Work Text:
When Millie saw Carr coming along the corridor with the definite look of someone pursuing her with intent, she stopped, turned and said, "I swear by all that is holy and Merlin's left ballsack, Vin, if what comes out of your mouth is anything that remotely resembles 'the Seers just tossed this up for us', I will go home with a migraine."
Vin Carr sighed at her as she started to walk again and he fell into step beside her, passing over a sheet of parchment. "Fine then," he replied, "I won't say it."
Millie took the sheet and curved her arm so she could flatten it against her clipboard. She scanned it briefly and swore under her breath. "How many times," she demanded, "am I going to be forced to take my investigations - my serious investigations, ones with dead people involved in them, not that anybody cares - off on stupid hare-brained paths that lead absolutely nowhere only to have, when I solve the damn thing myself through good old-fashioned Auror-work, the bloody Seers announce, 'ahah, but there was a picture of a lighthouse on the wall across the street so we were right. I don't care if they're right. They're useless and pointless and a pain in my arse!"
She'd had to take several breaths in that little speech, partly because she'd been raising her voice over every time Carr tried to interrupt her. Carr winced, Millie saw him, and considered bringing her volume back down - just in case someone was trying to do some honest work. For a moment, the only sound was the clicking of their bootheels against the marble until Millie pushed open the door to her office and dumped her files pointedly on the desk, flinging herself into a chair. "And right now," she added, "I'd like to point out that my partner's still learning to use that new hand of his, so it's just me."
With another sigh - he was good at sighs - Carr dropped the rest of the file he'd been carrying on top of hers and sat down in the less comfortable chair at the other side of her desk. Merlin and Morgana only knew why Millie's partner preferred the thing, but they were shoved up on one desk as it is with budget cuts, so since he didn't complain, they'd never put in a request for a better one. "Look, Andris, it's not entirely like that - you can't fairly say that the entire department is useless - "
"No, Cabriola Caker-Smith is usually worth five minutes out of my day," Millie cut him off. "Usually. But she's off having a baby at the moment, so yes, I can fairly said that - "
"The Director likes them," Carr cut her off in turn.
"Then the Director can follow their bloody leads, and I'll do some actual useful work." When Carr looked about to protest, she added, "Dead. People. Murder. You remember, that thing we're supposedly against? Someone's committing it. Repeatedly. Honestly, I'd rather work with Muggles some days, at least they get to scoff when someone claims to have found their suspect in the tea-leaves."
Carr's lips pursed. "This sort of attitude isn't helpful to your career, you know," he said. Millie snorted and pulled one of her own files out of the pile and opened it, a thousand bits of parchment and paper needing her attention.
"I don't have a career, Vin," she informed him. "You have a career. I have a job. Someone kills people, I find that someone. That's my job, and I'm trying to do it."
With a noise of disgust, or maybe just frustration, Carr pushed himself to his feet and glared down at her. She ignored him. "Just look at the damn vision," he said, finally.
"I'll look at it," Millie said. I'll need the scrap parchment for brainstorming anyway, she didn't add aloud, but Carr shot her a look like he was reading her mind. (He wasn't, of course - the man was the worst excuse for a Legilimens Millie had ever met). But he seemed to be at a loss for any kind of response, and in the end, he nodded curtly and took himself back out.
Millie glanced at the written vision out of a kind of obligation, and also out of a kind of morbid curiosity. She got as far as and the way will be indicated by the white of a bone before she snorted, turned it over, and started a list of known facts on the back.