coffee for your head (Heleen)

[scorpius hyperion malfoy]

September 2025

It had been a long day, and it wasn't yet noon. As much as essentially playing with Muggle technology was enjoyable, that wasn't actually all that Scorpius did, and he had been assigned a greater workload than he'd anticipated. The morning also seemed to dictate that coffee was necessary, and Scorpius was quick to take a break at the first opportunity he got to grab some.

The coffee from the food stall in the Ministry's Atrium wasn't the world's best, but it was sufficient to get him through the next few hours of work—or so Scorpius hoped. The queue wasn't long; most people had gone to their offices for the day, but it was long enough that it would be a while before he would have the opportunity to order. He filed in and waited, not that there was much else that he could do.

@seph

[Deleted]

Ever since the accident and the following drama, Heleen had been unable to go get coffee in the busy moments. Everything around her always seemed to be magic and these days that gave her a headache. She often had trouble at work since it made it very hard to concentrate when everything around her was just... glowing. She'd been getting better in tuning her ability out and at times even managed to turn it off completely but it drained her energy a lot. She'd been sleeping badly and had struggled a lot more than before. It was one of the days she'd had a high need for coffee but she'd started early to make sure that she could dodge the busy moments when the coffee break came around. She figured she'd also get Dmitri something, although she wasn't quite sure what yet.

When her coffee did come around she blinked at it and then looked at the store keep for a moment in exasperation. "Really? Multiplication charms? Are they saving money on coffee now?" The employee gave her a bit of a weird look before shrugging. She looked down and quickly rushed off to the counter to wait for the second coffee. She softly muttered to herself for a moment as she considered the fact they'd started multiplying supplies. It would certainly make the coffee cheaper, although not better. She looked at the other person there. "I wouldn't expect too much. I think the quality isn't quite up to par for today." She was a bit off that day, grumpy due to a building headache and the prospect of subpar coffee wasn't helping. You could charm a lot of things but it wasn't always better. At least this never happened in muggle shops.

scorpius hyperion malfoy

[scorpius hyperion malfoy]

September 2025

"Really? Multiplication charms? Are they saving money on coffee now?" Scorpius overheard a woman questioning from just ahead of him. He wasn't quite sure what that was about, but she nonetheless sounded exceptionally frustrated. Had she had a large order that she had had to place for an entire office or something? Had that been their way of solving it instead of making each coffee one by one? Scorpius guessed that it was possible that they had tried to cut corners, but he didn't think that that would turn out very well.

The woman didn't seem to think so, either, and he watched her out of curiosity for a few moments before she spoke to him, warning him about the issue. "I wouldn't expect too much," she advised him, still sounding put off by it. "I think the quality isn't quite up to par for today."

"Thanks," Scorpius nodded his head, waiting for the same employee who had been helping her—or who was supposed to be helping her, rather—returned to take his order. Sticking with something simple sounded like a good bet, and at least he was only ordering the coffee for himself. He wasn't an intern who had been forced to take the needlessly complicated orders of all of the higher-ups. He paused and watched to see what was going on behind the counter, and then he turned to the woman. "What are they using?" he asked her curiously, lowering the volume of his voice a little bit as he spoke. "Doubling Charms?"

@seph

[Deleted]

The guy asked what they were using, asking if it was doubling charms. Heleen snorted a little. "You wish. They're doing multiplication, which is just the same thing that is easier and doesn't duplicate with the same quality. It's a very subtle difference and most people wouldn't even be able to tell anyway, which only makes it worse." It kind of felt like they were being ripped off. "I think they're low on supplies though, since this is the first time I caught them attempting to use charms to keep orders going. It just adds to the headache I already have so it makes me a bit ill tempered." It was almost an apology, although she hadn't exactly been rude to him. She did feel a little bad about being so grumpy over something that seemed so small. Still, as she got her two coffees (including the one for Dmitri) she could feel her headache getting slightly worse as the swirls of magic in the cup did nothing to help ease the intensity of having far too much sensory input.

On the bright side, she was getting better at controlling the impact of her new sixth sense. Her initial bad health was mostly gone if she noticed the more simple charms. She'd mostly been avoiding more complicated stuff, although she sometimes used her ability at work to see where some devices in development were not functioning as they should. It usually meant she needed about an hour or so to recover but all in all she'd made quite a few leaps of progress since going back to work after the incident. Not that she could share that with anybody outside of the department of course. She didn't even think sharing her ability was smart, since it had been the result of a work related injury. She just wasn't sure how to talk herself out of this one if he started to ask too many questions.

scorpius hyperion malfoy

[scorpius hyperion malfoy]

September 2025

"You wish," laughed the woman in response to his question about what in Merlin's name they were doing with the coffee behind the counter. "They're doing multiplication, which is just the same thing that is easier and doesn't duplicate with the same quality," she explained. "It's a very subtle difference and most people wouldn't even be able to tell anyway, which only makes it worse." Scorpius, who had never even heard of such a thing, was surprised, but he took her word for it.

She also added that she thought that they might have been low on supplies, which would have explained why they were cutting corners so significantly. On a more positive note, she said it was the first time that she had caught them taking that route, though the positivity was short-lived. The woman said that she had a headache already, and Scorpius nodded, feeling sort of bad that she was having to deal with the coffee fiasco.

Her order arrived, and Scorpius gave the woman a nod. Given that the baristas were just multiplying what they could back there, he didn't think that it would be very long before he got his order, too, so he didn't feel as though continuing to converse with her would keep her there too long. Besides, she'd mentioned her headache, and he wanted to make sure that everything was okay. "Are you feeling alright, though?" he checked with her. If she wasn't well, he didn't mind staying with her or accompanying her back to her office, whichever she felt she needed.

@seph