24 September 1891 — Ministry of Magic

Juliana had only just started her new job working for the Minister of Magic, but she thought she'd made the right decision in leaving. The work was engaging, and more interesting than anything she'd done at the House of Lytton, and while she'd had to rearrange her usual Tuesday trips to the Hogsmeade Street Market it was rather nice to have weekends off. And the emotional burden was significantly less than having to share a space with Camilla every day. She did feel terribly guilty about leaving her alone, but the positive impact on her own mentality was undeniable. This had been the right choice for her. Maybe someday Camilla would forgive her for it.

She was finishing up her work for that Friday afternoon, delivering missives to the various Ministry departments. She could have sent them magically, but after being stuck at her desk for several hours already she wanted to stretch her legs, and it would be nice to have a bit of face-time with her counterparts in the other departments as well, just to set a good foundation for the relationship. When she went down to the Department of Mysteries, however, the secretary was already engaged in what appeared to be a heated discussion with a gentleman. Juliana couldn't help but eavesdrop a bit as she dropped the papers off on the desk, and part of her was hoping that her interruption would scare the man away so that she could try and get the full story from the secretary once he was gone.

This didn't happen, and she ended up simply feeling very conspicuous as she interrupted the argument and then retreated back through the middle of it. It was awkward, but it probably wouldn't have made much of an impact on her if the lift hadn't taken so long to reach the floor so that she could leave — now she was standing right next to the visitor, who was apparently on his way out. She could have said nothing, but that would have meant just standing there in awkward silence while they waited for the lift, and through the whole ride back to the Atrium (quite far, since they were on one of the lowest floors). And besides, she was still curious.

"Well," she said, tone pleasant. "You don't sound particularly popular down here."

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Elliot Carmichael Cassius Lestrange

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He really ought to know better than to embarrass himself at the Ministry anymore.

But Elliot had gotten it into his head that if he could see his visions — his actual visions, not just the gut feelings that plagued him — then maybe he could make sense of this. He had been a professor of Divination, and a fairly good one at that — he ought to be able to make sense of his own visions.

But of course the secretary refused him, and would not let him talk to any of the Unspeakables, and Elliot had seen this coming — (in a logical way, not from the Sight) — and yet he still let the argument get heated.

He was starting to feel embarrassed by the time he saw the other woman again, when they were both waiting for the lift.

"The Unspeakables think that I'm dramatic," Elliot said, a little dry. He wasn't sure how much he should get into it with a stranger. For his reputation, it ought to be not at all — but he was already a known Seer, and had already predicted deaths, and had already had this publicized.

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The following 2 users Like Elliot Carmichael's post:2 users Like Elliot Carmichael's post
   Juliana Ainsworth, Louisa Embry

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You do seem quite dramatic, Juliana thought, but all she said was, "Oh."

Most of the world routinely forgot the Department of Mysteries existed, in her experience. While Juliana was curious about what exactly they got up to down in the bottom floor of the Ministry, she would never have tried to press the issue (or any issue) with someone who worked there. Picking a fight with the receptionist was very dramatic indeed. On the other hand, it was intriguing. It meant that he had to know at least a little bit about the Department, didn't it? If he, like most people, knew nothing beyond the name, he would hardly have taken the time to come down here and make a scene. She wanted to know exactly what it was that he knew, but of course she couldn't come right out and ask him about it. He had no reason to tell her anything at all, because they were perfect strangers, and people who had sensitive information never seemed to want to give it up in response to direct questions.

"It's all the Unspeakables, then? I'd imagined you just had a bone to pick with the secretary. Lover's quarrel, maybe," she said, looking at the button to summon the lift rather than at him. She did not actually believe this, of course, but two things had occurred to her: first, that people were usually more talkative when they were provoked; second, that it might be very easy to provoke him, since he was already upset by the last conversation.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Elliot thought that would be the end of it, but then she said lover's quarrel, and he frowned at the button for the lift. He shouldn't engage — he already had a reputation for being a little eccentric, and if his battles with the Department of Mysteries hadn't pervaded the rest of the Ministry then he should take the victory now — but a lover's quarrel was certainly worse.

"Well, usually I just end up talking to the secretary," Elliot said. "Which — it wasn't a lover's quarrel. Not even remotely. But I think she recognizes me now." He was sounding like a crazy person, and he could hear it. "It's not like I come down here for fun."

