A/N- Big thanks to Jadely31 for her review, while I'll apologise that this chapter is light on action I will more than make up for it in those to follow.

Cheers and enjoy.

Grey.


Magus ignored Paige the whole way back to the Preparation room and all the way up until he turned to take the satchel from her.

Shrugging off the heavy bag, her scathing gaze finally met his, as he accepted it from her.

"Some practice that was!" She accused him.

Magus turned his back on her and slung the bags into separate dusty lockers that stood against the wall in a row.

"I don't see what you are so mad about, New Girl.." He shrugged her off casually, taking a towel from a rack and wiping first his sweaty brow and then his sturdy wand.

"You got some valuable practice at reversing some magic and even a shot at repairing some ribs." Magus pointed out, drying his hands off and walking back towards the fireplace.

Paige couldn't fault his logic there, but she certainly could object to his means.

"Yeah, but they were your ribs! After a bar fight!" She continued in exasperation.

"And on that note, I might need to have another go at the ribs. I think one of them isn't straight or is too straight; ribs are supposed to sort of curve. They are funny things." Magus explained almost as though he was describing an old eccentric friend, or at least he did until his side caught again when he reached for a handful of Floo powder.

Seeing Paige's perplexed expression, he hurried to reassure her.

"Not bad for a first attempt at ribs though, you'll get the hang of it! Probably." He quickly encouraged, trying to say things a mentor should say, before disappearing into the fire.

Paige had a horrible view of the future with this immature man where she followed him from place to place fixing him up after he did stupid things. Was this some latent divination powers finally beginning to surface?

"The office of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes." She muttered in exasperation, like the department was a curse and headed after him.

On the other side he was waiting for her to emerge.

"Come on New Girl, I'll show you the cafeteria. I don't usually eat there, but most of the ministry do." He announced, a colourful lunch box already hanging from his hand.

Paige summoned her lunch from her bag and strode on her long legs to catch up with Magus as he made for the exit with his own Scooby Doo lunch box.

As they walked to the elevator, she addressed his odd, childish lunch container.

"Do you have kids?" Paige asked, gesturing to his lunch box covered in children's characters.

"Not that I'm aware of…" Magus answered carefully, looking at her sideways.

"Why? How old are you? What has your mother told you?!" He demanded in conspiratorial tones and clutching the front of her robes seriously.

"I'm seventeen and you are NOT my father." She told him firmly in a deadpan expression, brushing his hands off her robes.

"No, you are right the math checks out on that one. Thank god." He wiped his brow in mock relief, his eyes twinkling with mischief that apparently hadn't been knocked out of him from earlier.

Paige rolled her eyes at him; why did she have to get assigned a mentor with a sense of humour?

"A relief for us both, I assure you." She promised him and they stopped in front of the elevator bank, Magus jabbed the call button with his little finger.

Rapping a fist on his adorable lunch box he explained.

"Present from a friend; inside joke ya know?"

"How old are you?" She despaired, a puzzle she had been trying to figure out. Her mentor was an odd mix of contradictions, old seasoned eyes, yet full of mirth, a mature body, but a wide streak of childish humour and playfulness.

He smirked in that annoying way he did when he was trying to be enigmatic.

"I like to think I'm ageless: my true time of birth another great mystery for the ages." He dramatically revelled.

"You are 24 and your birthday was last month." An amused voice answered from behind them. Dawn pushed her way onto the elevator with them.

Magus clutched at his head in frustration.

"Noooo my mystique!" He moaned in a haunted fashion, like it had just been robbed of him.

Dawn flicked his ear with a long suffering expression.

"Ouch! I regret letting you meet my mother when she came to stay!" Magus moodily shot back at her, clutching a wounded ear.

"I saw you two heading to the Café for lunch and thought I'd take mine now too." Dawn explained, a Johnny Quest lunch box was clutched to her chest protectively. The lunchboxes matched in their imaturity and gave Paige a good indication as to who had gifted them to each friend.

"And we are so glad you decided to join us.." Magus muttered sarcastically and did a good job of pretending to be annoyed.

"What else do you want to know about this crazy, Paige?" Dawn offered with a lazy smirk at the irritated expression it created on Magus's face.

Paige liked the way the two mucked around and the way Dawn was not afraid to undermine him, briefly she wondered if they were a couple.

