A/N- A belated merry Christmas to everyone. Here is your present sorry about the delay, leave a review if you want and enjoy.

-Grey.


Having the whole rest of the week off did have its perks though; Paige had gotten all her laundry done, had lunch with her parents, read a whole book on defensive charms and caught up on her sleep.

At lunch, her mother had of course fussed over her recent encounter, an event that Paige had wisely omitted many details from. Louise Calamisi was a kind loving woman who made potions as a side business to raising Paige and her sisters. Accordingly, she had a fair number of draughts for her daughter to take upon the revelation of her traumatic experience.

"Are you sure you don't want a draught of dreamless sleep or how about a calming draft?" She had repeatedly offered in concern. Indeed, she seemed as upset about Paige's refusal, as she did the fight itself. A rather old fashioned woman and a scholar herself, she found the idea of magical duelling crass and unladylike.

Although, she had quite helpfully offered a skin softening solution to aid Paige in the reduction of scarring on her burnt shoulder. While healed as best could, the burn still ached and felt overly warm most of the time, this was made worse by the wearing of anything with shoulder straps.

Her father was a different story altogether. A stern hard wizard of great height and stature, Donatello Calamisi was a further Chimera handler and the current head of an Italian based international curse breaking firm. His knuckles had clenched white at the table when he had heard that his youngest daughter had been in a firefight with three Death Eaters. When she had first started recounting the story, Paige was afraid that her father was going to uplift his wand, pop down to the ministry and curse Fudge himself.

Her parents listened in stunned silence as she described her first few days and the first fight she had entered into. She omitted several parts, such as the daily heavy drinking of her mentor and his often obtuse attitude to the ministry.

Accordingly, she must have given her parents the wrong impression of him.

"He sounds like he has his head on straight, to fight off three Death Eaters." Her father gruffly noted seemingly impressed, his thick bushy beard quivering. The grey streaks in it were longer now then she ever remembered.

"I helped him, Dad!" Paige insisted fervently, not wanting her contribution forgotten.

"And he studied at muggle medical school? How peculiar!" Her mother noted with sincere interest as if it was the most foreign of concepts.

"He is really unusual; a bit of a joker." Paige readily agreed.

"Well if he has taken you under his wing and is looking out for you, be grateful." Her father advised her in his usual stern demeanour.

"Yes daddy." Paige loyally intoned as her standard response.

"We should have him round for dinner for some time and maybe your other new friend, Donna was it?" Louise suggested helpfully.

Paige had a sudden horrifying vision of her clowning mentor with his boots resting on the Calamisi dinner table and chugging back her father's good whiskey. In the background of the image, her straight-laced parents watched in disgust and her father had his wand out in outrage.

"Dawn." Paige emerged from her terrifying vision to correct her mother automatically and stuttered for a worthy excuse.

"They are both really busy Mum, working nightshifts and stuff, it might be too hard to organise." She quickly added refusing to look at her father, he had a terrible habit of knowing when she was hiding something.

"I'm sure we can find a night that works." Her mother assured her, not noticing Paige's obvious reluctance.

"McIntyre did you say his name was?" Donatello muttered as if taking careful note of it. Perhaps he had read more into her expression than she had noticed.

"Common name, Irish I think." Paige confirmed nervously.

"I don't recognise it, but it sounds familiar." Her father continued musing as if he hadn't heard her. Paige was sure he was going to be checking in with some of his old friends at the ministry to see what he could find out about her mentor.

The rest of the lunch had been uneventful, her mother talked about the shortage in lacewing supplies, her father discussed a series of crypts that had just been breached in Peru.

