Landon can remember in childhood having entire months off from school with nothing to do but play with his friends, and he remembers craving that freedom. These days he has no idea what his child-self was thinking - having nothing to do and no clear responsibilities is an absolute nightmare.

Of course, his current mandatory weekend off is definitely being marred by the fact it happened due to that massive blow up between himself and Rose, and he knows full well he'd gone too far with that. She was offering to help for God's sake, and he'd bitten her head off over it. This after months of biting her head off over not helping too, so he gets to be a massive hypocrite on top of an , which is fun.

"Well ladida for you white boy!"

That one had hit hard, mostly because Rose is right. He's not just a white, straight male from a good background, he's also a pureblood - he's privileged in all worlds, and Rose absolutely has barriers and struggles to fight through every day that he can't even begin to imagine.

But.

But he's still mad at her, but now he feels like he should feel bad for being mad at her. And he hates it.

He ends up leaving his flat - it's too empty and seems to be echoing his internal monologue in a way that is distinctly unhelpful. He means to just go for a walk - wander around London, maybe do some people watching, and then probably go home and owl his parents to see what their thoughts on the matter are - but his feet end up taking him to a building he's visited quite a number of times at this point, and against his better judgement he walks inside.

The receptionist looks up and raises an eyebrow. "Welcome to the Daily Telegraph, how can I help you?"

Landon clears his throat uncertainly. Obviously he wants to see Celine - he wouldn't have mindlessly wandered here if he didn't - but he also knows she's really worried about being seen with him too often or too obviously, and he figures asking about her at her own workplace probably counts as both.

"Um, I..." He trails off uncertainly, wondering what exactly he was thinking when he came in here. "I'm actually a bit lost." He finally goes with. He has an American accent, he doubts the receptionist will question it.

Sure enough, her expression clears and she plasters on a bright, customer-service smile. "Oh, that's understandable, the streets around here can be rather haphazard. Where were you looking for?"

Landon thinks fast. "There's supposed to be a restaurant nearby called The Phoenix? I heard it was a great local lunch place, but I seem to have gotten a bit turned around." Celine has mentioned it a few times as a personal favorite, so getting lunch there isn't even a bad idea.

"Oh that's not too far at all - a lot of our reporters take their lunch breaks there. Here, let me draw you a map."

"It's alright, I can show him." A voice interrupts. "I was just heading that way myself."

Landon looks up to see Celine, who's apparently just stepped off the lift and is now walking towards him with an unreadable expression. She smiles as the receptionist looks up. "I don't mind."

"Oh well, that works out well then!" The receptionist says, oblivious to the intense eye conversation happening between Celine and Landon. She's obviously cautious about his being here, as he'd expected she would be, but he's trying to assure her that it was mostly an accident and he wasn't planning on even connecting himself to her. Her appearance was entirely coincidental.

They exit the building together and walk in silence for a few blocks, until they're well out of ear shot and sight line of anyone at the Telegraph, which is when Celine turns to him looking a bit exasperated.

"Was there a reason you decided to show up at my place of work and risk getting me moved to a new project?" She asks with a sigh.

Landon smiles sheepishly. "Not really? I have the weekend off and I sort of ended up here on accident. In my defense, I was obviously not planning to bring your name up!"

She gives him a small smile. "Fair enough. Is everything alright though? I thought your weekly off day was Thursday, not the weekend?"

He grimaces. "That's... kind of a long story. And probably why I ended up here in the first place. I could use an external viewpoint on what happened and maybe get some ideas on how to fix things."

Celine tilts her head. "Well, we're heading to The Phoenix anyway - what better time to talk then over good food?" She offers, and Landon hums his agreement.

They keep the conversation light - he asks after her friends and she does the same for him - up until they've ordered, at which point Celine leans forward over the table and stares at him intently.

"Alright, so what really brought you out here?" She asks pointedly. "I feel I'm owed at least a bit of an explanation considering this could be a risk to my employment."

Landon winces slightly. "Yeah, sorry about that. I really wasn't thinking when I went inside."

She smiles faintly. "I can tell. Luckily for us you're not really a known Initiative face, so the chances of Phoebe connecting anything is pretty small - she's not the most attentive person in the world. Now stop stalling and tell me what's up."