"Hmmm." She pondered, where would she start? So many questions, seemed to fill her mind.

"What is the deal with him not wearing robes?" Paige found her first question and one of the most obvious.

Dawn seemed exasperated by the question already as Magus pushed his head past hers to answer this one himself.

"Why would I want to wear a pair of silly pyjamas to work?" He ranted derisively.

"No offense ladies and they look smashing on you both, but not very practical are they?"

"I don't know, my dream was always to wear pyjamas all day." Dawn riposted to wind him up.

"Comfortable no doubt, and you can wear nothing underneath them and no one is any the wiser." He waggled his eyebrows at Dawn at this second point.

"But having billowy, flammable material hanging off your every limb when you are trying to run, fight or attempting not be set on fire is just idiotic." Magus finished, at the word flammable he gave Paige a pointed look as if she needed reminding of what had occurred earlier that day.

"Face it Magus; you are just more muggle than wizard." Dawn accused him with a smarmy look.

"No doubt," He freely admitted to the pair with a snort of laughter.

"Hell I've always just been a muggle with a little bit of black magic at his disposal." Magus seemed almost proud of the claim.

"The blackest." Dawn teased him.

"I will tell the story of the time you were caught going commando at work." Magus threatened her with a raised finger.

Dawn blushed and tried to look abashed.

"It was laundry day!" She muttered in feeble defence.

"That is what I thought," Magus finished with a satisfied smile.

The elevator dinged and the trio walked out and down the short corridor into a large sparsely populated lunch room.


Groups of wizards sat at long bench tables, talking, eating and generally enjoying their lunch break.

Walking down the length of the long tables, a stern looking black wizard had removed his odd hat and placed it beside him on the table.

With a quiet pop it turned into a Chihuahua, which promptly started yapping shrilly and annoying the tough looking occupants of the table.

Magus subtly lowered his wand and tried to keep a straight face as they passed.

"Watch it McIntyre, smartass." Kingsley intoned in his rich mahogany voice, the hint of a smile crept to the corner of his mouth and his table chuckled as he transfigured it back to its usual hat.

"You didn't have an Auror that was coming, Kingsley?" Magus quipped lamely, with a friendly grin.

"That crazy Medicine Man!" One of the Aurors snorted in laughter at the antics.

Dawn elbowed him hard in his previously broken ribs and sent him sprawling into a chair at a nearby table, gasping for breath.

"Don't mess with Kingsley, that guy will be running this place one day!" She scolded, taking a seat beside him and seeming not to notice the genuine agony she had caused.

"Sorry, I forgot about your massive crush on that ebony wonder." Magus muttered, straightening out again with some effort.

Dawn looked mortified and about to jab his ribs again, but he quickly covered up his vulnerable target.

"Not the ribs, they've just been repaired!" He croaked in protest.

Dawn snapped her head to look at Paige, who nodded sheepishly to confirm the fact.

"What were you doing, McIntyre?" She demanded, lunch forgotten as she glared at her friend.

"Nothing." Magus insisted in a longsuffering moan and tried to take a sandwich from his lunchbox like the matter was dismissed already.

The sandwich was blasted from his hand, with a quick swish of her wrist. Lunch meat, tomato and fragments of bread showered the trio. Paige tried to cover up her head to avoid sandwich shrapnel. The table of Aurors immediately ceased their conversations and watched in mixed amusement and interest, wands having slid from sleeves and pockets on instinct at the sound of the explosion. Upon seeing the pair that were creating the commotion they resumed their hushed chatter though, it was obviously not uncommon to see that particular pair in conflict.

Dawn seemed unaffected by the rain of lunch.

"We were just doing some training." Magus played down the events of the day and hoped that his tough friend would just leave it at that.

"So help me Magus, I will wipe your memory and dump you in a muggle insane asylum." Dawn warned him unconvinced and her wand still threateningly smoking in her hand.

"I bet she'd do it too." Magus told his new partner without a beat of pause.

The wand tip seemed to glow.

"Okay okay, we went to the Hogs Head so I could get that money that Mundungus owed me…"

"Wait, you were serious about that?" Paige exclaimed in an outraged whisper.

"Well, it was 5 gallons and.." He began to reason, but this time Paige cut him off again.

"So you fought those two apes who were shaking him down for money, just so you could get your money off the guy first?!" She continued in dismay.

