Tapping his fingers on the desk, Neil shut his eyes as he contemplated the slate of events yesterday. Getting hungover, accidentally screwing over his brother with a dumb rumour, rushing to the scene, almost dying, dealing with Albus Potter, comforting his teammates, discovering more goons and criminals in a hotel... It was a lot.

Lily's desk was still empty. She had called in sick today but he wasn't surprised at all. He knew she probably wasn't really sick but it did not matter. He understood things from her perspective, the need for a breather, for a break from everything else in the world.

In truth, he was concerned, much like the rest of his team. She had refused to reply to any other messages and calls beyond contacting him about her sick leave.

"Neil... I'm worried about Lily. As in, I'm seriously concerned about her," Cynthia said, "What if this is the beginning of a spiral of depression for her? What if - what if she keeps calling sick in the future because of this-"

"Then we will have to manage without her, which will be difficult... Look, I'm with you on this... But I think we should give her at least a day without being bothered by the rest of her team. Sometimes it's important."

"Or having a negligent team could deprive an Auror of her best source of support," Cynthia rebutted flatly. "I... would know how it feels better than you."

Sighing, Neil was in no mood to counter her, not that he really disagreed with her on it either. Somehow, all the snarky quips that swarmed around his head had evaporated. "I know. I must have been hard."

Silence.

"It must have been hard to - to - re-adjust after..."

"Yeah. Had to see a therapist. Saw all my other colleagues get promoted, progressing, flourishing and I... I felt like shit."

"I'm sorry to hear, I hope it's all better now for you."

"Sort of. I no longer feel suicidal... I considered quitting the Aurors during my suspension, you know. Thought a different job would get everything off my mind. Applied for all sorts of things: retail, coffee shops, magical research, journalism, security contracting... all of them rejected me. Maybe my record or reputation or inability to get over myself impacted my chances. I couldn't exactly travel much either - restrictions from the ministry and all that. I was too embarrassed to see other people so I mostly kept to myself in my house. None of the rest of the team kept on contact with me either and my colleague, Thomas MacLaggen, who was promoted, kind of shut me out of his life. So when I could begin working again, you couldn't imagine how relieved I was... cautiously hopeful, perhaps. It's not bad these days."

"Cynthia," Neil felt compelled to say, "I know we haven't gotten along all the time... but if you ever feel the need to chat about this, just let me know. I might be that helpful, but I can at least listen."

"Thanks."

"Really, I mean it."

~X~

It felt great to torch the man alive with Fiendfyre, he wasn't to lie.

Today had been a particularly vile day. Being assaulted by criminal thugs in Paris hadn't been ideal so he ended up pursuing then, getting entangled in a wider gang shoot-out and taking the life of an especially disagreeable ringleader. Except it brought forth more problems... and opportunities that he didn't necessarily appreciate.

Hence why he was sitting before a French mobster wearing the most garish purple suit he had ever witnessed, hands clapping and elated at the scene of death and torture. Somehow the guy spoke in a British accent - must have been a British wizard in France then - and he kept rambling, rambling and rambling about how much he had heard about Albus. "Brilliant! Just as I expected! Sensational!"

"Are you okay?" Albus corked an eyebrow - it was really quite hard to suppress. "After all, I just killed one of your men."

"Oh Jacques and I were having a feud, he was very possibly trying to orchestrate a coup against me and you bumped into him at the perfect time and place..." The man waived off the questions with a whiff of nonchalance.

"Too perfect," Albus remarked. "Sounds almost... orchestrated."

"Oh don't say that! You make me sound like a bad person!" He flung his arms up high.

"Right, of course not. It was great meeting you, I'm glad my unfortunate scuffle leaves no bad blood between us," Albus said curtly as he stood up and headed towards the door.

"Hang on! Don't leave just yet!" With a flick of his wand, the door was bolted. "Apologies, I don't want to antagonize you, Albus, only a fool would do that, but rather, I would like to leave you with ... an offer."

"I'm not interested," Albus said as he took out his wand and was about to unlock the door in front of him. It was always the same, they would ask him to do them a favour, capture a person or two, run an errand for some nice cash - not this time though. Gangs were more difficult than individuals, they came with other entanglements too and he was feeling rather...uninterested, to say the least.

"I can give you what you want, Albus," the man insisted. "And it's only a small thing you'll need to do in return."

"You don't know what I want." Alohamora, he whispered.

"A chance, Albus, I can give you a second chance-"

"That's not what I want," Albus interjected bluntly. But there was a tingling sensation throughout his back. Could the man really mean - no. No one knew. Classical act of bluffing.

"All this contracting, this mercenary-like state of existence... It must be very tiring for you, Albus. Don't you ever long for the days when you were just an ordinary and upstart Auror? You could have been in your father's place now, had you stayed..."

The voice was familiar. He'd heard of it somewhere... some distant figment of his memory. It had to be...

"You're not French," Albus stated out of the blue.

"I- How is that-"

"I know who you are. I know who you used to be. And I know what you want and what you want to do. And I'm not interested."

"I have a powerful time turner... the last of them! If you ever want to contact me again... the offer is still on the table!" The man called behind him frantically as Albus quickly rushed away from the lair, like the tempting sound of a siren.