Landon huffs out a breath - half amused and half bracing - before he begins to slowly lay out the whirlwind in his mind.

"I guess the starting point would be Rose. You know that we've been having... issues, recently, with our ability to work together. And it wasn't such a big deal since she's so rarely in the office these days, but this week... well, she was in the office." He his lips, stalling for time as he tries to come up with the best way to explain what happened. Ultimately he realizes the bald truth is probably the only way to describe it without biasing the information one way or the other. "We got into a fight. A massive one. And, well, I said some things I shouldn't have, she said some things that made me realize what a selfish, close-minded I've been-"

"So things she shouldn't have." Celine interrupts firmly. "Go on."

Landon gives her a look but does continue. "And the point is that we were both sent home for the weekend to cool off and decide if we actually are going to be able to do our jobs despite working with, you know, each other." He sighs. "It's just bugging me, I guess. She was just trying to help, and I snapped at her. It was unprofessional. I'm honestly wondering if I should step down from all this - if that's how I act with a friend who's frustrated me, how much worse might I get with someone I don't actually like?"

Celine hums. "You'll do infinitely better." She declares without an ounce of hesitation. "You're professional Landon - how you react to a friend doing something that feels underhanded or in any way a betrayal of that friendship is entirely different from how you'd react to someone you fully expect to be a bit of a jerk. Besides, things with you and Rose have been tense for a while. I'm not surprised that things boiled over - honestly I'm just stunned it took as long as it did. Neither of you really strike me as the type to leave things unaddressed like that." She smiles ruefully. "Which is maybe why it exploded as violently as it did."

Landon sighs. "Still, I can't really imagine going back to work like nothing happened after that. We were literally screaming at each other, it was... it was bad." And his guilt is clawing back up his throat now and isn't that just wonderful.

Celine frowns. "Well, obviously it won't be like nothing happened - you two need to talk things through and figure out what the rest of the run is going to look like - it's only March. There are still six months left in the Initiative's contract. If you can't work together, well, something will have to change. But you can't figure out what that change needs to look like until you sit down and hash things out." She shrugs slightly. "Easier said than done, I know."

"You're right though." Landon sighs. "I've known the whole time we needed to talk about it but I was angry and stubborn about it. And the worst part is that I still don't trust her. I don't know if I can work with her, and considering some of the things she said yesterday, I'm not sure she'd care to work with me anymore either."

Celine reaches across the table to take his hand, but is interrupted by their food arriving. Landon barely represses the glare he wants to direct at the server, instead sitting straight and grabbing his utensils.

Celine hesitates for a moment before following suit. "I think you should give her a bit more credit. You say you said things you regret, right? I'm betting she regrets some things too. Don't start deciding what's going to happen from here before even talking to her about it, alright? Bending yourself out of shape isn't going to make things any better."

Landon knows she's right, but he still feels rather like crud. As they eat he debates whether or not to tell Celine about the particular accusation Rose had hurled which is most sticking in his craw, and eventually he decides he probably should bring it up, considering it is, in many ways, the crux of his concerns with all this.

He doesn't end up saying anything until the walk back, finally working up the nerve. Celine is female and Chinese - she's more than likely going to agree with Rose, and fairly at that.

"There was one more thing. Something Rose said that's probably the main reason I'm worried about all this." He blurts, and Celine slows down her walking speed and turns to face him, a small frown creasing her features.

Landon doesn't look at her as he explains, isn't sure he wants to see her expression. He's always prided himself on being so open minded, on standing up for people who aren't given the time of day by a society dominated by arbitrary majorities, so the fact he'd so easily and borderline cruelly shoved away Rose's experience with those things still leaves a heavy pit in his stomach.

Celine doesn't say anything for a moment, and Landon briefly fears the worst, but then she reaches out to take his hand. It's a bold move, bolder than anything they've done before, and for a moment Landon is more caught up marveling at the action and what it might mean than with the panic swirling around his brain. That quickly ends when Celine speaks.

"I think you probably did say some things thoughtlessly." She observes slowly. "But I think Rose probably did the same. It's natural when you're angry and defensive to start using personal attacks regardless of whether or not they really make any sense." She squeezes his hand and he finally looks over to find her smiling at him softly. "But I know one thing about you, and it's that you may be privileged, but you know that you're privileged. Something said in the heat of anger and hurt does not and should not define how you or anyone else perceives you. You're trying, Landon, and I can tell you with certainty that with your level of entitlement you really don't need to try - but you do anyway. That counts for a lot."

