Break Down the Walls

[Lillian Fairbanks]

June 30, 1884

Lillian hadn't been an auror for more than a year or so, and she still had yet to prove to her coworkers that she was worth having around. She didn't like the fact that not everyone was very welcoming to her, and it wasn't even because she was a girl. Everyone she met seemed to be such a pessimistic person in comparison to her optimistic self, and it seemed that no one wanted to hear her cheeriness.

She'd just returned from a false alarm call, completely exhausted and a little grumpy. She didn't like when she was lead to believe that something exciting was going to happen when in reality there was no bad guy to capture or problem to fix. She sat on one of the benches in the office, pulling out her wand before casting a simple charm to clean her hands of the dirt that covered them. Even though there hadn't been a problem, she always seemed to end up in dirt of some sort.

She saw her boss, well her boss' boss walk into the room, and she immediately avoided making eye contact with him. She was hesitant to speak to him most of the time because she didn't want to upset him enough that he released her from her work. Even though she wasn't social with him, she wasn't rude enough to avoid him whenever he wanted to speak to her, much like she was around some of the other department workers.

  

[Faustus Prewett]

Faustus liked to keep a special eye on the Auror Office. It was where he had spent most of his time in the ministry, and it was where his heart still was. He was an auror, even if he no longer held that title, and he liked to peek in to make sure that things were going well ... especially with the mess with Walsh (and to a lesser extent Herondale) in the not-so-distant past.

Faustus especially liked to keep his eye on female aurors and trainees. They were more frequently distracted by things such as marriage and family. While some men were similarly distracted (Hatchitt, for example, marrying while still in training!), it was more common among women. Only a very few women made it through training, and of those few not all were truly cut out for the job.

Miriam Webster had somehow become the standard by which Faustus measured all other female aurors, and so far she had not let him down as a guide and an example. She was intelligent, capable, and otherwise an excellent auror. She was also proper and properly feminine, and she was all in all the perfect example of a woman who was capable of doing the job, dedicating herself to the job, and still being a woman.

So far Faustus had very little opinion on the newest female addition to the ranks of aurors, other than a faint displeasure at the fact that she was not as ideal an example as Miss Webster. Webster managed in dresses when not in robes -- thereby maintaining her femininity as well as being an exemplary auror -- and Miss Fairbanks wore bloomer suits. Those things irked him to no end; as far as he was concerned they had no business existing. Still, other than her questionable fashion choices she had not given him any reason to dislike her -- yet -- and so he nodded as she walked by.