Chapter 2
The Auror Office is part of The Department of Magical Law Enforcement which is located on the second floor of the Ministry of Magic.
Harry had not been eager to go to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She’d encountered too many Aurors as Rigel; Dawlish, Moody and a whole class of trainees had seen her in action. Dawlish had even taught her for the better part of a year. Someone was going to notice something, ask an unfortunate question or make a not so random connection.
However, she couldn’t think of a single reason not to put on her new brewing robes and follow James to work. The man was just so cheerful for once. He was whistling. An enormous weight had clearly been looming over him all summer and it seemed as though it has finally lifted.
James, as Head Auror and as someone under constant siege from the media over the lack of updates as to the whereabouts of the Rigel Black Child and the potential new Dark Lord calling himself Voldemort, has his own floo entrance.
Harry followed her dad around the Department of Law Enforcement. She was fairly convinced he was making a point of showing her off to as many people as possible as "his daughter who passed her NEWTs last week." She noticed that James never mentioned that she had only two NEWTs (technically the bare minimum one could have and still claim to have NEWTs).
She had taken great pains to wear her fanciest new set of brewing robes (who knew that brewing robes came in colours, let alone embroidered lavender), and a large hair ribbon she had stolen from her sister. The hope was that she would project an image of youth, nepotism and harmlessness.
James steers her over to an office labelled Master Grindel. Harry's eyes narrow. She's certainly familiar with Master Grindel's occupation but he doesn't publish publicly and she suspects it's because he doesn't do any research or innovate, not because his work is classified for an interesting reason. She has absolutely no interest in whatever this job is.
James looks incredibly triumphant. For a brief moment Harry considers letting him down gently and making a run for it and then she decides to let him be happy at least for today.
"I knew you would be looking for a potions opportunity and I thought this would be as good a place to start as any. Master Grindel keeps us supplied with potions like Polyjuice Potion and healing potions. So I pulled a few strings and now you're assisting him for the next four weeks. Maybe we can turn this into something permanent if it works out."
Harry winces. Four weeks of being under the constant watchful eye of James and a hundred aurors all to brew potions she had been brewing since she was twelve?"
But this seems to mean a lot to her Father. Four weeks of boredom doesn't seem like a lot considering how much he has aged in the last few weeks. Plus, this will get her out of the house and maybe access to some interesting ingredients and equipment. Harry beams up at him.
"Thank you, Dad."
James knocks on the door. A stressed looking middle aged man pops his head out.
"Yes?"
James pushes Harriett forward.
"Grindel, this is my daughter Harriet. I’ve told you about her before. Just completed her NEWTs last week. All Outstandings."
Harry tries to smile as sweetly as she is capable of smiling. "Both of them were Outstandings. Potions and Herbology." She doesn’t want anyone to think that she’s too smart.
Master Grindel nods at her and lets her into his lab. He clearly realizes that he has absolutely no say in whether or not he is getting a new assistant and that he is now stuck with Harriett.
Master Grindel turns out to be a perfectly competent if by the book Potions Master. His lab is clean and highly organized. Rather than let Harriett immediately start brewing he takes her to Human Resources to complete paperwork and receive a Ministry of Magic ID Card.
Harry marvels at it. They just hand these out? She wonders what sort of trouble Leo could get up to with this.
Master Grindel sets her up at a work station with a cauldron and instructions to brew an Antidote to Common Poisons and resumes his own brewing.
Harry can tell he’s working on a batch of Veretiserum antidote. Not particularly interesting.
Harry sighs at her own almost equally dull work. This in a third year potion. It might be necessary for Auror field kits but that doesn’t make it exciting. She reviews the recipe quickly in Magical Drafts and Potions and gathers her ingredients.
Master Grindel comes by to inspect the work at the forty-minute mark, just before the potion reaches it’s second stage. Harry is more amused than offended, the poor man is probably a bit concerned that she’s either going to vanish or blow herself up.
He nods his approval and lets her go back to work.
Harriett does not like the second part of the recipe. Her instincts lead her to honeywater, stewed mandrake and essence of lavender so she incorporates those ingredients and ignores that the recipe calls for unicorn horns and mistletoe berries.