Landon shrugs, glancing away. "Does it matter if I'm not actually trying for the right people?"

Celine squeezes his hand again before letting go entirely. "You're going to trip sometimes, that's inevitable, but Rose was also speaking from a place of hurt and anger. You two need to talk, and I think you'll find she feels just as bad as you do about some of the things said yesterday." She smiles at him, and he can't help smiling back. "Hang in there. I'll see you for lunch on Monday, okay?"

Landon realizes then that they've reached the Telegraph HQ, and he watches Celine vanish inside, waiting a moment longer before he turns to start wandering back in the direction of home.

Celine is right - he does need to talk to Rose. But the question there is whether or not she wants to talk to him, and she'd be in her right not to.

She'd also be in her right to leave entirely, and yeah, the idea of that still makes Landon feel better so for all Celine says that trying is worth something, he's really not sure he's willing to try with Rose again. Not yet.

He'll owl his parents and see what they have to say. In the meantime, he'll maintain professional detachment and leave the ball in Rose's court. He has enough to stress over without adding Rose and her problems to that list.

Miles' hope that the comments would be a nice respite lasts for all of a day before he boots up the laptop on Monday and is immediately inundated with a barrage of rage, fear, and accusation.

He stares numbly at the screen for all of a minute before picking it up and walking over to the leaders' office, knocking twice before letting himself in.

Mrs. Weasley glances up from her desk with a frown, that only deepens when she sees Miles. "Yes Mr. Taylor?" She asks, her eyes flicking from his face to the laptop and back again. "Is anything the matter?"

He opens his mouth, tries to find the words to explain what he's just seen, and finally gives up and just hands over the laptop so she can see for herself.

Her eyes rapidly flick over the comments, growing darker with each one read. "What are these referring too?" She demands, and Miles shrugs helplessly. He hadn't actually thought to check if there was a source - he'd been too upset by the vicious accusations of bullying, lying, and violence that fill their comment boxes to the brim.

Mrs. Weasley pushes the laptop back towards him. "Well, figure it out. Obviously there's something going on here, and I want to know what it is as soon as possible - we can't respond to these accusations if we have no idea why they're being made."

Miles returns to the desk and wishes fervently that Veena was here, but she still has another week on her tour and Petra is still down in the Archives, so he's on his own. To think, at the start of all this the prospect of having the laptop all to himself would have been a dream, and now he kind of wishes he could push it off onto anyone else. But there's only him, and he's determined to do his job well so when Veena and Petra are back they'll be proud to see that he could handle things himself.

Still, sifting through a pile of comments accusing him personally and the people he works with of being horrible human beings deserving of death is... a lot, for a Monday morning.

He eventually finds the source of the outrage - a small time blogger who's gone viral for his "tell all" post about the inner workings of the Initiative, revealing that the work environment is a mess at best and toxic at worst. In the post he talks about how the members are all fighting with each other, and claims that most of them are quite close-minded which is why Miles always talks more than Veena in their interviews - she's just a black, LGBTQ face they can hide behind so they can insist that they're all-inclusive and caring.

Miles feels sick, but he forces himself through the entire post. He thinks the worst part is that, while a large majority of what the man says is entirely incorrect, he frames each claim with 'evidence' that actually seems legitimate. Miles does talk more than Veena on shows, but she's always let him do that - he loves getting to meet everyone and show off! But if she wanted to do that too...

He shakes his head. Veena and him are a great team, and if she wanted him to talk less on interviews she would tell him, right?

Maybe he'll ask her when she gets back. Just to be safe.

He reports back to Mrs. Weasley, and she reads the article in tense silence, before closing the laptop and looking up at Miles.

"Go find Petra. We need to have a full team meeting about this. Now."

Miles nods and darts away immediately. He gets a few concerned looks from the other Initiative members as well as one of the remaining Hunters, but he ignores them and goes straight towards the lift. Mrs. Weasley said 'now', so he's going to get Petra up here as close to that as possible.

