31st July, 1980
MINISTRY OF MAGIC, IMPROPER USE OF MAGIC
It was a busy day at the Ministry and Mafalda was very very tired.
She had only just joined the Ministry after giving her NEWTS. She applied for a position in the Improper use of magic department and the ministry accepted her as an intern fairly easily.
Afterall why would they not? She was a halfblood and her mother had been a pureblood from an influential family.
Now, Mafalda had never really worked hard. She had indeed worked but never hard enough, there was no need for her to. She was from a well off family and had always earned average grades during Hogwarts. That was good enough for her to get a job at the ministry and marry a good man with a ministry job too. She didn't want much more.
It had been hardly 2 weeks since she had joined this job and she swore she would be getting grey hairs soon.
The Dark Lord's influence was growing more so ever and while Ministry was doubling the funding for DMLE it had cut short funding for few other departments.
It was all ever Ministry employees talked or more like complained about these days. She supposed she could understand why it was done but that did not mean she liked it. Her salary had not been reduced or her department's either but there were not going to be any increments either for a few years.
Mafalda was many things but stupid was not one of them so when she was asked to track magical signatures around muggle areas apart from muggleborn's homes she had accepted it easily because she knew it was necessary.
It was war.
She tracked spurts of magic on a large map and patterns of it like a hawk all day on a large map of London and it's surrounding areas in her small office.
No one apart from her Head of department, Head of DMLE and a few select aurors knew about the work she did. She informed them about potential places where death eaters might strike or where they've already striked so that a team could be sent quickly.
Mafalda looked at the sunset through her window and sighed, she wasn't paid enough for this job. She massaged her forehead to prevent the building headache and saw that only 1 hour was left then she could finally go home and sleep in her fuzzy soft pajamas.
It was then only that she saw a tiny ball of growing light on the map around a northern London suburb. She squinted her eyes and saw it was coming from Hampstead and its brightness was growing at a rapid rate it was so bright that she had to shut her eyes.
She blindly reached for her wand and cast and Patronus to call the aurors.