RP Log: Rosalie and Berk
Characters: Rosalie Diserafino and Berkeley Doge
Setting: The Auror Department offices, Thursday afternoon
Summary: Rosalie discusses with Berk the unpleasant bit of correspondence left on her desk.
Rating: G



As Rosalie shut her journal, she bit her lip and picked up the note again. It had been easy to spot on her neat and organized desk, standing out amid the precisely aligned folders and color-coded notes. It was the message of it that she wasn't too clear on. "Careful who you stand next to"? That could mean almost anything. Obviously it had something to do with her blood status, though; whoever left the note had been very clear in how he or she had addressed her.

There was something unsettling about it. While the note didn't make any precise threats, it did make her uneasy. She supposed it was lucky she worked in an office full of Aurors. It wasn't as though she were in any danger there. Still, for a World Champion Worrier like Rosalie, it seemed best to discuss the matter with someone. Berkeley was a good choice; he was her friend, and he wasn't one to jump to a panic. He'd know what to do.

In the meantime, she'd try to get some work done. Rosalie picked the vacation schedule up and started marking the large wall calendar, so everyone would know who was gone when over the course of July and August.

It was rare that one of their own was having trouble inside the offices, so Berk cut his riveting conversation about the various ways a woman could give birth (and actually, many of the single/childless aurors were around listening with curious/horrified expressions) to head over to Rosalie's desk and find out what was bothering her. Really. If any of the new recruits were giving her a hard time, Berk had a list of about two million things he could torture them with.

And he might just torture them anyway, because it really was a lot of fun. And it was good bonding time with his brother, which was definitely something he and Mycroft needed. Berk knew that with the baby coming, his brother was starting to feel a bit left out so--maybe they could plot something.

"Hey," Berk said quietly when he reached Rosalie's desk. His fingers rapped gently in front of heer, eyes casting down at her paperwork. If things got settled, maybe he could ask about that extension, "You okay?"

Rosalie looked up, startled, and her facial expression made the answer to the question obvious. Her eyes showed worry and she bit her lip. "Not exactly," she said, and she moved a folder aside to take the note out from under it. "I found this on my desk this morning when I came back from getting tea."

She handed the note up to Berk and turned her chair away from her work, toward him. Nervously, Rosalie glanced around the area to be sure no one was actively listening to them. Whoever left that note, it had to be someone in the office - and whoever that person was, she didn't want him to know that he had succeeded in scaring her with his vague threat.

Berk's eyebrows rose slightly as she explained, and he flipped the note around to read it properly. This--was not what he'd been expecting. His eyes flitted from the note to Rosalie, and then Berk straightened up, jaw tightening. He wasn't one to get overtly mad, and he didn't have a reputation for having a temper, but he couldn't stop himself from growing fairly annoyed at this. The aurors were supposed to be the ones that protected people against these kind of idiotic threats and ideas, and now right under their nose, one of their own was being targeted?

"You said it was just on your desk?" he said quietly, summoning a chair over and sitting down casually, as if their conversation was about something benign and not at all dangerous. The auror offices were not the easiest place to get into unless you had an escort; whoever had left the note had been allowed in under their surveillance and who knew if they were still around.

He leaned forward, hands clasped with his eyes ducked low, "Do you know the exact time?"

"Not exactly, no," Rosalie replied apologetically. She'd worked in the Auror office long enough to know that information like that would be helpful, but she simply didn't have it. "I went to get a cup of tea, and then I had a meeting with Karen over in Artifacts, and then Mr. Robards waylaid me in the hall...I was gone for a full hour from around three until four or so. It was here when I got back. No one was at my desk or all that time."

That was part of what had Rosalie so troubled. It could have been anyone in the office, and it almost had to be someone in the office. She went to great lengths to be safe as a woman on her own, and she didn't like feeling as though that safety was compromised.

"What do you think it means?" she asked. "Be careful who you stand next to? I can't even decide if it's a threat or a warning!"

Berk let out a breath, sitting back in his seats. He'd have to go over the surveillance statues' reports to see if there were any strange appearances, but he knew that the message could have just as easily been slipped in with her morning post, or sent through one of the paper airplanes constantly zooming in and out of the offices. Maybe he could try to trace the ink, but then again, if someone was daring enough to make a threat against Rosalie, who was well involved with the auror squad, than it was more than likely that they weren't new at this kind of thing.

"Have you been spending time with someone you normally wouldn't?" he asked, tongue twisting in his mouth as he thought over the questions, staring at the note. "It mentioned your blood status---so, a pureblood? I'm going to assume from a 'traditionaslist' family."