The lift ride to the sub-basement feels impossibly long, and Miles nearly launches himself through the doors the moment they open, startling the young man at the front desk of the Archives.

"Um can I-" He doesn't even finish his sentence before Miles blurts out his answer.

"Do you know where Petra is? From the Initiative? She comes down here all the time you know her right?" He says, nearly running out of breath at the end of the last question.

The man looks even more petrified, but he nods slowly. "Um, yeah, she's with Archive Head Taylor right now? They're going through some old war files that were mis-filed way back when. I could send them a summons, if you'd like?"

Miles nods vigorously, and the man, still seeming rather flustered and uncertain, sends what appears to be a Patronus into the depths of the Archives.

"Oh cool, you can do a wordless Patronus?" Miles asks, momentarily forgetting to be nervous and miserable in favor of poking at this new discovery.

The man startles, then shakes his head. "Oh, um, no. No, I can't cast a Patronus. That's just the Archive Messenger - everyone learns how to create it so we can communicate easily no matter where we are in the Archives."

Miles frowns - he's never heard of anything like that before - but doesn't get a chance to ask anything else before Petra and Eloise Taylor appear from the depths of the room behind the front desk.

"Miles? Is everything alright?" Petra asks, sounding like each word is being dragged out of kicking and screaming. "The Initiative is alright?"

He holds his hand up and wiggles in in a 'so so' motion (he'd learned that on one of their Interviews, and he uses it whenever he can now - it's so useful!). "It's not great. Mrs. Weasley is calling a full-team meeting right now, so we need you to come back up for a while."

Petra frowns, but nods reluctantly. "Alright. I'll be back later then."

"Best of luck." Taylor offers, though Miles can't tell if she's being sincere or not. Based on Petra's smile he assumes she probably is, so he gives the Head a smile too before bouncing back to the lift.

"So what's going on?" Petra asks as they ascend back towards the seventh floor, and Miles grimaces. He really doesn't want to explain it, but Petra probably does need a rough overview of the situation, considering everyone else probably got one while Miles was away fetching the social media specialist. So he sighs and gathers his thoughts, trying to come up with the least-terrible way of phrasing their newest crisis.

"Basically a blogger posted an article about how the Initiative is a toxic workplace that doesn't actually want to get anything done, just wants to make magical people look good so the Muggles will let us do whatever we want in public. There are some specifics, but that's basically it." He blurts out, mostly in one breath, and Petra looks sick.

"Oh. Great." She replies after a long moment of silence. When they reach the seventh floor the rest of the Initiative has already been gathered, the desks pushed aside to create space for a circle of chairs. Two sit empty, and Miles and Petra quickly take up residence in them.

Mrs. Weasley nods to them before clearing and rising from her own seat. "It seems," She says smoothly, "That we have a leak among our ranks."

A few people tense up, and Miles flicks his eyes around nervously. What is Mrs. Weasley talking about? Wasn't the article just speculation based on information easily avilable through the conferences?

"An article was posted last night which has rapidly infected the Internet with rumors about our organization and its ability to actually function. I've read through the article, and while much of it is speculation on the part of the author, it seems his interest was piqued when he overheard a member of our group complaining about the argument that occured last Friday."

Miles sees both Landon and Rose shrink, and he wonders what he'd missed - he hadn't heard any argument, but he also had been pretty busy running around on Friday, so he may have missed it.

"The author seems to have gotten wind of this argument, and it serves as the foundation for all his other accusations." Mrs. Weasley sighs. "I understand that everyone here is under a lot of pressure, and I'm confident that this slip was entirely accidental, but this accident just set us back several months - from this point onwards I'm issuing a formal gag order until further notices. No talking about the Initiative unless you're in the office or the privacy of your own homes - no owls, no emails, no phone calls to vent. Not until things have calmed down significantly at least, and likely not even then. We're the face of the move to integrate our two worlds, and slander like this is incredibly damaging."

"You can sue, you know." Aruna says, almost too quiet to be heard, but as her voice is the only sound in the room it echoes like she's cast a projection spell. "For slander. This person could severely damage our work with his speculation. I could read the article, see if there's anything we can do about getting it taken down or at least retracted?"