Paige heard news from the rest of her family; her younger sister Jessica was due her first Hogsmeade visit soon and she was excited for that. Paige's older sister Maggie, had split from her dirt-bag boyfriend and was still working at Flourish and Blotts. Paige couldn't help but notice the hidden contempt from her mother when she talked about the romantic choice of the sister that was older by two years. Her mum had always hated Noel Neverine, the rough Ex-Slytherin that Maggie had gotten together with when she left Hogwarts. Noel was a tattooed skinhead, who was renowned for his quickness to start fights and to carry a blade on him in addition to a wand. What Noel did for work no one really wanted to know because it probably wasn't very nice and accordingly, Maggie had alienated herself from the family to a large extent with the unconventional pairing. As her mother had often drawn the comparison, "He is no Lawrence..."


Friday came all too soon for Paige, while she had plenty of time to reply to Lawrence's letter, telling him all about the upcoming ministry Halloween party and imploring him to come. Despite the rest, she still didn't feel ready to return to work.

Stepping back into the office on Friday, Unwin Doit immediately bounced from his office to boyishly pump her hand and enquire about her health after her 'encounter' as he so tactfully put it. After much assurances that she was feeling much better, Paige continued onto her shared office.

At 0830 she was still somehow early for work and had, as usual, beaten her mentor into the office. Instead she found a small sealed envelope on her desk, an interoffice memo as it turned out.

The tidy block letters of Kingsley Shacklebolt were there to remind her of the meeting she was to have with him later that morning. Paige was just rereading the short note again when her mentor made his reluctant appearance.

As usual he looked rough as guts, as if he had rolled straight out of bed and put on the first pair of clothes that he landed on. His usual black jeans and combat boots were contrasted by a crumpled, canary yellow t-shirt that had a picture of a black smiley face, but with black crosses for eyes and a tongue hanging out. It seemed oddly appropriate since he both looked and smelt terribly hungover.

"Sup, Rookie." He greeted gruffly, tossing his man-bag across the room to crash at his desk.

"Good days off?" She asked of him, friendlily but with an edge of sarcasm at his appearance.

"I only took one, think I slept most of it." He shrugged, rubbing a chin over his prickly five o'clock shadowed jaw and yawning deeply.

"Seriously?" Paige's mouth dropped open in shock and horror. Her mentor seemed not to notice and was pouring a combination of milk and coffee liqueur into a bowl of cornflakes.

"Why didn't you take the whole week off, like you told me to do?" She demanded incredulously.

A voice piped up predictably from the door of the cubicle.

"That's what I said, about a hundred times!" An impatient looking Dawn agreed, irritation hanging unusually ugly in her attractive features.

Magus pushed up the aviators that covered a heavily bloodshot eye and the raw wound that lined his cheek. He smiled happily through a mouthful of unconventional breakfast and coffee coloured milk that dribbled down his chin.

Putting his bowl down, he gestured around him.

"The wheels fall off this place when I'm gone. How would the department ever cope without me?" He purported grandly, the effect lost slightly as he still chewed noisily.

Dawn rolled her eyes irritably, but couldn't find an answer yet.

"Well there would be a lot less bloodstained towels in the bathroom." Dawn challenged him eventually.

"Pfff you can't prove that was my blood." Magus stated in a superior manner.

"You're an idiot." Dawn informed him flatly, for what was surely not the first time.

"Total idiot." Paige agreed, glad she was not alone in the opinion. The girls had begun to bond on that point.

Magus seemed completely nonplussed at the concordance and merely slurped loudly the last of the boozy milk from his bowl.

"Besides.." He continued his argument to the two stone-faced witches with folded arms who faced off against him.

"If I didn't come to work who would you have to eat lunch with, Dawn?" He arched an eyebrow questioningly at his defensive friend. Paige assumed they must have meant if she was off sick too, because she found Dawn quite an agreeable lunch buddy.

Dawn opened her mouth to reply, seemed to think better and closed it again with a petulant look.

"Such an idiot, Magus." She settled on restating, but her face betrayed a hint of a smile. The astute wizard obviously picked up on this because he was quick to respond.

"Ah, but I am your idiot." He specified as that was the crucial part.

Dawn shook her head somewhere between amusement and horrific realisation.

