Caution (Juniper)

[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

It was another Monday at Witch TV, and Monday Weekly had gotten very tired of the day of the week after which she had been named. All of the commentary about hating Mondays had gotten old by the time she was at Ilvermorny, never mind being in a real workplace. If she had a Knut for every time she had someone say something about her name, she probably would have had the equivalent of her parents' net worths combined. It was frustrating, and it really didn't help that people tended to take their frustrations out on her. As an intern, Monday had learned very quickly, she was usually more of a nuisance than a welcome presence, with the exception of getting coffee or tea for whoever wanted it.

Creating a spell that could magically send each person's order directly to their respective office would be an absolutely genius move, but Monday didn't have that kind of time. Instead, she had to track down everyone individually and keep her fingers tightly crossed that their beverage of choice would still be hot—or, if iced, not watered down and gross—by the time it got to them.

After making nearly all of her rounds, Monday was relieved to find that she had one last coffee to go. It was for Juniper McGonagall, one of the screenwriters. The question quickly became where Juniper had gone, and Monday knew that she couldn't just leave that one dumb coffee with a secretary, as much as that might have made her life easier. Carrying that one lone coffee in one of those cup holders meant for balancing multiple drinks at once and feeling like she'd begun to walk in circles, Monday wondered why she couldn't just summon a person.

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[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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The space she called her office was more or less a corner of a room that wasn't exactly designed for the Witch TV writers, but also seemed to be the home for most of them. Not having a desk worked well for the creative minds in the writing room, allowing them to be flexible on where they wanted to work. Essentially, wherever and whatever got the writing juices flowing, they were allowed to work from. That didn't work for her though. Juniper needed a desk and a filing cabinet, mostly because she had material that she had to transpose into the shows she was trying to develop. A rolodex of educators was her prized possession, as it allowed her to owl them immediately if she had a question. Wedged away in her tiny corner, she was usually hidden behind stacks of books and other research material. A stack of empty coffee cups also always littered one corner. At least they were easy to stack when she had the forethought to clean up after herself.

Today, she wasn't at her desk though. One of her contacts that she didn't know too well yet, for a show about child-friendly charms (not for the kids to practice, but to get them excited for Hogwarts at a young age), had apparently gotten a little upset with her demands for specific spells. A howler had arrived in her mail for the day, and she quickly made her way to the storage room across the hall. The intern that had delivered it had found it funny, giggling as Juni ran off with the ticking-time bomb of an envelope. It had been years since she'd gotten one of these.

The door to the storage room had barely closed behind her when the long, snakelike paper tongue ripped out from inside the envelope, immediately going into how rudely she had been treating her contact. Apparently sending an owl reminder every other day was annoying, though this was the first she had ever heard someone taking offense by such a thing. If everyone had magicked phones, this sort of thing wouldn't be a problem. By the time the howler had finished yelling and whining at her, she was equally as pissed off and wanted to send one right back. Doing so would have her packing up her desk by the end of the work day though. Leaving the self-destructing letter behind in the storage room, Juniper stepped back out into the hallways and slammed the door behind her. A stack of cleaning supplies inside definitely fell over because of it.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

Monday was walking along a hallway that she could have sworn she had already been down two or three times when the sound of a door slamming almost caused her to drop the coffee she was supposed to be delivering right onto the floor. She kept her grip on the cup holder, and the coffee cup itself fortunately wasn't dislodged. It was a close call, one that she didn't want to repeat. And she was relieved to see that she wouldn't have to. Walking out of what Monday realized was a storage closet was Juniper McGonagall, the writer whose coffee she'd been carrying for quite a while by that point.

The strength which which the door to the supply closet had been shut made Monday think that she would probably be getting chewed out for not being fast enough with the coffee delivery. Especially on a Monday, Monday knew that people had very little patience for things like that. Her bringing coffee was sort of a trivial thing, but not having caffeine in a timely manner was just enough of a problem that it could set somebody off.

