𝗺𝗮𝘇𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘀, the marauders

˗ˋ 05

CHAPTER FIVE
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-: the beginnings :-

── IN WHICH SHE WRITES UP
TRANSCRIPTS

. . .

OPHELIA WAS EXHAUSTED, she had spent hours interviewing each of the four best friends - going back to Sirius in between Remus, Peter and James but to no avail - and then after the interviews were over she returned to her office to listen through the tapes over and over until 5pm arrived and she could go home.

Her feet hurt, she had taken the muggle Underground for one ride to get further away from the entrance to the Ministry and Apparted from an alleyway there into the alley beside her apartment building - which was a lot further away from her workplace then she would have liked - and so she felt sick from this, and after relistening to the tapes so many times she had a headache.

But she also had the tape recorder in her bag, so that was that.

Clutching the straps of her bag she pushed herself off of the brick wall she had been leaning again, turning onto the street lit in an amber glow as she set her eyes on the townhouse at the end of the street, pushing the door open to Number 19. 

Despite the neat townhouse appearance on the outside, it didn't really reflect on the inside - at least not in the corridor anyways. It was a little dingy, the wallpaper was peeling and faded and the downstairs neigbours were having another get-together, which was really just a party disguised as that. 

But it didn't bother her too much, only as she walked by to get to the stairs on the otherside of the hall, free hand running over the bottom of the railing, across the acorn-shaped cap at the post before beginning her steady incline up it.

She passed two more floors until she began to climb up the much thinner, rickety staircase up the landing of her floor - which consisted solely of a couple meters of old wooden floor and a dying plant. "Aguamenti." She muttered, glancing behind her before saying the spell, watching as the magical-infused water slowly brought the plant back to life. 

Then, Ophelia extracted her keys from her pocket and unlocked the faded blue-grey door, pushing it open into her attic apartment, smiling when she saw the tawny owl perched on the white window frame. "Good evening Ferelith." She greeted the bird with a scratch behind her ears, dumping her bag on the old velvet sofa and reaching for a tub of treats, offering one to the owl and taking the letters from her. 

It was fair to say that Ophelia's apartment wasn't the most extravagant place, but she didn't need it to be. It was small, and consisted only of a kitchen-living room combination, bathroom, and bedroom. 

The kitchen was sage green, old cabinets painted over when she first moved in. The fridge was a faded yellow, the counter stoold a shade of blue. Tucked beside it was a wooden table and in front of that the old faded couch, bookshelves and her desk, as well as Ferelith's perch for when she travelled from her parents' house. A rack by the front door was filled with her shoes and several hooks were with her coats.

Her bedroom was small; bed on a wire frame tucked into a corner, attic windows jutting out to provide a little more space, a built in wardrobe filled with a mixture of ministry-appropriate clothes and her everyday wear. The bathroom was nothing special, terracota tiles with green-blue walls.

Her parents hated it, they had begged her to let them buy her a house like their did for Amos. But she loved it there, she didn't exactly need anything more. 

Sitting down besides her bag, the girl set the tape recorder down on the coffee table, pulling out a notepad and pen and pressing play again, writing out the conversation over the lines, tiny abbrieviations for who was talking lined in the margins. 

It was a lengthy process, and curled up on the sofa the time seemed to pass even slower as she made the notes. But she needed to do it so that she could put them in the official file, bring a new spin to their way of investigating within the Auror Department.

They didn't usually use this method, and if anything was needed to be pulled up in front of the court, they had a pensieve at their service if it was necessary, but the Aurors were under an oath that would prove if they were lying or not when the time came to it.

Nobody actually seemed to know what it would do, considering they had no reason to lie when it came to their cases and they were all in fear of it happening to them anyway. 

But either way, Ophelia considered it a good idea for the department to get in the habit of having physical records of it as well. The tape within the recorder could be pulled out and put in the file when she was finished writing it up as well. Really, it was just adding evidence to what they already had, because memories could be unreliable.

She didn't dare suggest that to the Ministry though, although her N.E.W.T study into the effect of memory charms and memory as a whole had managed to get her a 'U' in chams and very much proved that although 'obliviate' would remove the memory from their direct thinking it was still there as well as the fact a person had the ability to alter their own memories. 

They were stuck in their ways, which pretty much explained why she was the only female auror as of then in a department that didn't look like it would be changing for a while. 

But either way she was going to do her best. And that was why, after writing up another set of tape transcripts, she dug out a list of addresses from her bag and found the takeaway menu that had been dropped into her letter box a while ago. 

Well - the takeaway didn't add anything to it, but she had gotten hungry and needed something to eat. So, using the muggle phone placed on the small table beside the sofa she ordered that, all whilst thinking about she was going to write.

After the call, it had taken her a while to get out the right words, but a letter had formed on the sheet of paper in front of her. It was inviting Sirius - and just Sirius, his friends had been far more helpful than he had - back to to the headquarters for another interview.

Because to be honest, she had been upset with how Sirius had been. And she couldn't let her  case end up being unsolved. 

Not only was it her first case, but it had been assigned to her because a positive interaction she had with a now dead man. Even if he was a shitty person, the wizarding world didn't mess around with the dead. You respected their wishes, and that was final. 

And so help her if she couldn't find out where the hell Regulus Black had gone. She needed to find him. She would find him. But only if Sirius Black pulled his head out of his arse and actually answered her questions. 

But she would make sure he would. It wouldn't be too hard.

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