"Oh god, don't say that! Dammit, you sort of are, aren't you?"

Still shaking her head, she turned robe and departed in a huff of frustration.

"See ya at lunch, Sweets!" Magus called after her, a triumphant grin alighting his weary face. He appeared convinced that he had won that mornings fight.


Paige having apparently been forgotten from another one of their arguments simply looked entertained and hid her smile by bringing up her note to reread.

"Oh shit, you got your meeting with Kingsley today don't ya?" Magus realised, eyeing the memo.

"Yup, did you finish your report that you had to write?" Paige asked him doubtfully.

"Hmm what report now?" Magus mumbled with a smirk, barely paying attention and she noticed that he had just been doodling on a napkin from the coffee shop they now frequented. It was a magical stick figure drawing of two people walking down a street. Paige realised that the one with long hair and oversized glasses drawn on their face was probably her, the other one appeared to have three legs and must have been the crude visual representation of himself. As she watched the two figures lay down behind a wall as three black stick figures came out with frowny faces in green pen. Various coloured pens had been used to add life to the roughly drawn flying spells that shot back and forth. Two StickEaters then fell down along with the three legged man in a big puff of smoke as a poorly drawn building disappeared. The final frame showed many wizards and witches turning up holding hands, dancing and singing. In the background of the picture, an unmistakeable underpants jellyfish swam its way around the border.

There was also one final picture that seemed to show a crude caricature of Cornelius Fudge, whose head grew larger and redder until it eventually exploded.

Paige snorted in amusement and disbelief at his laziness and cheek.

"I stayed up all night doing it." Magus sarcastically informed her, roughly stuffing the magic napkin comic into an envelope and throwing it as a paper dart.

"How are you still employed again?" Paige incredulously and genuinely asked him, wondering aloud what was often flitting through her head.

"Hawkeye factor, baaaby." He smarmily revealed as if she should know what that meant.

Paige raised an eyebrow in an uncanny impression of Dawn.

"Now your meeting with Shacklebolt this morning.." He changed the subject rather than explain. Suspiciously he glanced around the cubicle before throwing a muttered muffliato spell at the door and waited until it had enveloped the whole office.

"He's a straight up fella. Don't lie to him, don't embellish anything." Magus cautioned her, in a rare moment of seriousness.

"Is he someone I need to be careful around?" Paige uncertainly asked him, having come to the understanding recently that some people in the ministry were unreliable at best.

"For a different reason. Kingsley is one of the good guys, hell he is one of the best. But part of his chat today will probably be trying to recruit you." Magus slowly explained.

"As an Auror?" Paige checked uncertainly, surely her fighting skills had not been that impressive.

Magus genuinely chuckled at the idea.

"Not a chance, too skinny and certainly not based on your shooting the other day! No he will try and get you to join the secret little club he has with Dumbledore."

"A secret club? What do they do?" Paige asked intrigued at the mention of her old headmaster and one of the greatest wizards in modern history, unless the prophet was to be believed. Her curiosity trumped her hurt feelings and allowed her to disregard his light insults.

"It's mainly gobstones and golf on the weekends I believe." Magus replied with a straight face for almost an entire minute.

"They are gearing up to fight Voldemort and his followers of course." He corrected obviously.

"Does the ministry know about this club?" Paige demanded, uncertain about how she felt about such a group. She had been still unsure whether Voldemort was back and gathering power once more or if it was a tall tale as the media reported. That was before she had battled Death Eaters with her own wand and saw the evidence for herself though.

"Didn't you see the muppet of magic Fudge the other day? That tosspot is in denial, doesn't want to believe the Dark Lord is back in the game." Magus retorted lightly.

"Fudge feels threatened by Dumbledore, thinks he is making up shit to depose him, so their little bird group is still largely underground." He elaborated on the political climate that Paige had missed the development of, while she was at Hogwarts.

