Disclaimer - I own nothing. If I owned Harry Potter and Co. then I would be rich beyond imagination and live in a huge mansion with Orlando Bloom. However, I don't own Harry Potter and Co. and will probably never meet Mr. Bloom. To sum this up, I'm poor, don't sue me.

Chapter One - Bad Dreams and the New Assignment

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His head pounded. All he could see were figures cloaked in the dark red of blood. They cackled around him, reminding him of the Muggle idea of witches he had so often heard of. He had always laughed at their assumptions. They suddenly didn't seem so funny.

The figures parted, taunting him and pushing him on. One touched him. He bolted forward, terrified. When had he ever been this terrified before?

He covered his ears and tried singing to himself to calm his nerves. He shut his eyes tightly. Without his wand, he was powerless. He had never had to fight man to man. If someone confronted him, he was dead.

He felt a barrier and opened his eyes frantically. It was dark but, like the other creatures, he could make out the cloak on the thing in front of him as clearly as if there were fully sunlight. He jumped backwards, met with shrieking laughter. The cloaked person before him - could it be a person? He had no way of knowing - stretched out a scaly hand, its eyes glowing red. The red eyes, darker then the cloak it wore, were the only things visible in the dark space where its face should've been visible. He jerked away, met with a crazed laugh from the figure before him. The hand rotted before his eyes, the stench pungent. He screamed.

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Joyce Kitz wished she had never become an Auror.

Alright, that wasn't true, she just wished that she didn't have to do any of the paperwork that inadvertently came with the job.

She sat in her office, riffling through the various papers scattered on and around her desk frantically, not sure of what the exact jinx she'd have to call out to find the right paper. (Would it be "Accio paper I just finished today at three in the morning?" Or "Accio report that I shouldn't have even done because it would all be quicker if I just told Mann that I got 3 of the Death Eaters and went around undetected?") Her boss, the head of the Auror division of the Ministry of Magic, United Kingdom, Erickson Mann, had warned her about this. She had to find her report, or she would be stuck in the same old routine again.

She had done some field work in Scotland, helping to round up the last of the suspected Death Eaters. She hadn't seen many of the other Aurors on the mission with her. It was what Aurors did. They did their jobs solo, unless they had a friend on the field. She hadn't been close to any of the Aurors that went, so she had been basically secluded. It was like a fresh breath of air to be back.

She had needed to write a report, as had all of the Aurors that went. Mann had told her about the opportunities that were before her, if only she could learn to be a bit more… collected.

"It's not a bad thing… exactly. It's just that we have a big job and I wouldn't want you to loose anything important." She mocked under her breath as she searched some more, nearly knocking over her mug of Kerman's Brand of Authentic Muggle Coffee in the process. It was quite an energy booster, and it didn't taste too bad either.

"Yes!" She hissed as she grabbed at a paper near her mug, the pile on top of it tumbling over. She looked at the room in dismay, then at the paper. Rings from her mug of Kerman's stood out against the stark white of the paper. Biting her lip, she mumbled a dulling spell, watching the rings disappear enough to look nonexistent. The only reason she could still see them was because she knew exactly where to look. She hoped. She muttered the spell again, watching in horror as the rings disappeared, and the ink in the area dulled to a gray. She frantically fixed it.

"Hey, Kitz, the meeting starts in five, don't be late this time." Another Auror, Jackson Kelly, said as he stuck his head in her office. She waved her hand to acknowledge that she had heard him as she looked down on the paper before her. Then she stopped.

"Hey! Jackson!" She called. He popped his head in again a second later.

"Yeah?" He asked, looking into the room, Joyce guessed. She didn't actually know, with his shaggy dark hair in his eyes like it was.

"Does anything look wrong on this paper?" She asked, sticking the paper out in his direction. He walked into her office, taking the paper from her, laughing softly.

"You know you've got coffee rings on it, right?" He asked, looking to her, his brows up. She scowled at him, grabbing her paper from him.

"Damn it."