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"But you do come down here often?" Juliana asked innocently. If he was down often enough that the secretary recognized him, that was telling. She didn't know of many others who had the distinction, since hardly anyway had a reason to venture down this far in the first place. If he didn't generally enjoy his visits, it was perhaps even more damning that he visited so frequently... but perhaps not. A secretary was more likely to remember someone who was unpleasant than someone who was nondescript, she could attest.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

"More often than your average citizen," Elliot said, which was of course to say that he'd been down to the Department of Mysteries at least once in his life. "They don't turn over secretaries very often down here, from what I can tell." That made sense, of course — it was about keeping secrets, and presumably the longer they held onto their low-level employees, the better.

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"No, they don't," Juliana agreed. She paused half a beat, then added, "It's helpful that secretaries down here don't often have to deal with irate members of the public. If I had to wager a guess," she continued, tone turning mildly playful, "I'd say repeatedly dealing with unpleasant visitors is the second most common reason secretaries hand in their resignations. After, of course, falling madly in love and giving up their careers to be housewives." Juliana might have said more on this — she had a rather low view of falling madly in love based on her own experiences trying and failing to be a debutante, and from watching her brother's relationship with Miss Jupiter Smith implode. Since he was a stranger, however, and might not enjoy being regaled with her philosophical opinions on women who chose marriage over careers, she let the sarcasm in her tone at the end of her sentence do the heavy lifting and left it at that.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She startled him into a laugh; not by calling him an irate member of the public, but with the tone she'd used to describe whirlwind romances. "I'll take your word for it," Elliot said; his tone still contained the humor his laugh had brought to it. "And I'm not usually an irate member of the public. I like to consider myself to be — pleasant, or at least inoffensive, normally."

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His laughter goaded her into a smile — but for some reason she had the impression that was unprofessional, so although the edge of her mouth twitched up she bit her lip to keep it from showing too much. She liked that he didn't seem offended by her teasing, though she hadn't exactly expected it — she'd started out by trying to provoke him into being upset, and on that front she seemed to be failing miserably, but it was hard to see the conversation so far as unproductive because of that.

"Nearly everyone considers themselves inoffensive," she pointed out, tone still playful. "With a few notable exceptions. Headmaster Black seems to think being maximally offensive is a point of pride," she joked dryly. Her experiences with the man were limited, but during her expulsion she'd had more face time with him than most students at the school would ever want. She might have dismissed her (exceptionally unpleasant) memories of those interviews as childish hyperbole if she hadn't recently applied for and been summarily rejected from a position at the Hogwarts Library. Though the rejection letter had been couched in politeness, it was clear to Juliana that Headmaster Black was capable of holding grudges against children over a dozen years after the fact — and what behavior could be described as more stubbornly offensive than that?

(Eventually she hoped the Minister would need a letter drafted to Hogwarts about something, and she'd be in a position to sign her name under some authoritative orders directed at Headmaster Black, but so far her office had afforded her no such opportunity).

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

"You've had difficulties with the Headmaster?" Elliot asked, tone curious; he suspected that this was not the point of her response, but it was the bit he'd latched onto. He was used to students having a healthy fear of the Headmaster — to say nothing of faculty members, who gossiped about him whenever they could be sure that he wasn't listening — but Elliot usually didn't hear things like this from people who had, by all appearances, been outside of Hogwarts for at least a few years.

So it was interesting that Headmaster Black was her first example for a rude person, and not one of the people at the Ministry.

For context, he added, "I taught at the school for a few years." They had never overlapped, at least not when Elliot taught. There was something familiar about the way she looked, so maybe they had attended at the same time — but until this lift, Elliot was fairly confident that they had never interacted.

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She had not expected him to question her on that count, and now wondered how to answer that. She didn't particularly want to get into any of the details. The most flippant way to do so would be to say he expelled me and leave it at that, but even that was bringing up a bit of personal information Juliana didn't like to lead with in conversations. She'd assumed that Headmaster Black was a good common reference point, since everyone who had attended Hogwarts knew him at least through reputation, but she hadn't anticipated that he would have any more of a connection to him than the average person their age.