Harriett is careful to note her ingredient changes on the labels as she bottles her potions in clear crisp writing.
Master Grindel comes by to inspect her work and doesn’t comment on the substitution. He takes the potions away to be used for field kids and assigns her a more complicated and time-consuming tissue repairing potion to work on.
When it reaches noon he tells Harry to go ahead and leave for an hour. Harry is deeply suspicious that all manner of trouble will be the result of her not being exactly where James Potter left her and stays put.
Her potion is also at a volatile stage and needs her supervision.
Harry is distilling murtlap tentacles when the laboratory door opens suddenly and a light blasts towards her. Her magic instinctively reaches out to block it.
Well that certainly isn’t good.
Dawlish walks in laughing.
Harry freezes. She reminds herself that she can’t apparate out of the Ministry and besides, that would certainly look suspicious. She isn’t sure what exactly Professor Dawlish knows or what he’s guessed. It can’t be a coincidence though that he’s fired the same stinging hex at her that he used to fire at Draco every other week during Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. She puts her hand on her hip and glares at him in her best impression of Daphne Greengrass.
“Do you just like attacking defenceless teenaged girls?”
Dawlish laughs again. He hands a flask labelled Antidote to Common Poisons potion to her. Then flask still bears her handwritten label.
“Is there a problem with the potion?” Harry asks mildly offended. Her potion was perfection thought she supposes perhaps there’s an allergy issue that has led to the use of the more standard recipe. Maybe she should have brewed a batch of each version of the recipe?
“Catch.”
Harry looks at a worn volume that Dawlish tosses at her. She recognizes it as the copy of James Potter’s Auror’s Field Guide that he had given to her a few months ago.
She flips it open and looks at the handwritten suggestions and slightly impertinent comments in the margins.
Handwritten notes. Writing them had seemed a lot funnier at the time.
She looks at the letters on the flask and the letters in the book. They’re an obviously match.
Harry stares at Auror Dawlish with wide and hopefully innocent looking eyes.
“This is my handwriting but I’ve never seen this book before. Is this a joke?”
He simply laughs at her. “It’s good seeing you. Consider that stinging jinx as a payback for the Banishing Charm.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
Harry goes back to her potion. It doesn’t seem as though he wants anything or that he’s going to talk to her father and she would like him to leave.
Auror Dawlish nods at the book. “I’d burn that if I was you. Try and not get into too much trouble then.”
“I don’t go looking for trouble, trouble usually finds me.”
Dawlish laughs again and walks off.
Harry sighs. This is just as terrible as she thought it was going to be. She puts the incriminating book carefully into her new potions bag and focuses on the potion. She’s bastardized the recipe that she was given in an attempt to limit the exhaustion that usually comes after taking a tissue-repairing potion and the recipe now has an extra but fairly slow stage where she has to watch it simmer.
James Potter walks in with a paper bag. “Fawn.”
What now? Harry wonders.
“I heard you brewed a perfect Antidote to Common Poisons this morning.”
James looks at her proudly, as though brewing a very basis potion under supervision is something worth being proud of. She feels a bit like this is nursery school and she’s being congratulated for cutting with scissors.
Harry is vaguely concerned that he is going to take a picture of her first day at work to frame in their entrance way. Sirius is bad influence.
“I thought we would go out for lunch but then I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to tear you away from your cauldron.” He hands her a wrapped sandwich.
Harry opens it and looks at it with some confusion. She doesn’t know much about cooking but this doesn’t seem like a reasonable combination.
“Chicken and waffles?”
James shrugs. “I told them to surprise me.” He inspects his own sandwich which appears to be the unlikely combination of bacon, peanut butter and bananas.
Harry considers that this is probably as good an opportunity to ask as any.
“I was thinking the Department could sponsor my application for a license to brew restricted potions for Ministry use.”
James looks at her a bit suspiciously but keeps chewing.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with what I’m doing here but I could do a lot more.” James still looks suspicious.
“And the brewing would of course be here under supervision. And the potions would stay here.”
James nods at her. “I’ll think it over.”
Harry beams at him. “Thanks Dad.”