Trying to figure out how best to approach Juniper McGonagall with only a split second to make a decision, Monday decided that she would have to go for it. If she got yelled at, she knew that it wasn't totally her fault. How many people would expect that the intern would start looking in the closets for someone who needed their coffee?

"Um, Ms. McGonagall?" Monday asked, wanting to make sure she caught up with her. "I have your coffee order here?"

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[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

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Seething was one word for her current state. This was the sort of thing she had spent years trying to correct, and going back into the office this way would totally shatter what people thought of her now. But she was beyond calmly collecting herself right now. Hearing her name called made her head snap to where it was coming from. "What?" she aggressively barked at the poor intern, Monday Weekly, that was standing a few feet away and holding a coffee carrier. She was one of the good interns, exceptionally quick with office coffee orders and actually had the right head for the business. Juniper consider herself a bit of the oddball here, since she was solely focused on educational material, but the rest of her coworkers had a knack of film and television that made up for her lack of interest in the technical side of things.

She wanted to continue on a tirade with the intern, but stopped herself when Monday said that she had the coffee that had been ordered earlier in the day. When had that been again? Cautiously stepping towards the Weekly girl, Juniper plucked the coffee cup from the cardboard carrier, knowing it had to be lukewarm at best by now. One sip confirmed that. Monday hadn't failed before with this, so that meant disappearing into the broom closet was probably what caused it to turn out this way. "Sorry...got a howler. Didn't need the everyone hearing that." She produced her wand and tapped it against the side of the cup, feeling the liquid inside warm up instantly. A second sip confirmed that it was perfect now. "You could've left it on my desk you know. No need to run around the whole building trying to find me over coffee," Juniper stated, acting as if she hadn't just almost chewed the poor girl's head off for bringing it to her.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

There were worse things than getting yelled at for not finding someone and bringing them their coffee quickly enough for their liking, and Monday knew that. Though there were worse things (like narrowly escaping a burning castle, for one), that didn't mean that Monday wanted to get yelled at, either. She had held up her end of the deal by getting the coffee, so it sort of reasoned that people needed to be able to be available to get said coffee after she had done her part. One would think so, anyway.

Juniper McGonagall did have a valid reason for not having been readily available to receive her coffee, though, as it turned out. She admitted that she had gotten a Howler, and being on the receiving end of one of those was something that nobody really wanted. It became automatically more understandable as to why she had been hiding away in a closet instead of somewhere more accessible. As Juniper herself pointed out, she probably didn't need everyone to hear that.

It didn't seem as though there had been any harm done, and Monday had to thank Merlin for that. Juniper had taken her coffee cup from her, so Monday was free from having to run around the office… until the next coffee run or assorted errand that trickled its way down to intern territory. After she had tapped her coffee cup—probably to heat it back up, Monday guessed—Juniper told her that she could have just left it at her desk instead of going around to find her in the flesh.

"Sorry," Monday squeaked, not realizing that she might end up in trouble for wasting her own time. "I didn't want it to get cold…"

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

▲

Interning at the Ministry was a lot different from what the interns at the studio went through. Everything was definitely a lot more relaxed, aside from the neurotic behavior that some of the writers and hosts had. Getting on their bad side was likely to ruin any shot you might have had at one point. Having been hired into her position, she hadn't personally gone through what the interns usually did. A lot of the older employees seemed to think that she still had access to their children's' NEWT and OWL exams, as if she would personally go after students for crossing her. If she hadn't heard that mentioned once, she would have been inclined to believe it was just her face, or a personality trait back from the dead. Juniper liked to call it more of a disapproving scowl. It ran in the family.

"And that's why we have charms," she responded. Seriously, why complain about cold coffee when a heating spell fixed it immediately. Even muggles dealt with that by throwing it in a microwave. "Why do they have you on coffee duty?" Juniper inquired, motioning with her hand for Monday to follow her down the hall. It was sort of interesting how they collectively decided that the most competent intern was best used to fetch drinks. Surely they could have spent the time better showing her the ropes? There wasn't much that Juniper felt she could do to help the situation, aside from maybe sending her own howlers to her coworkers in order to get them to pay more attention to Monday.