Mrs. Weasley purses her lips. "I'd like to see about getting the statement retracted, if we can." She agrees after a moment, "But I don't want to pursue any legal attacks at this moment - it would likely only stir futher suspicions that we have something to hide." She sighs. "That's all for now - Ms. Kandasamy, Mr. Taylor, if you two could come see me in my office. Ms. Clark, be aware we may need you to return later."

Petra nods, grimacing, before darting away to the lifts. The rest of the Initiative slowly disperses, though Landon lingers behind alongside Aruna and Miles.

"Mrs. Weasley, I-"

"I don't care what you did Mr. Colvin. I'm assuming it was a mistake, and I'm assuming it won't happen again." The leader says briskly, and Landon deflates and slinks away. Miles watches him go and resists the urge to follow and try to cheer him up - if Landon really was the leak, which is the only logical explanation for why he stuck around post-meeting, he must feel awful. But they do have other things they need to focus on, so he turns and follows Aruna and Mrs. Weasley into the latter's office.

"Alright." She says, flicking her wand and closing the door. The laptop is still sitting open on her desk, the article pulled up. "Ms. Kandasamy, if you could read through this and see what, if anything, can be done I would be much obliged. Mr. Taylor, we need to discuss what the Initiative's response to this will be. I've been pondering over it myself, but as you're the person currently responsible for comment and message response I want to know what your ideas would be, as well as your comfort zone with all of this. I know this is a lot, so don't hesitate to tell us if you need a break or assistance in your work."

Miles nods, wetting his lips slightly and wracking his brain. If he's honest, he hasn't come up with anything resembling a solid response - he's been too busy freaking out. So he takes time now to properly think through the article, it's accusations, as well as their current marketing, trying to see if there's a way to combine them into something helpful.

He gives up after what feels like it's probably been too long. "I'm not really sure." He admits apologetically. "I'm just used to our usual messaging, how we're all human and stuff."

Mrs. Weasley purses her lips, nodding slightly. "And we'll be keeping to that - if we change our approach too much in light of this everything we've said up to this point will come under scrutiny and deemed false, regardless of how honest all of it has been."

Miles blinks. "But... why?" He asks, a bit helplessly perhaps but he's honestly confused by the statement. "It's all true, so why would anyone say it wasn't?"

"Because people will believe what they want to believe." Aruna answers him, which is startling enough that Miles forgets to be sad for a moment. "It's natural - if you think something is bad, you'll refuse to see anything good about it, no matter what, and you'll look for anything that could even slightly confirm your assumptions. It's called confirmation bias, and it's everywhere - causes a lot of trouble in court with the juries. You probably do it too."

Miles pouts. He's pretty sure he doesn't, but he doesn't get a chance to say so because Mrs. Weasley clears and he looks back over at her sheepishly.

"Ms. Kandasamy is correct, so we cannot give anyone anything to point at outside of this article." She says. "So no major changes in the messaging. If anything, I think this could work out well enough, considering how things panned out back in October with your and Mr. Edevane's unfortunate outing and altercation. Everyone is familiar with frustrating work environments - we can use that in our response." She purses her lips. "Perhaps we should bring Ms. Clark back in after lunch - she was instrumental in coordinating and disseminating that response, so she's probably best equipped to deal with this incident as well. For now why don't you begin mitigating the comment section as well as you can."

Miles nods mutely and accepts the laptop back from Aruna before returning to his desk. It's going to be a very long day.

Petra misses the Archives already. Aside from them offering a safe haven away from internet comment wars (and the temptation of going to chat with Noah instead of dealing with said comment wars), she's come to really enjoy her time in the Archives - and come to enjoy the people as well. From the ever-nervous Harrison to the newest Archive employee Aaron to Archive Head Taylor herself, Petra has gotten to know the Archive team incredibly well in the past month.

But she's needed in the offices again, like she knew she would be one day, and she can't exactly say no. So here she is, back on the seventh floor, rifling through the three notebooks' worth of notes that she's been taking during her Archive perusals and sharing her most relevant findings with Miles and Veena, the latter of whom had cut her book signing tour short to come help with the latest crisis. She had, after all, started the Archive dives with the express purpose of discovering information that could help with future crises like this one - if she can't deliver on this, she may not be able to go back to Archive diving once all this has passed.

So she determined to find something.