She was a bit surprised to hear he had been a professor. He didn't seem particularly scholarly, though perhaps that was only because her first impression of him had been watching him spar with the Department of Mysteries secretary. There was a bit of a mis-match of dignity, there: professors were meant to be distinguished, while irate members of the public were in most cases only exasperating. (An aside which occurred to her: real professors ought not to write salty letter exchanges to the Prophet making jabs at Emerett Picardy, most likely).

"And you didn't have difficulties with the Headmaster?" she responded. This was more of a dodge of his query than an honest question, but she managed to keep her tone appropriately curious to disguise this. "What did you teach?"

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Elliot's smile turned wry before he replied. "Divination," he said. He eyed her carefully. Elliot was used to interesting reactions when he told people that he was interested in Divination, and usually he did not hold it too much against them. "I think Headmaster Black preferred to forget that I existed." (This was also the case for most professors, Elliot believed — but he hadn't even been with one of the serious subjects, which certainly made things worse.)

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Juliana oohed at the mention of divination, with an appreciative nod. She was not as much of a believer in divination as some people she knew — particularly some of the young women she'd been acquainted with during her debutante years were crazy about getting all of the tiniest details of their lives foretold for them through tarot or tea leaves or whatnot — but she had always found it an interesting subject. Juliana was skeptical of any diviner who claimed to be able to come up with particulars about future events, but she did believe that some things were pre-ordained — or if not exactly pre-ordained, that perhaps people's lives were cyclical in ways that weren't readily apparent without taking a step back to appreciate the ways things were connected, which was sort of along the same lines as divination.

"I didn't take the class," she admitted, feeling as though she needed to say something to explain her initial noise of approval. "I've studied a bit, informally. But I don't think English divination is half so interesting as other types of it. I read this journal article a few years ago about how some of the American Indian tribes have these animal guides as a big part of their magic — it's almost like how we give children wands, they get an animal attached to them, metaphorically — and the article was saying that could be a sort of divination because it's quite often that they go on to have these formative experiences featuring those animals later in their life." She'd read it primarily because a solid third of the article was dedicated to connection between werewolf attacks and wolves or dogs being assigned as totem animals, but she omitted that from her recounting of the article so as not to raise suspicion. Not that he would have any reason to be suspicious, but Juliana had gotten in the habit of trying to edit out lycanthropy from anything she wanted to bring up in casual conversation, just to avoid the appearance that she was talking about it too often. "Had you heard about that?"

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Elliot smiled at the woman, close-mouthed, and genuine. He could feel it happening — not a vision, but the transference he sometimes made, into an academic. "I hadn't heard of that," Elliot said, "But if there's a paper, I would love to read it. It sounds like apantomancy." He paused — he wasn't sure if it was annoying for him to start explaining the concept, but she seemed like the sort who might care, so after a half-second he went on.

"Ancient Roman priests would work themselves into a trance and wait for chance meetings with animals, and then interpret," he said, "I haven't tried it myself, but the concept is interesting." It was very muggle — Elliot didn't work himself into a trance, they came upon him.

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Juliana frowned faintly at his description. Sitting in the wilderness in a trance and waiting for an encounter with a wild animal didn't sound particularly safe. Then again, her own perception of what that would be like was probably skewed by how many accounts she'd read of witches and wizards encountering werewolves in the wilderness on full moons. It probably wouldn't be quite so alarming if the animal that happened upon you while you were entranced was only a squirrel.

"I'll see if I can find it and send you a copy," she volunteered. She read a lot of articles, but she also had an exceptional memory. She could already visualize where that particular article had been on the page and how far into the journal it was, and she knew roughly what year it had been published. It would probably only take twenty minutes of looking through things to locate it. If she got a stack of old research journals from Zach, she could do it at her desk the next time Macmillan had a meeting, so she had an excuse to be 'caught up in something' and late delivering his tea. "Who should I address the owl to?"

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Hm, she was going to mail it to him. Elliot was intrigued, and — given his suspicion of Ministry personnel — a tiny bit suspicious. But it was easy enough to figure out who he was — former Hogwarts Divination professors who hassled the Department of Mysteries were not, exactly, common. (Well — Elliot was the only one he knew.)

"Elliot Carmichael," he said. And then, even though she hadn't asked, he couldn't help but add: "One of the Unspeakables came to ask me about visions a few years ago. That's why I was down there."

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