"Have they actually taught you anything about the studio yet? Or is it just coffee runs all day? Because I'm not sure I've ever actually seen you do anything but this." Hopefully that didn't come across as harsh as it did when she ran it through her head again. Because it sort of did. But just a little bit.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

Monday waited for the inevitable tongue-lashing about how she couldn't do something so simple properly and how a house-elf could do her job better. It was a lecture that she had never actually gotten for herself, but she had heard one of the other interns receive one around those lines a few weeks prior. Being Monday Weekly, it was impossible to slip under the radar, and not slipping up mattered even more to her because of that. Luckily, she misjudged the inevitability of said tongue-lashing, being told that she didn't need to worry about the coffee's getting cold; that was why they had charms.

At first, Monday thought that she had misheard Juniper. She was fully expecting some sort of criticism, like that was why they had charms, so she should have known to use one and not deliver coffee that wasn't piping hot. (If she had delivered it piping hot and it had spilled, though, it would have been an entirely different story.) She hadn't misheard her or misunderstood her point, however; she was saying that they had charms because it didn't actually matter if the coffee had gotten colder than was optimal. It could be fixed.

Following Juniper with the empty cup carrier still in hand as she motioned for her to follow her, Monday wasn't sure what she had gotten herself into accidentally. "Why do they have you on coffee duty?" Juniper questioned. "Have they actually taught you anything about the studio yet? Or is it just coffee runs all day?" It wasn't always coffee runs. People occasionally wanted tea, or they wanted her to duplicate papers that they were too busy (or lazy) to copy themselves, or they told her to stand at a certain distance to check if something looked right. Without a "real" job, Monday's job was doing whatever was most convenient for other people—and rarely did that involve actual work related to television.

"Because I'm not sure I've ever actually seen you do anything but this," Juniper continued.

She did kind of have a point, come to think of it. Why did they have her on coffee duty so often? For one thing, she had proven herself competent enough not to screw that up, which was apparently much more difficult than it sounded. A lot of the people who worked at Witch TV were the type of people who liked things just so, and their coffees were usually a reflection of that. Having seven siblings was really good practice for being able to remember tons of different things at the drop of a hat, but she would have taken a job running errands somewhere if that was what she had wanted to do fresh out of Hogwarts.

"Um, I mean…" Monday knew that she wasn't really speaking out of turn, but it felt like it. "Someone asked for coffee, and then another person, and then, like, it kinda turned into a whole thing, because I guess I'm the only intern around here who can remember, like, 'An upside-down magical macchiato with an added shot. Soy milk. Replace the vanilla with cinnamon, and no whip'…?"

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

▲

So it was just coffee runs after all. Juniper clicked her tongue at that, somewhat disappointed that her colleagues were blind to an actual hard-worker when one was standing right in front of them. If she had the need for an intern, or could get away with stealing one for extended periods of time, she'd corral the kid and bring her under her wings. But she sort of didn't need someone else up in her personal space all day every day. The only reason she was the way she was right now was because she had her hidden desk in the corner of the room and no one bothered outside of meetings and coffee. If she hadn't been walking while thinking about this, she knew her foot would have been aggressively tapping on the floor as she tried to figure out what to do here.

"People actually drink those things?" She'd seen the advertisements flashing in store windows, assuming the sweet (she hoped they were sweet with ingredients like that) drink was for children. Imagining the producers getting one of those over bland black coffee or tea was sort of hilarious. How was a drink upside down? Was it charmed to do so? While she didn't want one, it was certainly tempting to want to see the process behind it. Simple magic like that was the sort of thing that she wanted to present on her shows. It was sort of impossible to pitch to producers without a live example though, so seeing it in person could help...

