Sirius got into work forty-five minutes late. He had to stand at the door to the shared office in front of everyone whilst the head auror, Melany Bell, shouted his ear off about punctuality and dereliction of duty and about how if he wanted to qualify to work in the Auror Division he had to be committed to the job.

As Sirius flopped down at his desk, he could not help but think that Bell should have known he had been out until the small hours taking his superior Christopher Kirke to St Mungo's. It was her job to know.

Sirius had been hoping to get a moment's peace when Moody came striding over across the open-plan office, his staff in hand.

'Just read your report, Black.' He smacked the file down hard onto the desk. 'Did you write it in your bloody sleep?'

'Just about,' Sirius said, struggling to keep his eyes fully open.

Moody frowned down at him, then pulled out a cup of coffee from somewhere amongst the folds of his robes and slammed it down onto Sirius' desk, sloshing coffee all over the report. 'Here, I got you this,' he grumbled.

'Do you mind?' Sirius huffed, pulling the report away and shaking it over the carpet to get rid of the drops of spilt coffee.

'All the more reason to rewrite it, Black.'

Sirius gave Moody a dark look and tossed the report into the wastepaper basket at the side of his desk. He blew on the coffee quickly and took several swigs, cleaning up the rest of the spillage with a flick of his wand as he went.

Moody was leaning on his staff, watching him, but Sirius would be damned if he would give in and break the silence. He did not have the energy for Moody's games after the night he had just had.

They had been sent out to a lone muggle farmhouse on the outskirts of Warwick. Kirke, Sirius' partner, had tensed up immediately upon seeing the Dark Mark hanging in the sky above the house, but Sirius had not wasted any of his energy feeling apprehensive. The mark in the sky meant that the Death Eaters were long gone.

The door had been blasted off its hinges. Inside they had found the decapitated bodies of a muggle couple and their four young children.

Kirke had been driven half out of his mind by the sight of it. The older man had crumpled and started raving, pulling at his hair. In the end Sirius had cast several muggle repelling wards on the house and then taken Kirke to see a healer, returning to the scene a few hours later to clean it up by himself, and staying up half the night to write up the notes.

After a whole painful minute of completes silence, Moody finally gave in. 'Decapitated, Black?' He waited again for a moment, pressing his lips into a thin line. 'You should have called me.'

'It's fine.' Sirius waved off Moody's admonishments. 'A few of the curses they left behind for us were on the nastier side, but it was manageable, and it's easy enough fixing the bodies up ready for the cadaver collectors.'

Moody shook his head. 'Alone, Black? What if they had come back?'

'Can we not do this now, Moody, please?' Sirius whined. He gestured to the Head Auror's private office at the front of the room. 'I've just had my ear shouted off by Bell.'

Moody huffed, shifting from one foot to the other. 'How did Kirke look when you left him?'

'Like a fucking basket case.' Sirius chugged back a gulp of coffee and burnt the roof of his mouth, and that, more than anything else all morning, really managed to piss him off. 'He was shaking from head to toe. Would not shut up.'

Moody raised a gnarled eyebrow. 'Black, why aren't you like that?'

'What?' Sirius met Moody's gaze over his coffee cup.

The older Auror was leaning with both hands on his staff, peering down at him.

A shrug was all Sirius could manage. 'Would you have a panic attack seeing that?'

'No,' Moody agreed, 'but I might have when I was your age.'

The roof of Sirius' mouth was stinging. He would have been attempting to have a quick kip atop his desk already if Moody had not been hanging over him.

'Is there anything else, Moody?' he asked, trying to keep his tone polite, 'because Bell has punished me for being late by making me plan the whole of January's patrol schedule, as if I haven't got anything better to do.'

Moody gave him another long look, but gave in. 'That'll have to wait, Black. We've got places to be today.'

'Huh?'

'Get yourself changed,' Moody instructed. 'Put some of your muggle clothes on and grab your overnight bag.' He grinned. 'We're going up north, m'boy.'

Sirius raked his gaze over Moody's gnarled face to check if he was kidding or not, then let out a loud grown and flopped his face down onto the desk. He might have been excited at the prospect of a trip out in the field if he had not been so tired. He had made serious plans with himself after work to get a Chinese, watch something on his new muggle tellee-vision and get a gloriously early night.

'Where are we going?' he asked dejectedly as he stood up from his desk.