"What two apes?" Dawn's eyes narrowed.

"Magus, have you been fighting again?" She growled fully absorbing what had been said..

At last Magus had a chance to defend his not so virtuous virtue.

"Dunno who they were, couple of shady looking wizards; dark ones too, based on the tattoos they had."

He described the pair, Paige didn't remember seeing any visible marks on the pair, but then she also hadn't been as close as he had been. She hated to admit it, but his attention to detail was impressive.

Magus turned to face Paige.

"They weren't after money from Dung either, they wanted something much more dangerous."

Glancing around to be sure no one else was listening, he continued at a hiss.

"Information…"


"So yeah seemed best I put a stop to that endeavour." Magus finished to redeem his recounted feat of valour.

"And you just happened to be there when they were?" Dawn quizzed him suspiciously.

"You know me, Sweets. Luck of the devil." Magus winked roguishly at her, but she remained unconvinced.

Paige spoke up again.

"It is a lot less noble when you still collected the money from Fletcher." She pointed out.

"Jeez New Girl, you have a knack for ruining a good story." Magus complained, taking one of Dawn's untouched sandwiches as payment for his own destroyed one.

Dawn glared at him for his thievery, for his dishonesty and for his general getting into troubleness.

"Oh hey, is that Arthur Weasley? I need to try get him to repair our magic stereo system, it keeps firing out CDs.." Magus remembered, having spotted the balding, ginger wizard enter the cafeteria.

With a mouth still half-full of food, he leapt from his chair to go over and talk to the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Member.

It left just Paige and Dawn sitting at the table.

Dawn shook her head in affectionate disapproval at her unconventional friend, who was engaged in a passionate discussion with Arthur about something muggle in nature no doubt. If she hadn't been so highly observant, she wouldn't have noticed him palm off the small envelope to Mr Weasley or the troubled look it created the recipient.

Paige caught her affectionate gaze and tucked away that idea for later.

"So how long have you worked in the ministry for?" She decided to ask Dawn instead of the question she really wanted to know.

"Oh, about five years I think?" Dawn replied distractedly drawn from own thoughts.

"They didn't have many vacancies anywhere for work when I left Hogwarts, so I took on a position as a junior Obliviator. Turns out I'm actually quite good at altering memories so I never transferred anywhere else."

Paige nodded in understanding and planned how to phrase her next question.

But Dawn beat her to it.

"Magus has been a Reverser for about 6 years I reckon." She pondered on the point, lost in memory.

"His first partner and mentor died just under five years ago too, some said the position was cursed since then and they have never been able to find a replacement that lasted more than a month." Dawn looked forlorn at that thought and her large sad eyes trailed back to man in question who had just passed Arthur a burnt CD for inspection.

Paige paled at yet another piece of information that had been left out of recruitment.

"Your first day is going alright?" Dawn tried to change the subject.

Paige honestly didn't know how to answer that question. Her mentor was one of the more unusual people she had ever met and the job had turned out to be very little like the one she thought she had been accepted for.

She was saved answering by the return of a stoked looking Magus.

"Good old Arthur; he said he'd swing by and take a look at it after lunch."

Magus seemed to have more news to spread, but was interrupted by the 'Tequila' tone. Paige proudly didn't jump this time and Magus stuffed a whole sandwich in his wide mouth.

"Dammit, it's a red." He groaned through a mouthful of food, tapping the watch face to silence it. He clutched up his colourful lunch box and got to his feet.

"A red?" Paige wanted to know, she stood up to follow.

"Another job, urgent too." Magus curtly explained through mouthfuls of strawberry and white chocolate muffin, which he had moved on to devour.

"No rest for the wicked, no lunch either." He mumbled sullenly.

Dawn waved cheerily good bye to the pair until she realised that Magus had nicked her muffin while she wasn't looking too.

"Be careful," She called after the departing pair.


Paige followed him upstairs and dumped her lunch with his in their cubicle, Magus snatched a red scrap of paper from the Tracer table on the way through.

They left through the fire and he passed her the red memo to read.

It simply said: 75 year old wizard, unresponsive, found by family. 88 Chestermere rd. Sussex. The handwriting was tall, sloped and neat, female; Paige thought and wondered which of the girls had written it.