"Are you tied up with anything for the rest of the afternoon?" Juniper asked as she stopped walking abruptly. Her own schedule was sort of open, and she'd be forgiven for slight delays since she could convince the powers to be that this was field work.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

"People actually drink those things?"

It was posed as more of a rhetorical question, Monday assumed, but people did drink coffee that complicated, actually. She was also guilty of getting complicated drink orders, though that was probably because it was more of an American thing. There were plenty of Brits who wondered what was wrong with a perfectly good cup of tea. (They also put milk in their tea, though, and cringed at the thought that Americans didn't really own kettles…)

Juniper's next question for her was definitely a question question, though. "Are you tied up with anything for the rest of the afternoon?" she wanted to know.

"I… don't think so?" Monday told her, thinking it over. "Why?" She had fulfilled her coffee-related responsibilities, which meant that she pretty much had to wait until someone saw that she was free again so that they could give her some other odd job to do.

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

▲

Maybe she shouldn't have assumed about the complicated coffee drink. Muggles liked their sweets, so obviously once their equivalent (Spellbucks) came from America, it was bound to happen. She didn't think the place she usually stopped at in the morning had all of the gadgets to make such a thing though. But that was what they were about to find out! If not, there was an actual Spellbucks storefront that had just opened, which is where she assumed this coffee she had now was from. The popularity of the joint made waiting in line insufferable though, so hopefully they wouldn't mind the two of them standing near the front taking notes and asking questions on the charms used. This was the type of plan that would either work really, really well, or the producers would yell at her for wasting time and kidnapping an intern for a couple of hours.

Leading Monday back towards her desk in order to grab a few things necessary to make it look like a work trip - a self-writing pen and charmed notebook that usually followed her everywhere taking notes - she decided to finally tell the intern what they were going to be doing. "We're going to get coffee again. Sort of." She produced a letter and envelope from her desk drawer before looking back at Monday, "I've never taken an intern out of the office, is there a procedure or person I'm supposed to contact so that they know where you are?" There had to be, right? Someone keeping all the little ducks in a row. The last thing she needed was Monday getting marks against her for a silly trip to watch baristas magically make coffee. Still, she scribbled out what looked to be a permission-slip type letter and signed her name on it, waiting to hear from the intern on whether or not she needed to address it to anyone in particular.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

Monday followed Juniper back to her desk, though they didn't stay there. Apparently, the desk was only a brief stop on their way to whatever else they were going to be doing, because Juniper grabbed some supplies and then mentioned that they were going to get coffee again. ("Sort of," she said, which didn't give Monday a whole lot of confidence.) "I've never taken an intern out of the office," Juniper admitted then. "Is there a procedure or person I'm supposed to contact so that they know where you are?"

Fishing her phone from her pocket, Monday nodded. "Yeah," she replied. "I'll do it. No problem. Are we doing Side-Along Apparition, or…?" A quick e-mail explaining that she was going out of the office to run an errand with Juniper McGonagall would suffice, she assumed.

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[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

▲

Right! Interns these days used their phones. As much as she enjoyed using her muggle one outside of work, she hadn't hopped onto the magic phone train yet. Not for any specific reason aside from feeling busy all the time to the point where she couldn't go and get one. Seeing that Monday had it under control, she pushed her half-finished letter onto a pile of other work materials, most likely to be forgotten about for several months until she next cleaned off her desk. That happened infrequently, to the point where she'd specifically asked the house elves that clean the office to not touch her desk at all. Ever. Too much research material was on it, and having stuff go missing would cause a ripple effect of uncontrolled panic that she really didn't need anymore.

