A/N- A quieter chapter, but setting the stage for some bigger things and some more daring action. Enjoy.
-Grey.
"I think it is time you and I have a talk about a few things." Magus announced ominously leaning in close on his office chair.
Seeing the nerves building in his young charge he cut right to the chase.
"We're coming to the end of the day." He started, Paige looked at her watch in confusion; it was only 2:34!
"How do you think you've done so far?" Magus wondered and the pause stretched until Paige realised he was expecting her to answer.
"I don't know, we've done a couple of jobs. I helped out a little." She murmured unable to read anything from his expression.
"You've done well today Kid, you've shown me you have a good head on your shoulders. That is pretty much the only prerequisite for this job." Magus gently assured her.
"But at the last job I.." She started to protest, but he shut her down.
"You behaved exactly as I'd expect a 17 girl to act on seeing her first dead body." He cut across her.
"I can see you are smart, Kid. Hell you're probably a good deal brighter than me. What you need is some pure animal cunning and a crafty teacher." He decided with an approving nod, as if he had someone in mind for the job.
Magus rolled his chair a little closer to Paige and leaned in close to talk to her in an intense hushed whisper.
"Now I ain't the perfect mentor, a great role model or person, but what I am is very, very good at this job. I stopped training others a long time ago, I was nothing special at that. But I'm also a sucker for someone with talent and passion. I don't say this very often, but if you want, I'll train you as best I know: teach you how to be the best at this job. The only thing I ask in return is you keep my privacy and you indulge my eccentricities."
"Like drinking, collecting debts and sleeping at work?" Paige challenged him.
"Exactly." He smiled like she was finally getting it.
"And you promise to train me? To take the time and answer all my questions? Honestly" She was sure to clarify.
"There are things I can teach you that no other wizard in the ministry could. And I swear to tell you only the truth, even if it isn't what you want to hear." He promised in return with a slight smirk.
"Deal." Paige finally agreed and held out her hand to seal it with a handshake as her father had always told her.
Magus seemed to like that and he grinned widely.
"Excellent. In that case Paige Calamari."
"Calamisi!" She interjected hotly.
"I take you on as my learner apprentice." He ordained in apparently serious tone, having seemingly not heard her.
"Your what?" Paige didn't get the reference.
"So about your homework for tonight.."
"You're giving me homework, on my first day?" She queried in confusion.
"Jeez I thought you Ravenclaws loooved homework. Here is me trying to do my teachering duty and everything." He threw his hands in the air dramatically like he couldn't be bothered anymore.
"Sorry, go on." Paige apologised quickly.
"It's a joke." He replied shortly.
"I said I'm sorry." She reiterated uncomfortably.
"No your homework, is a joke. Find one and tell it to me tomorrow."
"That is your important homework task?" She doubted his wisdom already.
"Super important. After all I'm the Jedi master here. What I say goes." He assured her, waving his hand in mystique.
"Jedi?"
"You're lucky I'm not making you carry me around in a little backpack.." Magus muttered to himself as if she was ungrateful.
"Oh my god! Watch Star Wars this weekend too and call that homework. Go!" He insisted in frustration as she still had no idea what he was going on about.
Paige wrote down the words Star Wars in her diary, along with the word joke and a big question mark. The questioning of her mentors sanity and the sanity of her decision was increasing by the hour.
Packing up her stuff, she noticed he made no sign of doing the same and was instead scribbling on an inter-office memo in blocky untidy handwriting. She read at least one rude word in the sentence before he snatched it up. His personalised office stationary had his name in a signature block at the bottom. Due to some amusing charm his nickname or alias in the middle seemed to suggestively change with each new minute. It currently read "Magus 'magic mouth' McIntyre".
Folding up the memo into a paper jet he tossed it over the nearest cubicle wall.
"Well see you tomorrow, Magus." Paige said slinging her bag over her shoulder.
"Yeah catch ya later Kid and tell the tall ginger bloke outside to come right in." He shot back.
Paige was surprised to see the older red headed man he had been speaking to in the café just coming up to the door of the cubicle.
"Please go right in, he's expecting you." Paige told Arthur, who smiled genially.
Walking past the other offices she waved goodbye to the Ben and Bryce, who grunted back. She called out to the girls on the Tracer desk who nodded as she got to the elevator. As she waited for the elevator to arrive, Paige couldn't help but wonder what her next day at the department would bring?
Home for Paige was small upstairs loft flat above a pub in the eastern end of London. While not particularly large it was however reasonably affordable to rent on a junior ministry employee's salary. Basic was an understatement, with a double bed, a small sideboard, a tiny kitchen table with two chairs and a set of drawers as the extent of the furniture. The kitchen was pokey and had minimal bench space, with only a single pantry and a small fridge for storage. The bathroom had a leaky tap, no bath and a cramped shower that she constantly knocked her pointed elbows in.