Knowing now where her satchel was located she retrieved it before he could, earning another nod of approval. Donning the equipment bags, the two stepped into the circle and Paige took up his arm again.

Pop.

They appeared in an urban area outside an unkempt hedge. The letterbox in front of them announced number 88 and Magus took the lead, pushing open the rusted gate. Newspapers were stacked up at the front door and he stepped over them to get inside.

"Hello, Accidental Reversals. Where are we?" He called loudly, taking in the cluttered house and the faint whiff of urine. Paige wrinkled her nose at the mess and odour, unfamiliar with living conditions like this.

A faint, strangled voice called back. "He's in here!" and they followed the sound of it.

Finding their way into a small cold bedroom, they found a middle aged wizard standing beside the bed.

"I came over to see Dad today and he isn't responding." The man explained, he wrung his hands with worry and nodded down in indication to the bed.

That was when Paige saw what would be her first, but certainly not her last dead body.

Paige couldn't speak; every part of her focus was glued to the body in the bed. He didn't look peaceful or asleep like the dead were often described; there was just some difficult to quantify, lacking part of his appearance that left no doubt in her mind that all life was absent. He was an older gentleman, although old seemed an understatement; his eyebrows were long, grey and tawny, his skin hanging in folds. The corpse's entire appearance had taken on a waxy tone and was cold to the touch like marble.

Magus reached forward to touch the deceased, at the neck, perhaps measuring a pulse. He withdrew after a moment and turned to the remaining man in the room.

"I'm sorry to say it, but your father is dead." Magus confirmed in a sombre tone that was so unlike his own.

Paige didn't have to try for a serious expression, she figured her face must have looked as lost as the man's only relative that stood next to her. Magus was still talking, in a soft reassuring tone that she had never heard before, but his words didn't reach her. He seemed to be explaining to the dead man's son what the process was going to be next. She caught something about Magical Law Enforcement turning up to soon to take over the registering of the death.

Before she knew it, he had nodded solemnly to the son and had gently taken her by the arm to guide her back out of the house.

"Are you still with me, Paige?" He gently enquired of her.

Paige felt numb and hollow, but she nodded slowly in an obvious lie.

Magus gentlemanly offered his arm to her and she shakily accepted it.

With a pop they returned to the Preparation Room and Paige ejected her arm from his, stumbling forward. Madly she staggered, feeling weak at the knees and overwhelmed by the recent event.

"Door on the right!" Magus told her, with an inkling as to what was going to come next.

"God dammit." He muttered under his breath and pressed his hand to his forehead in frustration as his student rushed out of sight.

Paige burst into the changing room, sprinting past a line of showers and shoved open the door to one of the toilets.

Sinking to her knees, Paige clutched the edge of the porcelain and she retched violently. What scant lunch she had managed to eat was ejected and sloshed into the toilet bowl, her back and chest racked with each gag.

Her gagging turned into sobs and after a short while she became aware of a presence behind her.

Magus McIntyre leaned in the doorway, his steely eyes evaluating her like he was contemplating which counter curse would work best.

Embarrassed by her actions and her now unkempt state, Paige kept her head over the toilet, waiting for the nausea to subside.

A large hand appeared beside her offering a good sized wad of toilet paper.

"The first dead one you see can be rough." He murmured awkwardly shifting weight from one foot to the other.

Paige gratefully accepted his offer and spat bitterly, before wiping her mouth. Venomously she threw the used scrap of paper into the bowl and she carefully got up to flush the toilet. Dropping the lid back down, Paige sat down on it and held her head in her shaking hands.

"The unexpected shock of the encounter triggers an adrenaline response in your body, which in turn is what makes your body all shaky, pale and want to toss your cookies." Magus clinically explained, crouching in front of his young charge.

Ashamed, Paige refused to meet his gaze and continued to hold her head with one hand and dab at her eyes with the other. How did he know so much about the body's reactions? It was hardly something covered at Hogwarts or on orientation training.

"Do you see many dead people in this job?" She tentatively managed to ask with a deep breath.

"Unfortunately we do." Magus grimly admitted.

"Why? We don't have any spells or potions that can bring back the dead, do we Magus?"

The older wizard shook his head sadly. "There isn't much we can do for them," He confirmed but then added as an afterthought.

"But we can make it an easier ordeal for their families; helping them come to terms and deal with their grief. I think that is a magic of sorts isn't it?"

