He focused on his breathing, having learned it as one of the methods for keeping calm in a tense situation. He always thought be he'd use it when being bad-mouthed by criminals—not a very stubborn, very aggravating woman.

"Thankful," he quietly scoffed, scribbling his automatically-inking pill across the parchment. "I suppose this is one of the cases where words speak louder than actions, hm?" he questioned—calmly and without anger—while peeking up at her. Whatever efforts she'd made, she'd come off as nothing other than ungrateful.

Calm, calm, calm. He needed to do his business, and he didn't need to let some woman take control of his emotions. She was nothing to him, he tried to remind himself. She was only a memorable case in a sea of files, and within a few weeks, she'd just be another name that rang as familiar when mentioned. Right?

"They need you to confirm the suspect based on these pictures," he said, handing another file her way. "Apparently going simply off an auror's word is against protocol when other witnesses were at the scene. It looks bad," he explained, trying to smile as genuinely as he could—but ultimately falling flat.

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