Chapter 2
There was a long, dull, steel letter opener that stayed in my kiosk and I hated myself for knowing that it didn’t work well for slicing skin. Obviously I never told anyone that. I told them they could borrow it for their owl messages and they better fucking bring it back. No one would trust me with a way to sharpen it. That mostly meant I got the pleasure of watching idiot Potter struggle through opening a missive, bunching up the top of the envelope in a way that surely damaged the letter inside.
It’s all in the angle, Potter, but he grew angry when I said so. So I thinned my lips into a terse smile and told potter to get the bloody hell out and find his own office equipment. Potter wouldn’t, though. That would require filling out the proper requisition forms, which he was pants at, but also other trainee aurors did fill out the proper requisition forms and they didn’t get shit. If Potter did it, it would be more proof he was treated special and potter was only willing to harness that at my expense.
Like now, when he stole my damn letter opener right in plane sight, and the three other auror’s in line behind him didn’t say a damn thing to stop him.
Next in line was a career witch who’d survived having ethics during not one, but two wars that went out of their way to kill the good folks on the force. She looked so fucking smug, handing over her paperwork to be filed by a Deatheater forced under her boot. I reminded myself that I deserved it. All of it. That, or I could have had the guts to use that dull fucking metal when I had a chance to dig jagged lines into my body. The problem was I lacked conviction. And guts. And, above all, goodness.
Word must have got out about potter’s little gimmick because the rest of the day aurors asked to borrow all the little things I had. Quills. Inkwells. Binding clips. I watched one by one as each was taken away. I could have spoken up, thrown a fit, but I never had before and I wasn’t going to start just because I was being left in a stint, without the tools I needed to do my job.
I deserve this, I reminded myself as I handed over the last quill I had at my disposal. How many times had I forced my own classmates to give up the best seats in our common room, or their homework assignments to copy, or their own treats sent by loving parents? How many times did I trip up Longbottom in class so that Snape would look at him with the same derision I was receiving now?
Maybe they would fire me over it. Potter’s incompetence finally doing me in. It seemed like even odds he’d finish me off before I gathered the courage to put myself out of my misery. That was Potter for you. Better than me in every way that counted.
It was late but I couldn’t leave until I closed out the records log. It really was an ingenious theft-prevention enchantment to attack anyone who left without filing the paperwork. Polyjuice wouldn’t trick the system because it didn’t care what you looked like, only that you recorded who you were. I suppose one could try to bypass it with confundus or something equally mind bending, but I bet my life instead on ending each night transcribing a perfect, legible record of every file that crossed my path over the course of the day. Most nights I even threw in updates to my newly created index that cross referenced every file in the system. Anyone looking for a Carrow or a Rookwood could pull all the information across all the different case files in one go.
Most nights I hated that I was good at this job. I couldn’t decide if they deserved my exemplary work, even if I never doubted I deserved to have it taken for granted. Despite Granger’s protestations, I was not redeemable. While I suspected my system improvements would lead to more criminals apprehended and a safer, happier magical world, the thought didn’t bring me joy. I wasn’t trying to be helpful. I despised the thought someone may one day notice my work and feel obligated to offer recognition. I was just trying to stay sane. There were only so many hours one could spend hiding behind curtains before their imagination failed them and they were forced to face the fact that hiding didn’t offer any hope. The choices were Azkaban, untangling the rats nest of this records room, or throwing my hands up and storming from the room with my work undone in the hopes the defences incinerated me.
Merlin, I was a wretched coward. Braver Death Eaters would have gone down in flames by now. If only I had principals. If only I had been a fanatic who saw the mission as greater than myself. If only I could find one more ink well somewhere in this blasted filing room so I could get the fuck out and go to bed.
The filing room was very cold at night and I wasn’t able to sleep.
That next morning I cemented myself as the office villain.
Ha.
As if villainy were as simple as rejecting paperwork until aurors came back with their own quill. The line backed up all morning while I made each person wait long enough for me to use their own supplies to get ahead on that night’s inventory while also catching up on outstanding work from the night before. I made Weasley wait double long so I could use his ink to fill out my own soon-to-be-rejected requisition request. I was sure to return each item to the auror who brought it, mocking them with exacting professionalism.
At 12:24, Harry Potter reached the front of the line. He scowled the scowl of one who hated paperwork on a good day and hated it more when he had to wait near on an hour to do it.
I stared directly into Potter's green eyes as I reached into my kiosk drawer and pulled out an “out to lunch” sign. I lifted it reverently with both hands and put it down between myself and my once nemesis. I ignored Harry’s curses and got out of my seat. I ignored everyone else, too, for good measure. They could rot, the lot of them. Even if I deserved their vitriol and the hex that stung me on my way out.
More hexes struck me in the cafeteria. There were reasons I didn’t spend more time here than I must. I deserved the welts and rashes they tormented me with. I’d given worse, when I’d had the chance. There were fresh recruits here who’d gone to school with me and knew, like I did, that someone ought to ensure I got a much worse fate.
The means to ensure it was waiting for me at my kiosk when I returned. A freshly sharpened letter opener. My letter opener. Next to a pile of forms Potter hadn’t even pretended to fill out correctly. It’s like he meant to drive me to self harm right as he provided everything I needed to do it.
It really was quite sharp. I hardly needed to apply any pressure at all before it cut through skin. One red dot on my finger tip. It stung worse than the hexes.
I shoved the letter opener deep in the back of a drawer. As if out of sight was out of mind. As if I didn’t even want to use it.