Paige thoughts were still sluggish and she recalled the house they had just been in and the distressed son, who Magus had sat down and explained things to. The man they left behind was still devastated, yes, but he was on his way to accepting and processing his loss. The magic there had been cast by her mentor's words and Paige suddenly wished she had been able to concentrate on what he had told the man and how it was conveyed.

There was perhaps some different kinds of magic that this man had to teach her, she decided in that moment.

As Magus offered her a hand to get up, Paige realised that her enigmatic mentor, while unorthodox and somewhat complacent was actually, quite an extraordinary individual in his own way. For a brief moment she saw caught a glimpse of the wizard she had first admired when he came to talk to a younger version of herself at Hogwarts.

It didn't mean she liked him yet though, she decided, as he quickly returned to his jovial self; commenting on the panda like appearance her running mascara had created.

He did politely and patiently wait outside in the preparation room while she made herself more presentable to return to the office.

She felt weak and embarrassed by her response, Paige hoped he wasn't judging her for it. It fuelled the first question on her lips when she emerged to meet him.

"Did.. Did you have a hard time when you saw your first dead body, Magus?" She nervously asked her mentor.

His electric blue eyes seemed to darken at the question and his jaw tightened, it was a few moments before he responded. It was the first real serious moment she had seen from him.

"My first was difficult.." Magus slowly answered, his sharp eyes seemed distant in memory.

"For one thing, there were three dead bodies and secondly; I had created one of them."

He stepped into the fire without another word and without looking back.


Paige was struggling to digest what he had just divulged.

Seeing one dead person was bad enough, but three! And for him to have caused one of them!? It boggled her mind and the curiosity of a Ravenclaw demanded to know more. Unfortunately the cold look that had overtaken her mentor had removed any prospect of asking further questions around it.

Stepping back into the office she saw Magus had been halted by the boss; Unwin.

Un seemed to have an enquiry for the pair. She heard him mention, the Hog's Head as she approached and she figured he must have somehow heard about the mornings shenanigans. Magus shrugged off his question and replied simply with a well-practiced innocent expression.

"Another case of Self-Starting Fires, but we took care of them." He explained with a conspiratorial wink to Paige.

Unwin seemed unconvinced and anxious, but forgot his suspicion as his newest employee was noticed to have joined them.

"Ah Paige! How is your first day going?" He enthusiastically asked her with his usual boyish energy.

"It has been…" Paige started unsure how to answer the question. Her eyes flashed to Magus evaluating her silently and giving her no prompts.

"Interesting. Really interesting." She decided on amiably.

"Nothing like the induction training." Paige couldn't help but add.

Magus seemed to have seen something he liked in his assessment of her and a slow smile grew.

Unwin beamed at her response and turned on Magus like he was a son who had made him proud. Magus gave him a well-practiced glower in return.

"Keep up the good work then, team!" He cheered clapping an impatient Magus on the shoulder and generating an increasing scowl for his affection.

"Thank you, Sir." Paige returned as the man strolled off, full of nervous energy.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Magus shook his head and hissed at her.

"Please don't call him Sir, it makes him think he is in charge.."

"He is our boss though isn't he?" Paige whispered in scandalised confusion as they walked back to their cubicle to eat a late lunch at their desks.

Magus snorted in amusement at the idea and tapped the calendar that hung on the wall of the cubicle, it was filled with Weiner dogs in various costumes. From the tip of his wand long strings were being drawn from the paper and he stretched to attach them to the far wall of the cubicle. It now looked as though a large net hung over his side of the office.

Paige watched in puzzlement at the odd addition to their cubicle.

"He works in his big office and may be in charge of the department, but he isn't even the boss of his own head!" Magus nattered, stuffing a whole sandwich in his mouth once more and swinging himself up onto what Paige now realised was a hammock.

"Huh?" Paige groaned in confusion, with no idea what her mentor was referring to and giving him a dirty look at his apparent laziness.

"Never mind." Her office mate muttered through thick chewing and he lay back in his hammock with a grateful sigh.

He caught her disapproving look from his relaxed position.

"What? There is no rule about being comfortable at work. This is fatigue management." He insisted, he reached a hand above his head, where it disappeared into the sausage dog calendar and returned with a stuffed Schnauzer dog shaped pillow. He tucked it behind his head and kicked his undone boots off to thump heavily onto the office floor.