Despite the small size, for Paige it was home.
She had decorated it with lively colours to help brighten up the single roomed flat. Colourful artwork hid the bleak walls, depicting scenes of happy looking rivers and lovers walking beside a flowing stream. Purple vine stickers magically encircled the two plain lightshades and cast interesting shadows into the corners of the room. Her purple Ravenclaw duvet slashed her bed in colour and matched the dark blue pillows. The cramped kitchen had little potted herb plants and a giant pleasantly singing sunflower that reached for the tall ceiling.
Paige sighed in relief as she sat down on the corner of her bed and shrugged out of her shoes for the first time in the day. She was somewhat disappointed to see that her open window remained empty and that no owl had arrived for her from her boyfriend. The minuscule flat seemed much emptier without him sharing it.
Yes, her parents had been concerned when their middle daughter decided firmly to move out of home, halfway across the country to live with her boyfriend in a tiny London flat. But they loved Lawrence almost as much as she did and knew just how independent their daughter was. Paige had always liked to strive out on her own, never wanting and only ever reluctantly accepting help from others.
Closing the window to keep out the cooling late afternoon air, Paige sat down at the small table and began to write a letter to Lawrence to tell him about her first day, just as she had promised she would.
The quill paused in her hand though and for once in her life she didn't know what to write. How could she describe the emotionally and physically charged first day she had just had? How did she describe her unusual new mentor and her other odd colleagues to her boyfriend? She sat in thought for a long time, scribbling down the basics of the day leaving out the really weird stuff that would cause him concern. Light faded outside and Paige was writing in the dark before she knew it, having filled several sheets of parchment.
She yawned, the fatigue of the day suddenly bearing down on her as she rubbed her eyes and closed an envelope full of her rambling writings. Silently, Paige got up and performed her bedtime routine before slipping into her pyjamas and climbing into bed.
Paige arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed the following morning at 08:25, calling a subdued good morning to the rest of the office she briskly found her way to her cubicle. She was excited for a fresh day, a fresh start and the promise of some learning.
Her high hopes were dampened to see the cubicle empty, when she arrived. Setting her bag down Paige took a seat at the desk and waited.
It was 0905 before something happened, but that something wasn't Magus. Dawn ducked in the doorway to their office, looking like she had only just arrived. Her hair was windswept and her cheeks rosy from the cold wind outside.
"You are here bright and early." She chirped in greeting and Paige's smile flickered.
"What time was I supposed to be here?" The new girl asked in return.
"Did you not go out with Magus last night?" Dawn seemed surprised.
"Go out where?" Paige continued in confusion.
"You guys were rostered on call last night and got called out. I figured you'd catch up on some sleep before coming into the office." Dawn explained slowly.
"I didn't know that I was supposed to be on call!" Paige confessed in horror. Had she missed that detail in orientation? What had the others thought when she didn't show up to a call out? Her chest constricted in anxiety at the thought.
"Cut the Kid some slack, Dawn. It was her first day, so I gave her it off." A familiar voice called and the one and only Magus McIntyre appeared.
As usual he had forgone robes for a pair of faded black jeans and a thick knee length black and grey coat. He was carrying a stack of takeaway coffee cups balanced in one hand and he precariously perched them on the table as he shrugged his jacket off on to a coat stand. His jacket gave way to a simple grass green t-shirt and he slowly started passing out coffees.
"Damn, these butterscotch lattes really grow on you don't they?" He added taking another sip from his cup. The dark lines under his eyes suggested that he probably needed the caffeine.
"How was the night?" Dawn asked him, quirking her face at the unusual taste, but deciding it wasn't so bad. She came inside and sat on her usual spot on the corner of Magus's desk. Paige noticed that Dawn's robes were cut a bit shorter than most, so that it was more like a sundress then a traditional robe. It was a look she actually quite liked, the other girl seemed to pull it off alright anyway.
"Not bad. One job at about 0300: some muppet rolled over in bed and transfigured toadstools all up his wife's back. Or at that was his story anyway." Magus recounted in a bored tone.
Dawn shook her head in amazement, but Paige was interested.
"How did you fix it?" She wanted to know, eager to start her learning immediately.
"Good question." Magus nodded sagely, like he had hoped she would ask. His wise appearance was impaired by the foamy milk moustache he sported.
"So no standard reversing spells would work on her, nothing would remove them."
He told the enraptured audience.
"But then it hit me; he hadn't created them, he had simply engorged them!"
Both girls squirmed at the disgusting thought.
"I know right?" Magus screwed up his face in disgust at the memory.
