. “How fucking tight are your boxers?! Its bad enough in these trousers – but you’re making it worse!”



“Testicles hang outside your body for a reason: to keep them cool.” Hermione said, as Dave tucked his undies back in before whacking Harry over the back of the head with the Daily Prophet.



“Yeah, mate! You’re cooking the swimmers!” Will laughed, it had been a common joke that Steve had put extra cooling charms on his boxers when he and his wife were trying for Tara.



Percy made another note in the margin.



“Any thoughts on today’s meeting?” Hermione said, grinning.



“Yeah, I think the semi-skimmed has gone off – my tea tastes funny.” Kingsley said, pushing the mug away.



“Anyone else?” Hermione said, looking around the oval table at the assembled people.



“Can we go do something constructive yet?” asked Joe, he had to fill in the paperwork from the mission, and then go lodge a report with health and safety about his partner being hit with an unforgivable, well actually it was six. He really couldn’t be arsed with health and safety – but he’d love to give them all a surprise bungee-jump and not let them fill the forms in… revenge was a creative dish in the auror department.



“Yes, we’d better do that – you know the score, all paperwork in the right filing cabinets; if anyone wants me, I’ll be in the stores cataloguing anything we need to replenish and doing the wonderful task of filling in the order forms.” Hermione said, “The minutes of the meeting will be on the notice board, next to the memos from Health and Safety and accounting.” Hermione said, the aurors used that notice board for amusing paperwork, the serious stuff was pinned to the fridge and inside the toilet doors, they all looked there first for important memos.



The various notice boards were just for amusement and the pinning of stupid photographs from the previous Christmas parties. Arthur had managed to get muggle photocopiers to work in the magical world, and there was still the picture of a bottom that had been photocopied with a note from accounts asking whoever it was to pay the fine of nine sickles for the prints that had been made. The arse in question was Harry’s, and if you looked carefully you could see Ginny’s knees on either side of his hips. Nobody had paid the fine.



Everyone left together, leaving a fuming Percy Weasley scribbling in the margin of his parchment – there were nine lines of full text, and three feet of margin notes. He didn’t know how the aurors got away with it – or that the Monday Morning auror meeting was copied and distributed to the departments the aurors actually got along with: everyone except accounts, health and safety and the department of records (they had a copy anyway).



The hard-working aurors had to let off steam, and the madness of a Monday morning was their chosen method – but the minute takers hadn’t realised that… Hermione had thought one of them might just catch on after three years.