"We're just going to Diagon," Juniper stated as she watched Monday pull out her phone. "Unless you need to use Side-Along. I don't mind." So much had been postponed and pushed back for the most recent graduates, that she knew it wouldn't be too surprising to get someone that didn't have their apparation license yet. Floo powder was messy and complicated often times going to the shopping district, so teleporting there was the best way. She frequently wondered why the Witch TV headquarters weren't closer, but it was what it was. Apparation would get them there in a literal blink of an eye. "Just let me know when you're cleared. Last thing we need is you getting in trouble for something as stupid as this." Obviously she'd take the fall if something bad did happen or permission hadn't been granted, but rules were rules. Having Monday break them when other interns couldn't would not be a good look. Plus they'd never give an intern to her if she bungled it up this time.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

"We're just going to Diagon," Juniper clarified. "Unless you need to use Side-Along. I don't mind."

Monday appreciated that Juniper was willing to do that, but she didn't need to use Side-Along Apparition just to go to Diagon Alley. She had been there more than enough that she had no concerns about Splinching herself going there. "No, um, I have a license," she assured Juniper. She was fortunately old enough that the attack on Hogwarts hadn't screwed up her Apparition lessons.

"Just let me know when you're cleared. Last thing we need is you getting in trouble for something as stupid as this."

Looking down at her phone screen, Monday nodded. "So just… Diagon? Like, right outside of the Leaky Cauldron?" she checked, refreshing her e-mail every few moments.

Only a few seconds later, she had permission from her supervisor that she was free to go with Juniper. "And… bingo," Monday announced. They were good to go.

juniper minerva mcgonagall

[juniper minerva mcgonagall]

▲

The visualization of Diagon Alley's layout that popped into her head as Monday asked if right outside the Leaky Cauldron was not the best. Getting to where they wanted to be, The Pi Patisserie to be specific, meant going halfway through the shopping district to the corner of Diagon and Horizont. She supposed that the Leaky Cauldron starting point would make sense at that point. "Yeah that should be fine. Need a bit of a walk anyways," Juniper mused, stretching her arms above her head. Dealing with the Howler had tensed up everything in her upper body, shoulders tight and a stress headache ready to sneak in and make her miserable for the remainder of the day. The best thing she could do right now was get her mind off of it, and going to look at coffee charms was perfect for that.

With Monday confirming that she was all set and had her own license to magically jump to Diagon, Juniper led the way towards the exterior of the building. They had a specific location they had to disapparate from, after all. "See you in a second." Nodding to Monday, she felt the gentle tug and twist as her body was pulled away from the Witch TV building and placed at the agreed upon location in Diagon Alley. The Leaky Cauldron sat directly behind her, and definitely looked quieter than it normally was. She couldn't even recall the last time she'd come here on a Monday in the middle of the day. Maybe when getting school supplies to avoid the weekend crowds? In the brief seconds she had alone before Monday would appear, Juniper moved to the side to give the intern room and pulled out the notebook she had snagged from her desk earlier. A fresh page was opened and 'COFFEE MAGIC' was scribbled across the top. They would probably find out what the actual term for it was during this, but that would suffice for now.

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[monday meadow weekly]

April 12, 2027

Juniper replied that arriving just outside of the Leaky Cauldron on the Diagon Alley side would work, though she added that she needed a walk anyway. Monday wasn't particularly thrilled at the idea of having to walk all over the place—not after her trip to get coffee and then deliver it through the Witch TV offices—but knew that arguing with Juniper when she still wasn't totally sure what they were going to be doing wasn't a good move.

Monday set the carrier that she'd had for the coffee cups in the nearest trash can, and the two of them made their way out of the building. Once they were ready, Juniper went first and said that she would see her in a second. Monday made sure that her phone was put away securely and then Disapparated after Juniper, disappearing from the spot in which she'd stood with a crack.

Almost instantaneously, Monday had Apparated to Diagon Alley just past the Leaky Cauldron. She looked over and saw that Juniper was there, too, and she had pulled out a notebook already. "Are you ready?" Monday asked. She didn't really know for what Juniper was ready. (Maybe it was for more coffee, from what she had said before?) Either way, she was going to find out.

juniper minerva mcgonagall