"I mean, obviously the main conversation here is that this is a high-stress environment and sometimes people get snippy. But we also don't want to portray ourselves as unprofessional while on the job." She muses aloud, frowning at her notes. Most of them are things that she'd passed off to her Hunter team a while ago (she misses them - putting together her own reports is time consuming and a lot less fun than just collecting the information is) and aren't particularly helpful.

"Obviously." Veena agrees, almost distracted as she scrolls through the offending article. She'd only just arrived this morning and is still catching up on the details of the situation. "Man, this guy is good. If I didn't know better I'd have questions too. I think Miles and I can address some of these personally at our next interview, and it might behoove us to hold another Press Conference to talk about this specifically - clear the air as it were."

They chat idly as they keep working, but nothing of substance really happens. Petra eventually gives up and announces she's going to take her lunch.

"Hopefully I can come back with a clearer head." She offers. "I'm honestly just not seeing any way to approach this that doesn't make at least some people think we're hiding things."

"There may not be a way to placate everyone." Veena says disgruntledly. "Have a good lunch though. I'll probably head out for my own soon as well - I'll mention the possible Press Conference to the leaders before I go though."

Petra offers her thanks and heads immediately over to the Hunter's side of the room. If she's going to be back in the office, then she's reactivating an old lunchtime routine.

Unfortunately, Noah isn't at his desk, so she leans against it to wait for him to return. He's likely in a meeting with the leaders or the international consultants from other Initiatives - that's usually where he is if he's not at his desk.

Sure enough, he appears out of the leaders' offices about ten minutes later, and looks a bit startled to see her at his desk.

"Hey, what's up? You're not in the Archives today?" He asks curiously, and she can feel herself grimace.

"Nope, not for the foreseeable future." She confirms sadly. "Are you available for lunch?"

He hesitates, glancing over at the leaders' closed door before nodding. "Give me five minutes to file this stuff? Hugo is really big on organization and if this isn't put away properly I might get another lecture."

Petra can't help smiling slightly at the genuine stress that seems to cause him - she hasn't yet met the new leader of the Hunters, but he seems like he's distinctly different from the laid-back Fiona, and Petra is curious to meet him properly.

She watches Noah curiously as he carefully puts away the files he'd brought with him from his meeting, and giggles as he double-checks their placement, earning herself a baleful look.

"You laugh, but you've never faced the wrath of an irritated Dark Magic Specialist." He declares. "So where did you want to go for lunch? Maybe that new Chinese place just outside of the Alley?"

They debate food options the entire lift down and on the walk over to the Floo hall, ultimately going with Noah's initial suggestion as neither can think of anything that sounds better than orange chicken.

"So why are you back in the offices?" Noah asks once they're seated. "I thought you were getting a lot done in the Archives?"

Petra nods mournfully, pulling out her wand under the table and casting a silencing charm around them. No need to tempt fate on this one - she doesn't want anyone overhearing the conversation. "I was, but they need all hands on deck for this latest slip up. You heard about the article, right?"

Noah frowns. "Yeah, but I guess I didn't realize it was such a huge deal. Are people really taking it that seriously?"

"Unfortunately, yes. People always want to see the worst in the world." Petra sighs. "And they go and make my job harder. Terribly inconsiderate."

Noah laughs, and she sticks her tongue out at him slightly. "Hey, if you get to laugh at my pain I can laugh at yours!" He defends, and she does have to give him that one. "But seriously, that - sorry to hear it's gone so sideways. But this is kind of like the October thing, right? So maybe it won't be as hard to address?"

She shrugs, leaning back in her seat and double checking the silencing wards before responding. "That remains to be seen. We're still trying to figure out exactly how to market things, and I'm honestly blanking on how to say 'yeah there was a fight but it's fine, it's just office stress.' Like, I'm not sure there is a way to say that without basically sounding like we're admitting to being in over our heads with this."

Noah glances at her wand. "You guys are really taking this seriously, huh?" He observes, and she shrugs as she slides her wand back up her sleeve and out of sight.

