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Post by Bianca Alia Rivera on Mar 14, 2021 1:12:06 GMT -7
9 January 2026
There was nothing about today that could be considered normal. But then again, the idea of ‘normal had gone out the window from the first moment she’d set foot on that damned island. The strange sight of swirling fog, the unnerving collection of exotic plants and animals she had never seen before, the uneasy sense of trepidation and trespassing that had followed her for those two days…at the moment, Bianca had been focused on nothing more but surviving the next moment. It was a strategy that had served her well – focus on eradicating the most immediate threat, and forget about everything else until it had been done. Then rinse and repeat. She’d been in survival mode on the island, learning to navigate the strange things she had found (a glowing lake, a gleaming dagger) until the first second where she could look back and start to put the puzzle pieces together into a cohesive image.
She didn’t often lose focus during work, but then again…there was nothing about today that could be considered normal. Bianca stared blankly at her computer screen, not quite absorbing anything of the report she was supposed to be writing. No, she had gotten distracted by the uneaten muffin on her desk, and the strange implications of why it was there. It had been a force of habit to buy her usual at the coffee cart popular with Ministry employees across the street – one black coffee, one blueberry muffin. But today had been different. She’d loaded the coffee with cream and sugar, and set aside the muffin to give to Leo during lunch. That damn island. She couldn’t tell if it had been meant to be or some sick joke that she would walk away without a sense of taste. It had put her in a worse mood than usual lately.
By the time she had finally refocused on her report, her concentration was quickly broken again by the sound of her alarm. Oh yes – the second unusual deviance from her typical average day. Bianca had met the Head of Magical Law Enforcement a handful of times – once during her ceremony as she graduated from being a trainee to a full Auror, once after a particularly high-profile arrest she had made, and once after the incident when the department had issued her a medal for sustaining an injury in the line-of-duty. She knew his face and policing style, but then again, so did every law enforcement official in the Ministry. It wasn’t enough of a reason to justify the out-of-blue message he had sent her, requesting a meeting less than 24 hours later. Well, request wasn’t quite the right word – one didn’t just turn down a mystery opportunity to meet with a Department Head.
Bianca had wracked her brain for an entire day to puzzle out what this might be about, but she hadn’t arrived at any satisfactory conclusion. Instead, she simply logged out of the system, locked her desk drawer, and briskly made her way to Level 2. By the time she had arrived, she was exactly 3 minutes early for her meeting, and she spent the time standing blank-faced in front of the secretary while she confirmed her appointment. Upon being waved in, Bianca took the opportunity to study the office she had never set foot in before. The room itself was spacious, although it had been decorated with the austere style of a police officer who didn’t need pompous décor. She had always appreciated that about the current Head, even if she considered him too soft in committing to what needed to be done to address the fallout from Azkaban. The audience in the room made her lift a single eyebrow – both the Head and Deputy Head in one room, an unusual occurrence for a simple meeting with an agent – but Bianca stood stiffly by the open door until she was invited to sit down.
“If this is about the Rookwood case, we decided to push the sting back a week as weather conditions weren’t favora—“ Bianca began immediately, having decided that her joint operation with the Auror Office had to be the only reason she was here and wanting to launch an offensive to justify her decision to delay. But she was quickly cut off by the Department Head, who waved a hand dismissively like he couldn’t care less what happened to Iago Rookwood. “No no, you’ll have to reassign that to someone else. Won’t have time for that now.”
It was an outrageous statement, and Bianca immediately opened her mouth to refute it. It was her operation, after all, entirely hers! It had been her informant that had spotted Rookwood’s old messaging system in use, and it had been Bianca who had put in obscene amounts of overtime to find any trace of Rookwood in any of his old haunts. It had been her who had spotted the man and decided to hold off immediately arresting him, instead following him until he led her directly to a warehouse that had been flagged by the Aurors for some time as a potential distributing center for cursed artifacts. Then it had been Bianca who had painstakingly organized a joint sting between the two offices to finally recapture one of Azkaban’s most high-profile escapees. She couldn’t imagine why she was being pulled off the case at the last moment – only for someone else to take the credit, no doubt! “There’s no good reason to reassign it now,” Bianca replied stiffly, the anger evident in her tone. “I know that case better than anybody else. You’ll have to suspend me first.”
She could have expected any number of reactions to such a provocative statement, but a slow smile creeping across the Head’s face didn’t even make the top 100. “No good reason?” he drawled, one hand running across his stubbled chin as he continued to grin at her as if he had gotten a joke she hadn’t. “How about my job? Good enough for you?” He fell quiet, only for two resounding ‘what?!’ to echo in the space, twin looks of shock on both Bianca and the Deputy Head’s faces. The man had been entirely silent until now, and the shock of that along with the Head’s second outrageous statement in the span of five minutes meant Bianca didn’t know who to turn her characteristic glare on first. As if she hadn’t been tortured enough in the last few days, she had somehow entered a waking nightmare of being offered her dream job – because, she was sure, she was going to firmly crash back into reality and get it taken away any second now.