'Bell has sent me to liaison with the Edinburgh division, and she said I should bring you along too. Don't ask me why.'

'She hates me, that's why,' Sirius said, glaring at Bell's office door.

Moody rolled his eyes. 'Don't flatter yourself, Black. She barely knows who you are.' He turned swiftly and began striding away across the room, turning his head as he went. 'Come along, Black.' For a heavy guy with a severe limp, the man was not half quick on his feet.

Sirius yanked open his bottom desk drawer, the one with an extendable charm, and grabbed his overnight bag, before running to catch up.

'She doesn't like me, Moody,' Sirius insisted, before pausing. 'She's a muggleborn, right?'

Moody shot him a sideways look. 'Careful, Black.'

'No, no,' Sirius hurried. 'What I mean is, she hates me 'cause she thinks that just because my name is "Black" that I detest anyone who isn't pureblood.'

Moody laughed brusquely. 'What, it's not your chronic lateness, or your inability to fill out any kind of paperwork correctly, or your general disregard for rules and regulations?'

Sirius considered. It was true, he was apathetic about certain aspects of the job, a lot of aspects, actually, but, 'I get the job done, don't I?' he deflected, struggling to keep up with Moody's vast strides as they headed down the corridor.

'Yes, you do, and you're good at it, Black,' Moody agreed reluctantly.

Sirius felt a blossoming of warmth in his chest at the compliment.

'But when you're an auror, you have to follow procedure. This is the real world, and things don't get done without proper planning.'

Sirius had a thousand things he wanted to say, but he thought it best to keep his mouth shut.

Moody stopped outside the male toilets and gestured for Sirius to hurry up and get changed.

Sirius had bought his muggle get-up, as Moody had called it, from a second-hand shop in Camden Market. His Iron Maiden t-shirt was one of his favourite possessions. He had been to see them live at the Marquee Club in July, completely on his own, in a throng of muggles, and he had been completely blown away by the experience.

Whipping off his boring work robes, he pulled on the t-shirt, along with his black jeans, leather jacket and black leather boots.

'Nice outfit, Black,' Moody commented as Sirius stepped out of the cubical. He sounded mocking, but Sirius just grinned at him.

'Just count yourself lucky I didn't wear my crop top,' he parried.

Moody just shook his head with disapproval. 'So, with regards to our trip,' he said, changing the subject as they headed towards the lifts. 'As you know, portkeys and the floo network are unpredictable these days, so we're taking the slow, scenic route.'

'Fantastic,' Sirius droned. 'I suppose by slow you mean muggle.'

Moody grinned meanly. 'Careful, Black. Your pureblood agender is showing.'

'Oh, shove it, you gnarled old tree,' Sirius muttered. 'You just want to go by train so you can stuff your face in the buffet car and then claim it back on expenses.'

Moody let out a deep, hoarse laugh. 'It might give you a chance to catch up on your z's, Black. You look like you need it. And you can get yourself ready for following orders once you get to Scotland. The aurors posted up there do not take any nonsense, especially not from posh young English whippersnappers like you who think they know better than everyone else.'

Sirius was not in the mood for Moody's insults. It always felt like everyone was trying to knock him down a peg or two, when he was just as skilled as any of the full-trained aurors were. After coming back from France after school, he had practically breezed through Auror training. So what if he was not as bright-eyed and bushy tailed as the Hogwarts recruits? They were so caught up with the idea of being an auror they glossed over the boring parts of the job. Since the start of Sirius' placement year, he had not had one good fight. Never mind changing the tide of this decade-long war, most of the time he was stuck behind his desk filing paperwork.

'What is an auror anyway, Moody?' Sirius huffed. 'Just a highly skilled lacky for the Ministry to use to throw its weight around.'

Moody cocked an eyebrow and smirked. 'Play the game, Black, then you can start bending the rules.'

It was easy for him to say when he was the most infamous auror in the country, and hypocritical too.

'Did you not once spend two weeks in Azkaban for going off the rails, Moody?'

'Don't answer back,' Moody huffed at once, but Sirius could still spot the smug look about the older man's mouth. 'Play the game.'

'And suck up to people like Bell?' Sirius rebuffed. He held back a sneer, aware that he always looked a bit too much like his brother when he did that.

'Play the game,' Moody repeated. 'Keep your nose clean. Trust me, you'll find your way in the end.'

Sirius was not sure he believed that, but for now, he was willing to pretend.