"That is why he sent his undersecretary to Hogwarts, to keep an eye on Dumbledore." Paige suddenly understood remembering the article about her stationing earlier in the year.

"Bingo. It's a blessing if you ask me getting her out of here; that repugnant pug of a woman once wrote me up for 'dress inappropriate for work'. Can you believe that? The shirt only had one swear word on it.." Magus nodded his approval.

"So are you and Dawn in this secret group?" Paige asked him remembering the package Magus had taken from Mundungus on their first day together.

Magus wore an odd thoughtful expression at the question.

"Our memberships must have got lost in the mail." He shrugged, trying to play it down.

"They never asked you?" Paige seemed surprised by this, for some reason in her head, her mentor seemed beyond question aligned to the good guys.

Maybe.

Albeit he was a lazy, drunken crusader for the light, but it seemed odd he was never invited.

"Not so much." Magus again shrugged and inspected a dent in his wand carefully.

"I'm maybe seen as a little… unpredictable and Dawn.. Well they had their reasons, I'm told." He elaborated after a minute or so.

"What reasons?" Paige asked in curiosity, but she soon saw she had breached a touchy subject as Magus ignored her question.

"No big deal, we didn't want to be in their silly bird club anyway." He sneered.

"It's a bird club?" Paige was confused now.

"Oh they call it something stupid like 'the Order of the Phoenix' or something. Dumbledore has a real boner for his pet bird." Magus derisively explained.

"Don't get me started on that bloody phoenix of his.. Couldn't spare a couple of lousy tears..." He added in a low mutter

"So you are telling me I shouldn't join up, if Kingsley asks me to?" Paige confirmed she had understood him.

Magus shrugged his broad shoulders indifferently, apparently committed to remaining obtuse this morning.

"Do what ya want, but know that they got a pretty high mortality rate if the last war was anything to go by." He muttered, examining his cheek wound now in the shiny surface of his recently licked clean breakfast spoon.

"Oh." Paige uttered in understanding as the reason for his warning.

"The way I see it; you can still do the right thing and stand up for what matters without being part of some big movement. I don't need others to tell me what is right and wrong." Magus elaborated with another shrug and continuing to inspect his wand.

They passed the next couple of minutes in an unusual and awkward silence, until Paige looked at her watch and realised it was time for her meeting.

She got up to leave, but Magus halted her before she could step out of the office.

"Seriously Kid, forget about me and Dawn or what we are doing. You make the right decision for you and yours." He insisted firmly, an odd, inscrutable expression on his face. Having said his piece, the odd wizard now withdrew a miniature cauldron and several skewers that ended in fork tips.

"Thanks for the heads up." Paige gratefully told her mentor and left for her appointment with the senior Auror.


The offices of magical law enforcement were a far flung stretch from the department of magical accidents and catastrophes. For one thing Paige noticed that every witch and wizard seemed to be hard at work, whether it was on paperwork, processing members of the public or simply discussing work in low tones with other small teams of their colleagues.

This was what Paige had imagined her own office would be when she turned up and a small part of her was jealous for a minute. Then she remembered the small fondue pot Magus had been setting up in their office before she had left. Maybe you can work and still have fun, she considered for the first time.

Rufus Scrimgeour glowered on his way past with two other tough looking wizards in tow, there was a familiar napkin screwed up in his bony clenched fist.

"Ms Calamisi, over here!" A deep voice said and she turned to find Kingsley standing outside his office having just bid farewell to a rather grizzled member of the public it seemed. The visitor stumped away on a wooden leg, his magical eye whizzing this way and that, ever alert in a state of constant vigilance.

"Good morning, Mr Shacklebolt." She brightly greeted him and he waved her past him inside.

The office was very much like Kingsley himself; all business it would seem. Photos were spread across the walls, not of family but of fugitives. Most prominently the dirty dishevelled face of notorious still escaped as-far-as-anyone-knew mass murderer; Sirius Black.