"So anyway I simply shrunk her funky back fungus and went home to bed." He finished.
"Another life saved by Medicine Man: Magus McIntyre!" Dawn finished up his not-so-adventurous tale with a light, sarcastic tone.
"That Auror yesterday called you the Medicine Man too, didn't he?" Paige suddenly understood.
"Ugh yeah a few of the folk round here like calling me that, something of a bad nickname I guess that seemed to stick." Magus shrugged unconcerned and took another loud slurp of his coffee.
"It's because he actually went through muggle medical school, like to be a doctor!" Dawn proudly told her.
Paige's eyebrows rose in amazement, she had never heard of any wizard who had shunned the magical world to actually take up a muggle career before.
Magus rolled his eyes and pinched his friend's leg, making her squeal.
"Jeez Dawn, give away all my secrets why don't ya?" He grumbled.
"You shouldn't be ashamed of it, you should be proud." Dawn insisted rubbing her injured thigh.
"Proud of having the qualification taken off me by the Healer's Council? Yeah real achievement right there." He sarcastically muttered.
"Don't be Mr. Grumpy this morning, be the funny Medicine Man that everyone loves." Dawn pouted back at him and she tenderly wiped the milk mustache from his lip with her napkin.
Her tact worked.
Magus cracked his crooked grin and turned expectantly to Paige; the one eye that was slightly lower than the other seemed to bore into her.
"Thank you for reminding me, Sweets. Paige here has a great joke for us both."
Both faces turned on Paige and waited patiently for her to speak.
To find a joke: it had been a hard task for her, in the end she had asked the bartender who worked below her as she passed him on the way up the stairs last night.
Unsurprisingly he had a joke or two on hand.
"What do you call a Hufflepuff with one brain cell?" She slowly read out of her notebook.
Magus and Dawn looked at each other and shrugged
"Gifted." Paige revealed and she couldn't help the small grin that caught on her face.
Her mentor sniggered with laughter and Dawn chuckled too.
"Not bad, Kid." Magus granted her.
But she wasn't finished.
"What do you call a Hufflepuff with two brain cells?" Paige added.
Dawn leaned forward in anticipation.
"What?" She demanded curiously.
"Pregnant." Paige burst out smiling at the punchline. Since when had she ever enjoyed a joke that was mean or degrading?
The small cubicle erupted in laughter, long and loud.
Magus wiped tears of mirth from his eyes and nodded approvingly. Dawn seemed to be held in a fit of giggles.
"Very funny, I was in Hufflepuff and there is a disturbing amount of truth in that joke!" He claimed in mock seriousness.
"Wait, you were a Hufflepuff?" Paige snorted in amusement. She had always just assumed he was a Gryffindor or maybe a Slytherin.
"Sure, the roughest Puff that Sprout had ever seen." Magus rhymed, waving his hands around foolishly like he was a famous rapper. He finished in a ridiculous pose like he was at the photoshoot for the album cover of his terrible white rap group.
"It's true, she still told stories about him after he left." Dawn confirmed with a nostalgic chuckle.
"Yep, that old mandrake of a woman hated my ass. Always said I was in the wrong house." Magus conceded in good humour. Paige had never heard of a student that was disliked by the mellow herbology professor, but she was sure he could well have been the first.
"Well you were always getting into trouble and fights." Dawn defended the teacher in her opinion.
"It was that little private herbology project behind greenhouse 2 that she got really riled up about." Magus winced in recollection.
"So why was my homework to find a joke?" Paige interrupted in confusion.
Magus punched Dawn in the arm in a friendly way as if to reinforce the fighting and trouble part.
"That is to teach you the most important part of this job, Paige." He sagely replied in a Yodaesque tone.
Dawn rolled her eyes at his theatrics and Paige was quick to follow her example.
"To survive in this job you need to find a sense of humour; you will see and deal with some pretty rough things in this career. If you don't learn to laugh at some of it, you'll burn out." Magus explained his core philosophy and in an odd way it made sense.
More surprisingly, Dawn even agreed with him for a change.
"Magus is right." She affirmed and the man in question looked incredulous and made a show of clearing his ears as if he couldn't have heard her right. Dawn threw her empty coffee cup at his head to cease his shenanigans.
"Look at Ben or Bryce: those guys have been doing this much longer than Magus, but are total washouts because they had no sense of humour." She gave as an example.
"So now they live at their desks, dodging all the medical calls and overnight shifts, like a pair of overgrown Flobberworms." Magus ended sarcastically.
"How much fun do you think they have at work?" Dawn posed the question.
"Exactly, don't be like them." Magus warned getting to his feet once more and Paige took this as her cue to do the same.
"On that note, let's go have some fun." He suggested leading the way from the office, both the women followed his lead.