Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

13 September, 1990 - Made It

Lavinia groaned, flopping back in her chair and then glancing surreptitiously around to make sure none of the patients in the ward had noticed this slightly unprofessional behavior. But thankfully, the only people in the main ward remained fast asleep and Lavinia was reasonably certain that no one in the hit wizard's area could have heard her through the closed door. She definitely hoped they couldn't. One of Lavinia's least favorite patients was in there and he was a stickler for professionalism. Not that she could blame him on principle, but she rather thought that swearing over the massive gash he'd had two weeks ago was perfectly justified. And, similarly, she didn't want to be told off for groaning over massive stacks of paperwork. Which was exactly what was sitting in front of her now.

It was her fault, really. She was the one who had somehow managed to put off an entire week's worth of reports until today and even if the ward hadn't been exactly busy during the week... well. It had been busier than usual and the paperwork had stacked up rather unexpectedly. Lavinia groaned again and resisted the urge to swear under her breath as she pulled yet another sheaf of parchment off the stack and got to work..

A little while later Elias breezed into the ward from the break room, presumably to officially start his shift, but paused, his eyebrows shooting up at the sight of her and the table covered in parchment in front of her.

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, reading the teasing twinkle in his eyes as he approached. "I'm an idiot and should know better by now."

Elias chuckled slightly and shrugged his agreement to that before turning towards the little side room they used to brew potions.

"Heather's in there," Lavinia said, heading him off. "Brewing restorative draughts since we were running low. And I sent a list of ingredients we'll need restocked to Robert so that should be dealt with soon too."

Elias turned and quirked an eyebrow at her in silent request for an explanation. Lavinia merely shrugged. "The alternative was paperwork," she pointed out, gesturing at the mess of just that in front of her.

Elias snorted and nodded, but then tipped his head to the side and narrowed his eyes for a moment. Lavinia had absolutely no idea what to make of that look so she merely turned back to her work, figuring that if Elias wasn't going to explain himself then it probably wasn't terribly important.

And apparently it wasn't because Elias simply plunked himself down across the table from Lavinia and dragged a sheaf of parchment towards him.

"Bless you," Lavinia sighed, realizing he was going to help with the work. The ward was slow today, which was a blessing, really, since earlier in the week, they'd had more people come in than almost any other week since the war had ended and the paperwork had been a nightmare, especially since they'd all been caught rather by surprise and none of the systems they'd used to get things done during the war were still in place, resulting in a severe lack of efficiency. And preparation, both mental and physical. Which was why Lavinia was now doing mounds of paperwork and taking a hell of a lot longer at it than she would like thanks to her rather fuzzy feeling brain.

For perhaps ten minutes, Lavinia and Elias sat in silence, filling forms out more by rote than anything else and trying to remember what the hell had happened on Monday, which somehow seemed an unreasonably long time ago. Lavinia was in the process of searching through the stack of field notes she'd pulled out to answer this exact question when Mr. Hayes appeared from his office.

"Lavinia, Elias, I was hoping I could talk to you," he started, then paused, glancing around the room and frowning. "I thought there was someone else here," he mused, glancing around.

"Heather's in the potions room," Lavinia supplied, gesturing vaguely in that direction. "Why?"

Robert nodded vaguely to acknowledge the information. "I was hoping to have this chat in private," he admitted, humming slightly to himself. "But someone needs to be watching the ward at all times. Protocol. Which, of course, I don't need to tell you two, but..." He trailed off with a thoughtful hum.