"Is this what you do every day here at the ministry?" She asked incredulously, picking at her salad halfheartedly.

"Only after lunch." He defended his relaxed state, his eyes slowly closing blissfully.

"Or on weekends." Magus quickly added after a moment's contemplation.

"So what should we.. I be doing?" Paige asked, still struggling with their apparent lack of work.

The man in the hammock shrugged indifferently, making the strings creak and stretch.

"Whatever you want, if we aren't on a job we don't really have much work to do."

"We can practice useful spells or revise theory some other day, but I'm wiped out from my ribs today though." He promised her because of the heated gaze he felt prickling his skin.

Paige thought about that for a second and her eyes landed on her bland empty desk. It seemed so devoid of character and the opposite of Magus's cluttered desk. She had initially wondered how much work he got done at the desk, but now realised that there wasn't much work to be done. Leaning back on her squeaky roller chair and examining his desk she noted his odd collection of curios.

A little model skeleton hung suspended from a little hook in its cranium, she thought she saw its head move, but surely she was imagining it. Scraps of paper littered the table and unusually, he kept a scattered array of muggle pens, forgoing the usual quills favoured by most witches and wizards. A couple of random textbooks were stacked at the end of the desk and looked well battered. Titles like Advanced Transfiguration, The Mastery of Counter-Curses and oddly enough a few muggle medical textbooks were on display. An odd worn grey stone weighed down a set of stained memos and sat perched beside a long dead potted plant of some kind. Random potion ingredients seemed interspersed with junk food wrappers and empty potion vials.

Paige noticed that he didn't seem to have a lot of personal photographs, but she did notice three photos faded and pinned to his carpeted wall at eye level for a seated person.

The first was of an older looking man and woman, she suspected they were his parents. The man had Magus's hair colour, peppered with grey and his lean, but strong physique. He had hard eyes that still somehow radiated warmth, but drew pale in comparison to the soft eyes of the women who stood beside him with an arm around him. His mother was a little plump and seemed to emanate happiness from her lovely smile, her face was narrow at the chin and it was clearly where Magus got his jaw from. It stood out to Paige that it was a muggle photo and therefore still unlike the other two.

The second photo was sometime after Hogwarts, a younger looking Magus; clean shaven and in ministry standard robes. He was grinning his cheeky grin and posing beside an older wizard, who was lean as a whip and with a narrow pointed weasel like face. His dark hair had grey creeping up the temples and he leaned casually against a wall. The pair seemed to be triumphant and happy, the background appeared to be the very office they were currently in, dachshund calendar and everything. Paige smirked at the young fresh faced mentor of hers in the picture, she wondered if this was when he had first started in the department. She looked up from the desk as the man in question, who gave a little snuffle of a snore and shifted in the hammock; obviously a lot had changed.

It was the third and final picture that really drew Paige's attention and raised several more questions as well as her eyebrows. The two people were familiar, Magus and Dawn, the pair in tidy muggle clothes in some poorly lit environment. The photographer had caught a nice shot of the pair laughing hysterically at something, their eyes alight with mirth and mouths open in joy. They continued laughing together for a few moments before settling to just smiles and as Magus in the photo looked away, Dawn continued to glance at him and grin contently. The final transition was the alarmed pair realising they were being filmed, Dawn moving forward fending the camera with an outstretched arm and Magus simply cracking up again at the antics.

Paige couldn't help, but smile at the antics too and again she wondered what the relationship was between the pair.


Returning her gaze back to her own desk, Paige decided she might unpack her own stuff and decorate her desk a little.

First she unloaded her functional items; quills, pots of ink and some different coloured parchments. Next came some more personal items, a small enchanted rubix cube that constantly flickered and changed to increase the difficulty, her mum had got that for her in her fourth year. With slow reverence she lifted a framed photo from her bag, she made sure Magus still was asleep and she pressed a chaste kiss to the face in the picture and placed it on the desk, where he could watch her.

The photo of her boyfriend was bitter sweet, his friendly features a welcome sight every time she was down, like now. His thick locks of blonde hair were swept back and combed sideways on top, she always forgot how soft and silky it was. She would always tease Lawrence how much better care he took of his hair then she did of her own. His green eyes sparkled in the picture and made her lurch inside from the amount she missed him currently, his square glasses did nothing to diminish the light those intelligent eyes carried. In the photo his fetching smile spread as if he was catching sight of her too.

