The Cornish Affair
Chapter 1: A New Case.
"Weasley!" barked a loud voice, jolting the red-haired man using his paperwork as a pillow into an upright position.
Trying very hard to look as though he had not just been asleep at his desk, Ron gabbed a quill and pulled his tie straight. He noticed the report he should have been filling in was upside down, and righted it just as his temporary head of department rounded the corner into his office cubicle.
"New case for you," he threw a file on top of the still unwritten disturbance documentation, "your pencil pushing can wait."
The man withdrew his wand and conjured himself a chair. And then sat heavily on it back-to-front. Ron barely suppressed the urge to roll his eyes: Alex Stroud was always trying to play 'bad cop' even when there was no one to be interrogated, the moron. Hating Harry for deciding to take a holiday, Ron flicked open the file and started skimming the case information.
"A young witch from Cornwall, Phoebe Briggs, has gone missing, just finished Hogwarts, problem is she lives in a muggle town, and most of the department isn't exactly accustomed to muggle culture, are they?" Stroud continued in a long-suffering sort of way.
Ron looked up in surprise at Stroud, who did roll his eyes before explaining, "Do you walk around with your eyes shut, Weasley? Potter's on leave, and I can't be out of the department for long with him gone, Creevey's still on desk duty after that attack in Fife, and Firth-Macdonald hasn't passed her field assessment yet. That makes you the only available auror with a driving licence let alone any experience with muggles."
"You think I'm a good choice for a muggle case? Merlin, you must be desperate, don't you remember how many Obliviators we had to get out for that case over in Hammersmith?" said Ron, incredulously.
"Yeah, well, that was, what, 7 years ago now? Believe me, if there was anyone else… I'm kind of hoping you've learnt your lesson since then though, eh? Grown up a bit. Besides, aren't your in-laws muggles?"
Ron bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself retorting to this comment. Why Stroud thought being deputy head made it acceptable for him to talk to every other auror bar Harry like they were junior interns was absolutely beyond him. To distract himself from the temptation to tell Stroud what a prick he was, he returned to the case file and began to read. She'd gone missing sometime between getting off of the Hogwarts express and finding her way home. He had seen his own kids off for the new term 2 weeks ago. It was half way through September.
"Stroud! This girl has been missing for 2 months! Why the hell are we only starting on this now?" He jumped to his feet, looking furiously at his colleague.
"Sit down, Weasley. Her parents phoned the muggle police, I don't think they realised wizards have a separate law-enforcement system, she's muggleborn. Of course the police have been completely clueless, I mean, the Briggs' couldn't even tell them the train she was on, or the school she went to, probably thought they were making it up and the daughter had run away." Ron sank slowly back into his chair. 2 months missing. That girl could be anywhere, and as for evidence! He'd be lucky to find so much as a quill that wasn't contaminated. "They sent a message to Hogwarts as a last resort when it became clear that the muggle police could do literally nothing to help them, and McGonagall forwarded it to us."
"Anyway, you'll be going to meet them tomorrow, the Briggs', and start some preliminary questioning in the area, so you need to read through that file ASAP. You'll be posing as a muggle, a Private Investigator, to any neighbours you have to question. Normal rules apply, don't use magic to question anyone unless you've got proof they know something: the Obliviators are starting to get shirty again. I can't wait until Potter's back and he can deal with their crap."
Stroud rose, vanished his chair, and turned to leave. "Oh, almost forgot." He pulled what Ron recognised as a muggle mobile phone out of the pocket of his robes. He chucked it at Ron, who caught it in fumbling fingers. "You'll be needing that. Any muggle witnesses will need a contact number. And you'll need to find yourself somewhere to stay there, keep up appearances, you know. Cheerio."
Ron stared down at the little black device in his hands, and deciding that he was going to drop in on Harry before he went home to a) find out how to use the blasted thing, and b) tell him that his deputy head Auror was a shit bag, he pulled the case file towards him and started to read.
Not sure how often I'm going to be able to update this just yet, but I wanted to write something Ron-Centric because it's something I don't see a lot of (but then perhaps I'm just not looking hard enough)
I'm not used to creative/fiction writing and I'm rather nervous, so any encouragement or (helpful) criticism would be very much appreciated!
If you've read, please review!