"We're guessing the leak was an accident, which means there's a non-zero chance at least some of us are being followed by opportunistic bloggers and reporters hoping to make us look bad." She sighs. "At least, I hope the leak was an accident. Otherwise it may mean the Initiative is already compromised and that..." She shudders, checks the wards again almost compulsively. "I don't want to think about what that would mean. The last leak is something Yurina could have easily already known, but this... this was an accident. There isn't another explanation, at least not one that doesn't basically mean we're screwed no matter what we do."

Noah raises his hands placatingly, and Petra realizes that she's getting rather dizzy - she'd forgotten to breath. So she takes a few deep inhales and releases them slowly until her vision re-centers. "Sorry, I just-"

"It's cool, I understand." Noah assures her quickly. "It's stressful. Different topic?"

She smiles and grabs her wand to undo the silencing charms before anyone notices them and gets too nosy. "Yes please."

They end up talking about the Netflix show 'The Crown' which they're both rewatching in preparation for the third season which has just been announced to be in production.

"They get some things decently right, but then they get some things super wrong, and it's fun for drama but after this year I'm officially worried that some people might start thinking it's actual history." Petra sighs, and Noah hums agreement around a mouthful of rice, which he's completely soaked in soy sauce. "Honestly real history is dramatic enough, too. They don't even need to add all the intrigue, but they do anyway and now I worry about what people in like, America think about our royal family."

"They always portray Elizabeth well." Noah points out, and Petra tilts her head.

"True enough, but you realize that timeline-wise we're about to hit all the stuff with the Russian spies and Anthony Blunt, right? I'm worried they might not be as delicate as they should, considering how relatively recent that is compared to the first two seasons."

"I wonder if they'll start including magical aspects as well, considering the Royal Family was well aware of Hogwarts and the magical world." Noah muses, and Petra lights up.

"Oh that would be amazing if they did, but how would they work it in considering the first two seasons don't acknowledge it?"

The conversation carries quite comfortably through the rest of lunch and into their walk back to the Ministry (they still have some time left in their lunch hour and Petra had decided that a stroll through the fresh spring air would be good for her nerves). Eventually the topic does reach a natural ending point, and they fall silent for a while, just walking.

Noah takes her hand at some point, and she squeezes it slightly, smiling. "Say, we should do something this weekend." She says after a moment. "I don't know what, but that movie night we had a while ago was a lot of fun. We still have to see the Phineas and Ferb movies, right?" They've gone on dates since, officially labelling their relationship in the process, but they've always been dinners out or walks in the park - nothing like that first night in with just popcorn and good company. She thinks she could use a night like that again after all this.

Noah looks over at her curiously. "Yeah, and Season Four, too. I'm going to be at work all weekend, but I can probably get home by six or so - we could do it on Saturday?"

Petra beams. "At my place." She says after a moment. "You hosted last time, I think it's only fair."

He's slowly turning red, but he nods anyway. "Y-your place. Yes, good, that works." He agrees, tripping over his tongue, and Petra finds herself blushing as well.

"Right, um. I'll owl you details and stuff?" She offers as they reach the Muggle Ministry Entrance and they head down into the Atrium. "Later this week?"

"Yeah, that's fine. Or we can talk again on Friday and see where we're both at with everything?" He offers, and she nods in return. That's probably a better idea - who knows if she'll actually have time or energy this weekend, when all is said and done?

The part on the seventh floor, agreeing to speak in two days to solidify any possible date plans. And for all she's dreading getting back to work, Petra does feel a trill of warmth thinking the word "date" without any caveats or uncertainties. She honestly still can't believe she's actually dating the cute Hunter only six months after meeting and starting to crush on him, but with the chaos of everything else in her life, saying 'yes' when he'd asked if she was his girlfriend was easy in a way little else is. He's her island in the middle of this storm, and maybe it's unhealthy to rely on one person for stability in these sorts of situations, but Petra honestly can't bring herself to care. She's happy, and she's going to hang on to that with everything she has, even as the world keeps pushing back against her and reminding her of the many, many reasons that everything is actually terrible.

Veena and Miles don't look like they've moved when Petra walks up, though Veena seems a bit more alert when she looks up on Petra's approach. "Hey. How was lunch?"

Petra smiles. "It was awesome. So what are we looking at next?"

Author's Note: :D This is fine :D And with this we're officially halfway through the story! Originally TLA was supposed to open today too, but I got excited, so no special surprise for this mid-point! xD