"Did you try a fading spell?" He asked, taking out his wand, then looking around the room. "Kitz, you've really got to organize this place."

"Yeah I know, I know." She said grumpily looking at her paper as if she could scowl the rings off. Jackson mumbled something, the rings disappearing from her paper. He then mumbled something else, the papers organizing themselves, going into file cabinets of their own accord.

"Kitz?" He asked, still watching the papers with slight amusement.

"Yes?" She asked, looking to him with her eyebrows up.

"You're going to be late." He said simply. She cursed, turning full circle and jogging out of the door. He rolled his eyes, waiting for the paper she had left on her desk to start floating towards her.

Just as he expected, the report flew off a few seconds later.

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"…and so we got 11 confirmed and 7 suspected Death Eaters." Ron Weasley said as he handed the reports from his team to Erikson Mann. He looked them over briefly with a nod, then handed passed them on to Chris Xing, his assistant, who knew to file them when they went back to his office.

Joyce stood, fidgeting slightly under the scrutinizing eyes of her peers. She stood at rest like the rest of the Aurors, her legs shoulder length apart, her hands clasped behind her back. She knew that it would be best if she kept her eyes on whoever was being addressed at that point of time, but her eyes kept darting around. She was tired of the same patterns that she had been in for the past year (when she had been promoted to work with some of the better known Aurors, including the famed Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley) but it was always the same line of work. She wanted to call the shots the way that Weasley and, a while ago, Potter, did.

"Good job, keep me updated on anything new to be uncovered." He said with another nod. "I'll speak to you all individually later on today, you're dismissed."

And with a wave of his hand, the Aurors gathered in the room got out of their positions at rest and left the room.

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Joyce had been fidgety since the meeting earlier that day. She had gotten back to her office to find it sparkling clean with a note on her desk, telling her that she owed Jackson. It had apparently taken him an hour to fix the mess she had called her office. Not that she was worried about that. Jackson was a sweetheart and would never ask her to do anything she didn't want to unless it was something that needed to be done. But she wasn't thinking much of it, too busy with other thoughts. She was nervous about what Mann had to say about her report and couldn't seem to concentrate on anything in particular. A knock on the door jilted her out of her seat. She looked up in surprise, adjusting her reading glasses absently.

"Hey, you seem a bit… tense?" Laurie Dunne said as she came into Joyce's office, her hands full of sweets.

"Whoa, where did you get all that?" Joyce asked as her friend and former Auror set the sweets on her desk, sitting at the comfortable, well-used, black seat on the other side of Joyce's desk.

"I brought it in." She answered with a shrug. "Figure you'd be nervous, heard about your big meeting today. You hear from Erik yet?"

"No, I'm still waiting for him." Joyce admitted with a sigh, taking off her glasses and grabbing a chocolate frog.

"No wonder you're so tense. But hey, see it this way, at least you'll know he's being honest, whether it's good or bad." Laurie said, smiling a little.

Someone cleared their throat from the back of the room. The two women looking in the direction of the sound in surprise.

Mann stood there, looking at Joyce, seeming to avoid looking at Laurie at all costs.

"Well, I guess I'll be going, you'll do great." She said encouragingly as she squeezed Joyce's free hand. She brushed past Mann, not acknowledging his presence. Mann took the seat Laurie had been sitting in without blinking an eye.

"I see you're well prepared for whatever I may have to say." He said, amused as he looked at the pile of sweets before him.

"Well, you know how it is." She said weakly, suddenly embarrassed at the amount of candy Laurie had brought her.

"Well, I have to say, you did well on the presentation, I still believe you need to learn to become more well organized," he looked to the mug on her desk, "but you can't learn responsibility if you're never given any, so I'll give you a new assignment. You have to go to Diagon Alley to speak to Frederick and George Weasley. They're the owners of the local joke shop. You can't miss them, bright red hair and freckles. You'll have a picture in case you forget. We have indications that they're the next target for Letum."

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Author's Note - You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you're cool so you review the story you just read that ended with a hokey pokey themed song. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what its all about. =]