"Oooh he's handsome!" A girly voice from the doorway called and Paige almost dropped the picture in surprise.

Perergin took up the entrance to their cubicle and eyed the photo in her hand with interest.

"Who's the hunk?" She asked the new girl, causing her to blush red to the roots of her chocolate coloured hair.

"I've told you Amanda, my name is Magus and I'm flattered really." The other occupant chimed in patiently, rolling over in his bed and sending his best roguish grin.

"Not you dicknuts." Amanda shot back sarcastically and she pointed at the picture in Paige's hands.

"Hey, he is cute!" Magus agreed jokingly, plucking the picture from above Paige before she could even squeak in objection.

Anger boiled in her throat as he sat in his hammock and examined the photo.

"Give it back," She growled in irritation.

"A real bookish look to him, isn't there. I would have totally picked him as your type." Magus mused, still not returning the picture.

"Accio photo!"

The picture zoomed out of Magus's hand and Paige snatched it out of mid-air.

"So nice of you to bring a photo of your brother to work." He continued to mock her in a friendly way.

"Shut up, he's not my brother he is my boyfriend." Paige snapped back in irritation, her mentor had a great way of getting her to bite at all his jibes.

Magus and Peregrin made a loud low "ooooo" noise in scandalised amazement, they were joined by Ben and Bryce a few cubicles over, who while they hadn't heard the comment figured they would join in too.

Paige blushed deeply at the attention and squirmed with discomfort.

"Wait. Wait. Let me take a stab at this one first, before you tell me." Magus insisted, covering eyes and massaging his temples as if he was trying to divine the future.

"He was a fellow Ravenclaw, probably a prefect. Big on his study, had great grades. Now working some boring job like magical transportation or international relations?"

Her mentor predicted and Paige was infuriated at each correct point he managed to land, up until the last.

"His job isn't boring, he is actually working to translate runes in Spain!" She defended Lawrence vehemently.

"But he was totally a bookworm prefect wasn't he?" Magus focused on what she hadn't commented on.

Paige scowled at the description and put her hands on her hips defensively.

"And what's wrong with that?" She demanded.

"Ugh you were one too weren't you?" Magus ridiculed throwing his hands up in disgust.

"Ignore Magus, he was expelled from Hogwarts." Peregrin interjected unhelpfully, with a smirk.

Paige's eyebrows shot up at the remark, there was no way.

Magus rolled his eyes like it was an old insult and he was used to arguing it.

"I left by my own volition BEFORE I could be expelled, there is a big difference." He clarified childishly to Peregrin.

"And at least I didn't get diarrhoea one time in potions and shit myself." He added with a challenging glare at Peregrin.

"You're such a jerk, McIntyre!" Peregrin accused him hotly, her plump face heating up.

"Yup, but a jerk who remembers our time in Hogwarts well, If you want to play the story time game." He reminded her with a wide, smarmy grin.

"I'm sorry you had to get paired with him, try not to let him get you killed like the rest." Amanda addressed Paige instead, now ignoring Magus.

"How long did they call you Poopegrin for again? Was it just up until you got busted by McGonagall going to third base with that chimp looking 6th year guy from Slytherin in a closet?" McIntyre shot back crudely, his face darkening a shade at her last comment.

"Fuck off and die McIntyre!" Amanda cried in embarrassment at his words and left the cubicle in a huff.

"I keep trying every day!" He jollily called after her.

Paige was stunned into silence by the recent verbal sparring she had been caught up in.

"So she can be a bit of a bitch sometimes that Peregrin. I wouldn't tell her anything that you wouldn't want the whole floor knowing." Magus lightly warned her.

He didn't seem hungry anymore or sleepy either and he slid down from his hammock, returning it back into the wiener dog calendar.

"We were at Hogwarts the same time, we usually get along alright. Sometimes she just forgets that she is pretty much just an admin clerk around here though." Magus explained, flopping down into his roller chair.

"Did you really get expelled?" Paige couldn't help but ask.

Her mentor chuckled.

"You ask a lot of questions don't ya, New Girl? Ravenclaw through and through."

He mused, evaluating her further with those intense eyes of his.

"I think it is time you and I have a talk about a few things." He decided ominously.