“Declan, this makes absolutely no sense. Rivera is a fine agent, but—“ the Deputy Head began to stammer immediately, his face flushed with anger and practically tripping over his words in an effort to say them as quickly as possible. Once again, the Head interrupted. “More than fine, one of our best. The Ministry has been her entire career. Arrest record of over 80%, more overtime logged than anyone in her department, and a satisfactory recovery process from that incident a few years ago. That’s good optics, people love a good comeback story. It’s not unheard of here to grant an early promotion to reward such a prestigious service.” He had barely finished speaking when the Deputy pointed out in an acidic tone, “Oh yes, her career in the Ministry. Only 10 years in her entire service, why I spent that much time alone as an Obliviator in—“
“It might be time for a new strategy,” Bianca interrupted, her impatience with the Deputy Head’s fiery (if not accurate) comments pushing her to speak. Her heart had stopped in its chest and she couldn’t decide what exactly she was feeling, but she had more self-respect than to allow him to disparage her character and career in silence. “This department is in over its head. And everything from the last several years has happened under the guidance of veteran officials with decades of experience between them. How many times do we need to try and fail doing the same thing before we move on to something better?” It was a ballsy thing to say in front of the current Head, but Bianca studied him intently. He didn’t look angry, only defeated. A man ready to retire. She exhaled shakily, because it sounded like she had just agreed to the job – her dream job, the goal she had been working towards since the day she had started her Auror training. But she couldn’t deny that the Deputy Head had a point. She was young, much less experienced than many other officials in the department. There was an irrefutable truth at play here – the higher she might try to fly, the more it would hurt when she finally fell.
The Deputy Head sputtered something else about the ridiculousness of such a decision, and he quickly stormed out of the room. Bianca turned slightly in her chair to watch him go, then turned back to face the Head with hardened features. “He’s right. I’m not ready,” she said decisively. It seemed insane to turn down something she wanted so badly, but it would be a better move for the department. It wouldn’t be right for her to skip ranks straight to the top. All these thoughts echoed in her head – she hadn’t earned it, there were more deserving candidates, she had never truly done anything to prove herself. But she was interrupted by a snort. “Ready? No one is ever ready for this. I was an Auror for a quarter of a century when I got the job, and you think I was ready?” He leaned forward in his chair, and Bianca found herself almost doing the same as she watched her boss’s boss’s boss intently.
“Take a piece of advice from an old man. You’ll never be ready for any of the most important things in your life. And hell, if you think you are then you’re just fooling yourself. Better to go in with your eyes wide open, knowing you’re gonna struggle and fail and do it all again then thinking you’ve got this in the bag. Rivera, if I wanted somebody who was ready, I’d have just asked any Auror trainee who thinks they’ll be the next big thing. I need a survivor. Someone who’s been knocked down so many times it’s a miracle they’re still going. Someone who’ll never quit because, well god damn you’re right. This department is sinking. I never wanted my legacy to be this. Muggleborn students murdered at school, dragons loose over Hogsmeade. The worst prisoner escape in the history of Azkaban. I don’t need someone who only wants to ‘stay the course.’ I need someone to upend it completely. My Deputy won’t be the only one who’ll think I’m inviting a circus in here. You’ll need to fight every step of the way to keep your seat at the table and turn things ‘round. Ready to do the job? I don’t have illusions you are. But ready to never stop fighting? Now that’s you.”
He leaned back in his seat. “But so be it. Don’t say yes right now. Take the weekend to think about it, and we’ll have a neat little ceremony on Monday. You’ve got a lot of work to do, better to get started right away. You're dismissed, Rivera.” Bianca left the office in a daze, barely even certain where she was walking. Eventually she found herself in a deserted corridor, and she leaned heavily against the wall. Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Head of Magical Law Enforcement. It had always been a pipe dream, but now Bianca let herself weigh the words in her mind, turning each one over carefully as she considered the implications of the last 20 minutes. Head of Magical Law Enforcement.
She felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes, but for once she let them fall instead of pushing herself to be the emotionless agent she had molded herself into. For a kid who had come from the rejects of Santiago, born into a blue-collar family with a father who had never finished school and a mother whose dreams had been steadily crushed for years, losing her father to his work and then nearly going the same way, for her to end up here…what would he think? Would he be proud? There had never been anything she had wanted more, even if it was now impossible to obtain. Bianca let herself sink into the wall, crying into her hands even as she couldn’t stop the smile spreading across her face. Head of Magical Law Enforcement. The current Head was right. It would be a struggle every step of the way. There would be days where she’d curse herself for accepting this job, for wondering what the hell she was doing here. But for now, for this one moment…she had bled for this. Poured her life into this job. Accepted the possibility that she might have to lose herself completely if she wanted to fulfill the purpose she had set for herself so early in life. So for this one moment...she could let herself be happy. Come what may later.