"Please, just call me Kingsley, we are all colleagues and friends here." He assured her pleasantly.

"Paige then, please." She reciprocated in polite insistence and took the seat he offered her. Kingsley closed his door and muttered a muffliato to keep their conversation private.

Kingsley closed the folder in front of him and set his quill down on top of it, he took his time studying Paige.

"On the books here Paige, I'm taking your statement about what happened on Tuesday." He begun slowly.

"Off the books however, I know what happened and I think you do too."

"Those Death Eaters were there to kill that guy Kakaroff." Paige quietly guessed.

"Well deduced. I am in no doubt of your mental acumens." Kingsley softly agreed.

"But this is a narrative that the minister of magic refuses to accept and so we need to collaborate a story that will not scupper your blossoming career here." He continued.

"The truth is something jealously guarded at the moment, Paige. Rejected by some and tarnished by others for their own means, but one thing is inevitable." Shacklebolt went on at barely a low whisper.

"There is a war coming isn't there, Kingsley?" Paige nervously headed him off.

"Indeed, young lady. A terrible fight and oppression the likes of which haven't been seen in nearly 16 years." He ominously agreed.

"And so the Order must form again." Kingsley finished grimly.

"The Order of the Phoenix, right?" Paige guessed again and once more Kingsley looked impressed.

"You are well informed, Paige. I would ask your source?" He enquired, his tone however somewhat more guarded.

"Magus. He told me you would look to recruit me." Paige decided honesty was the best policy against the formidable wizard.

Kingsley looked slightly troubled by this revelation and started scratching at the hem of his robe nervously, if Paige hadn't spent so much time with her mentor she wouldn't have known it as a tactic to keep a hand close to ones wand.

"You would offer me a place, but not him or Dawn?" Paige was curious and wanted a better answer.

Kingsley looked increasingly uncomfortable, but hid it well and tried his best to explain.

"Your mentor Magus is a unique case; a wildcard, he could be very valuable as an ally or rather dangerous."

"Dangerous?!" Paige snorted in disbelief before remembering she was at her adult job being vetted for a position in a secret organisation and had to be mature. Sure her mentor was no fluffy kitten but when she thought of the venom in which he battled the Death Eaters with, there was no chance he was on their side.

"Magus is considered friendly to the order and has in fact pulled a few of our operatives out of various scrapes over the past few months. The truth of the matter is that he flat out declined membership when he was approached about it last month." Kingsley admitted sounding somewhat puzzled by the whole matter himself.

"He refused to join?!" Paige voiced back in confusion. Magus had made it sound earlier as though he had never been asked.

"As for Dawn Dennison, there are some questions as to where her allegiances lie." Kingsley delicately phrased it, but had given her a large hint.

"But Dawn is the most sweetest, loveliest, somewhat protective.."

"Person that you have known for about a week?" Shacklebolt finished for her sharply and Paige couldn't deny the claim. The way he said it implied that they knew several dark things about Dawn's past that Paige did not..

"I suppose." Paige conceded, trying not to sound like a petulant child. To be fair she didn't know much surrounding the past of either of her new friends.

"Her prior affiliations give some in the Order doubts about her and by extension her extremely loyal friend, Magus." Shacklebolt finished grimly, his tone left no room for argument on the matter.


Her meeting with Kingsley finished soon after that with him imparting her with a final ultimatum.

"I don't expect an answer now, but think about my offer of place. The Order could always use more bright young ministry workers who are willing to accept Voldemort's return."

Paige was glad he hadn't pressured her for an answer then, she honestly wasn't sure what to say in answer. She decided that she would discuss the matter with her parents and get their take on things.

On returning to the office she saw that Magus had indeed fired up a little cauldron of fondue and was taking turns with Dawn dunking little hunks of bread into the melted cheese.

Taking turns was perhaps putting it generously; more so it appeared the two would fence with their elongated dunking forks to get the largest pieces of bread and to successfully submerge them in the delicious smelling solution. Watching the two sword fight in friendly competition, Paige couldn't help wonder what the two were hiding to not be joined up on the good guys crack team.

