Alice strode into the office at her usual time. Fabian, who was usually on the side of five minutes late, was in early, and he was at his desk, scribbling furiously onto a ream of papyrus, his writing medium of choice as a vegetarian wizard. His shoulders seemed to be heaving, and when Alice saw his face and the papyrus he was writing on, both were tear-stained.

"Have you been crying?" Alice asked, matter-of-factly.

Fabian turned his face to look up at her, eyes shining and lips trembling. He bit his lip, and his mouth curved downwards. He was repressing the urge to sob. He took in several deep breaths, and gripped the edge of the table tightly. Pushing his chair backwards, he began to speak.

"I went to see Crouch."

"Oh," said Alice. "It is good you went to see him early. Get it over and done with, before the myriad demands of the day put further stress on his nerves, thus increasing his ferocity."

Fabian nodded sadly, still looking like he was about to burst into tears. Alice was awash with a fondness for him, for he seemed so guileless and undeserving of Crouch's anger. It was true that no Aurors were supposed to be on the scene, and it was by a stroke of luck there was even one to lend expertise to controlling the unexpected prison riot. Yet Alice also wondered if her friend was at all suitable for this line of work. He was so naturally bestowed with compassion and generosity of spirit it seemed that he would not survive for long in this job, where daily they faced the abyss of human darkness.

And yet like her he had over five years on the job, three in training and two as full-fledged Aurors. Their role was not known to the world, yet they undertook the most crucial task of preserving the security of the magical world, preventing it both from consuming the world in its own darkness and from total annihilation by muggles. The heads had assigned Fabian to the back end, in a research-intensive role, which required him to frequently dwell in the laboratories in the Department of Mysteries with the Unspeakables. It was where Ravenclaws were frequently shunted, but Alice believed she would be of better use out on the field and successfully persuaded Crouch to assign her to the role she wanted.

She was not prone to displays of affection, but she recognised that this was a situation that could be ameliorated with a hug, and so she reached out and squeezed Fabian around his shoulders. In that moment the thought came to her that if she were in his situation, that is, if she were the one sobbing and heaving at her desk on a workday morning, it would have been taken as a sign that she was too weak for the job and Crouch would have fired her for an improper outburst of feminine emotions. Fabian had sobbed many a time at his desk, and yet his tears seemed tolerated.

It was not without cost, on the other hand, for Fabian had confided in her often about his feelings of inadequacy on the job alongside people such as her. They were friends, certainly, but Alice wanted to say that it took her twice as much work as a witch to get the same recognition as any other wizard doing the same work.

A while later, the rest of the team filed in, and on hearing Fabian's sniffles and on seeing his hunched up pose, expressed varying degrees of disappointment that they missed Crouch's legendary displays of rage. Even without hearing his tirade Alice could make a reasoned guess at its content. He would have screamed at Fabian for encountering a Dark Wizard and failing to capture him, or to even pin down any identifying characteristics that could be subject to further investigation. On top of that, he let a detainee of an ongoing investigation escape with this Dark Wizard, and any dark magical activity to emerge in the next few weeks or so would squarely be Fabian's fault. It didn't matter that this was unplanned, all that did was that Fabian was in a situation to act and he failed to produce any positive result from it.

The day begun, Alice picked up some memos from her inbox. There was one case near Swansea, not particularly urgent, but it gave her a sudden craving for cockles. She decided she could squeeze this in between her other outfield investigations today, and set about preparing her notes and equipment.

...

White-grey gulls with their orange feet cawed from orange beaks while salty waves broke upon the sandy shore, in bursts of foam that frothed and subsided. The tide was receding, and the mouth of the bay was strewn with flotsam and debris and driftwood, webbed and gnarled like sunken sea-bones.

"This was where I found it, the branch that spread death in its deadness."

"How many casualties so far?"

"My dog, and a child before it."

"Why are children out on the beach during winter?"

"I don't know. Maybe she was lost."

Alice made a note to contact the local muggle police about the deceased child. She levitated the offending branch into an evidence bag. The branch was small, just a twig off a shrub, spiked with thorns and bleached pale by the sun and sea. It seemed common, and did not emanate any noticeable dark energy from its core. A cursory scan of the branch told her that this was not a local shrub, but further testing was needed to identity the exact species. Of more interest to her at this moment was the deceased muggle child.

She headed back into town, stopping by the police station to ask about the reported circumstances of this child's death. It seemed that this child died alone, and that she had died in the middle of the night several days ago. The owner of the dead dog found her bloated and pale body not too far from where his dog died, and he called the police down. No one had come forth to identify the child, and during the investigation the branch had caused several more accidental deaths, which led to the call for magical assistance.

Alice collected several more interviews on the incident, and moved on to her next investigation.