He himself was a pureblood, there was a long generation of Doges in the wizarding world, but it drove Berk mad that he even had to bring it up in certain situations. Sometimes people, some muggleborn aurors or other ministry officials, scoffed at him because he simply could not understand thee prejudices they went through. Berkeley knew exactly what it felt like to be thought lower than human, he didn't need a muggle family to verify those feelings.

Her mind went immediately to Braith, of course. He was certainly someone she hadn't been spending time with until recently. She hadn't inquired about blood status, though, and neither had he. It had always seemed rude to her to do so, and neither of them discussed their families except in rather oblique ways. He knew she had a difficult mother and sister and a somewhat distant relationship with her father, but she'd never mentioned that her father was a muggle or that her mother was a squib. Since he didn't seem to care for discussing his family in detail, Rosalie had simply refrained from asking. She knew family was important to him, and that was enough. They had other, more interesting things to talk about.

"Well...maybe?" she hazarded. "I've been seeing someone a bit, but blood hasn't really come up. Do you know Braith Selwyn, from Transportation?"

Berk expertly managed to hide his surprise at the name, and turned away for a moment to see if there was anyone close by. No, he wasn't one to make assumptions, but even Berk could not help letting his emotions take over when personal matters were directly involved. Selwyn? The one who had broken his wife's heart for reason Berk really didn't need or want to hear about?

Oh--there was also the fact that his brother was killed after trying to attack a young law student recently, and was revealed to be a death eater.

Rosalie must not know any of this, right? Because---well, he knew that one of the new recruits, Jugson, he knew that his brother had been a death eater as well, so people could be entirely different from their family members (well. Look at him and his brothers), but this was just unsettling.

"His brother was a death eater," Berk said bluntly, biting the inside of his cheeks for a moment before letting out a breath, "I'm not insinuating anything, but--that could be the connection."

Rosalie's eye's went wide, and she blinked a few times as if trying to clear her vision. "Oh my," she murmured, mostly to herself. "No wonder he doesn't talk specifics about his family."

This was startling information indeed. She wasn't aware of any of the things Berk knew about Braith, about his brother the death eater or about breaking the lovely Mrs. Doge's heart. They had talked about books and food and work but never about politics or past relationships. Both of them were people who avoided complications, and therefore those topics were off limits for the time being. She knew only that Braith was very good to her, that she liked him, and that she felt comfortable around him like she seldom did around people she hadn't known for years.

The note seemed to imply that perhaps somebody had a problem with the two of them spending time together. Apparently they felt the need to tell her in an utterly cruel way. But then, some people were simply like that, weren't they? Rosalie had lost her faith in the basic goodness of humanity a long, long time ago; it was no surprise that some people were just mean. Surely that was all this threat was: some obnoxious pureblood supremacist being nasty to her. That was what she wanted to think, anyway.

Berk nodded slightly, and then stood, taking the note from the top of her desk.

"Look--I'm going to take this down to the labs and see if they can pick up anything," he shrugged; they probably wouldn't find anything of significance, but he could try. Berk rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly not feeling as lighthearted as he'd started his day off. How he managed to be an auror during this war with an optimistic point of view, he had no idea, but it was starting to get more and more draining as the days went by.

"I don't want you to get too concerned," he said, mostly to calm Rosalie's nerves; this could either be someone acting stupidly or there was an actual reason to worry, he simply wasn't sure yet. "But--I'll assign someone to take you home today, maybe check the wards? Just typical safety precautions, you know that."

Berk let out a breath, carefully folding the note. And here he was, thinking all he had to do today was fill out surveys about the cafeteria food---well, no, not all, but his light workload had definitely been a relief.

"All right," Rosalie agreed, hoping fervently that he was correct about it being nothing to worry about. She had enough to worry about, and she always preferred to keep her worrying to other people, not herself.

However, she certainly wasn't going to give anyone else leave to worry about her. "Don't tell anyone you don't have to, please?" she requested anxiously. "I don't want anyone to worry about me because of something that's probably nothing."

Berk opened his mouth to respond with an easy 'sure thing' but shut it quickly to actually think about his answer before answering. Would it be better to keep it quiet, squash the threat quickly? Or, could they turn this into something that could benefit the ministry as a whole? Taking a page from Amelia's book, Berk's mind began to whirl about a campaign that could cause awareness to this kind of discrimination in the work place; would that scare people off or piss them off?

Probably a bit of both.

"I'll do my best, I promise," he responded with a nod, tucking the note carefully into his front pocket. Berk sent a a short smile before he started off, nodding and muttering hellos at his superiors that passed. Surely this would blow over soon.