Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole

[Morwenna Skeeter]

25th October, 1887
Stephen Flint’s Ball

The invitations being extended to the rest of the department had not surprised Morwenna – one had to keep up appearances when running a Ministerial campaign after all and being inclusive of your underlings was a fine show of deference to the middle class voters if nothing else – but she wished she had thought of an excuse. Mr Flint’s general circle of acquaintances were not at all to her taste, and she doubted very much she was to theirs, and the entire evening thus far had been a serious of awkward interactions with gentlemen and unbearably tedious conversations with the wives she had been shunted towards so they could ignore her properly.

Putting on a smile had always seemed a great deal easier in the past but now it was nigh on impossible. She was far too old and tired to pretend but the Ministry was a beast that would not allow its employees to become weak or impolite in the face of utter idiocy and so Morwenna continued to smile, continued to sip her drink sparingly to stop herself from becoming too loose of lip, and, inevitably, found herself in the company of the man of the moment.

Or rather the man for the moment as she preferred to think of him.

“I trust the evening is going well?”

She refused to call him sir. She had avoided it as much as was humanly possible thus far in their professional relationship and she quite simply would not.

@'Stephen Flint'
@'Annabelle Scrimgeour'

  

[Stephen Flint]

Stephen's election campaign was going as smoothly as it could; he'd avoided any scandal and wasn't having anyone in the public eye attack him. He didn't lack experience like many of the candidates, and he had his credentials that vouched for his candidacy. Becoming Minister for Magic was one of the highest political ambitions any one British witch or wizard could have, and Stephen was not about to let the opportunity to hold that title slip through his fingers. His position — his specific position, including the department he was in — prevented him from holding radical opinions on a variety of issues, as he wanted to make sure he kept the support from the people working under him. However, even he knew that not everyone would vote for him.

He was unfortunate enough to have to work with the woman, Mrs. Skeeter, the relative of another one of the candidates. She was not at all the type of woman he preferred to find in his company, and he avoided collaborating with her unless emergency struck. Such was the case with the failure of the werewolf capture unit.

He was dressed smartly and had on a pleasant smile to greet everyone who approached. When Mrs. Skeeter approached, however, the smile slightly dipped into a scowl.

"As good as it can be, Mrs. Skeeter," he responded with a nod. "I do hope you've found the refreshments enjoyable. The caterers are from France and India," he offered. Perhaps avoiding the subject of him campaign was the best way to keep from accumulating unwanted tension between the two of them.

  

[Morwenna Skeeter]

If she wasn’t careful Morwenna was quite sure that she might lose several millimetres of her teeth due to grinding them, like a white cliff being weathered away over time by the arduous efforts of an irritating sea that was full of salt and mercilessly stung the fragile weaknesses of her mouth. It was impossible to avoid, impossible to do anything but weather the milquetoast storm that was the men she had to demure to.

It was around such men that she had that rarest of thought, the sort that she loathed in herself and tried to cleanse away with work and altruism for her fellow man, that it really might be terribly wonderful to transform around them just to rip their condescending throats out once and for all. She might be a pariah; hell, she might be a criminal, stripped of everything she had worked so hard for and thrown bodily into Azkaban, potentially, and the thought was almost the most soothing thing, without a soul to make her worry about all and sundry at all times. Being a blob might be comforting. Would certainly be restful and Merlin knew she could do with rest.

And it might, just might be worth it.

Instead she smiled with fake sincerity she had honed so much over a lifetime that her jaw maneuverer the muscles before she even thought about the lie she was about tell. It was pitiful. She almost hated herself for it but, like all sensible people, she refined her ire into something more crystallised and aimed it squarely at somebody else.

“Are they indeed?” She said conversationally, eyes flicking to her drink like a vampire eyeing up a neck, like Pandora eying the decrepit hope in the box, or rather more like a middle-aged woman with more problems than she cared to list clinging to the single thing that might make it less unbearable, like the sad, pathetic fool that she was. “Is there any reason for such a varied palette? It is quite the difference.”