Now nursing two savage little puncture wounds in the back of his hand from a particularly vigorous battle with Dawn, Magus produced a third fork for his intern.

Paige appreciated that neither of them pestered her for details about her meeting with Shacklebolt and instead it was largely idle chatter and gossip that they shared around the fondue cauldron like a trio of cheese worshipping vultures.

There was an open and cheese stained copy of the Prophet on her desk, awaiting her turn to read it as was the process in the office. She had learnt within the week that the most senior officers read the paper first and it slowly got passed down the ranks throughout the day until she got to read the paper, which was usually thoroughly thumbed through, food stained and with the switching crossword filled out. Today she noticed some slandering article about Dumbledore taking up the front page and only a brief mention of 'the altercation' that her department had been involved in. There was no mention of Karkaroff or death eaters, she assumed Fudge had ensured that was the case.

"I was just telling Dawny here about your mate Tim." Magus pulled Paige into their conversation.

"Who?" Paige asked in puzzlement, she had met so many new wizards in the past week she struggled to remember all their names.

"The tall bloke from Law Enforcement who had the misfortune of having his nose straightened out by you the other day?" He reminded her.

"Oh yeah." Paige remembered now before coming back to the description he had used.

"Wait, what do you mean misfortune?" She started at him hotly.

"Well he does have a bit of a kink in his schnoz now." Dawn delicately told her.

"It could point round corners." Magus amended her statement and got another stab in the hand for his trouble.

"It's honestly not that bad, he doesn't seem to mind." Dawn hurried to reassure her.

"It was the first nose I had tried to fix and I was in a hurry." Paige confessed guiltily.

"Don't sweat it, I think Tiny Tim must like you some see, he isn't complaining. To be honest he was a little to ordinary looking before; the nose gives him some character." Magus contemplated.

"Besides, for guys it is sort of a rite of passage having your nose broken at some point. He'll get some tough guy credit from the incident, maybe just don't let on how it happened exactly." He finished, rubbing his own slightly misshapen nose.

The now familiar Tequila ringtone interrupted any unlikely chance of further discussion on the matter.

Her ridiculous mentor sprung to his feet dancing around in an exaggerated childish manner, letting the tone run through to its completion. Swiping a sheet of paper from the desk he wiped the messy stubble around his mouth of any stray cheese and bread crumbs. As he dumped the sheet back on the table, Paige noticed that it was a very important looking document and had his name at the top. She only caught a glance of the terms 'Disciplinary Action' 'Official Warning' and 'Unwizarding Conduct' before it continued to flutter finally coming to a rest in his rubbish bin.

"Orange job, lets boogie." Magus joked exiting the cubicle with a sharp two step.

Paige noticed his limp was barely present anymore as the goofy man lead the way to the dispatch desk.

"Mikayla, good morning. How is Satan?" He enthusiastically asked the skinny gothic girl who was sitting alone at the table.

"He says hi." The girl replied in a deapan manner, her wide eyes seemed to bore into Paige and stare right into her soul. Creepy….

"Broom accident huh? Much left?" Magus read off the card she had passed him.

"Enough for a call to us evidently." The Tracer replied in her same flat tone.

"Access sounds to be difficult, side of a cliff. It looks like you might be flying in." Mikayla continued sombrely.

Magus paled slightly at the words and he cursed under his breath, his entire demeanour changed with the news.

"Crapsticks. I was really keen on not dying today." He groaned.

"I'm not bothered really either way." Mikayla soulfully contemplated the idea.

"Flying? As in on brooms?" Paige gulped, she had definitely not been on the house Quidditch team.

"Unless you got wings tucked down the back of those robes." Her mentor quipped leading the way towards the fire.

"And I know you don't.." He reminded her with a conspiratorial look, causing her to gasp at his audacity.