ICW Coordination Meeting

[attr="class","imagez"]

[attr="class","title-sonia"] Way down, Hadestown

[attr="class","subtitle-sonia"] Better go and get your suitcase packed,
Guess it’s time to go

[attr="class","wordz-sonia"]

She knew many of the people surrounding her, by paperwork and pictures, if not personally. As Séraphine’s assistant, she’d met some of them, and she’d done the necessary filing, the runs and discussions, and she knew it was going to be continued without her.

It was a curious sort of denial, Sonia knew, to be more off-put that Séraphine was without her than it was to face the loss of her magic. No, she’d trained her replacements well, shown then what she did, prepared her notes for them, left reminders and reorganized their stations. How they would fare was something she could pretend to have control over, and it stuck in her mind more.

Going into quarantine where she might lose her magic— no, there was nothing she could control there. She was going there for Séraphine, to make the waters as smooth as possible, to listen to Luiz as she would Séraphine. If she lost her magic, she would live with it. She hoped that she would still have her Parseltongue, as without the twist in her throat to move her speech to serpent-tongue, she did not know what she would be.

It was a well-kept secret, far better-kept than the magical school she had attended. The latter was in her files, after all, though the former was not and would never be, if she could help it. She’d made sure the school was included, as she never could stand inaccurate information. Her personal shorthand or code, whichever was best to use, would reflect that once she turned in her reports of the UK mission.

Sonia knew the UK from stories, truthfully. She was Trini, after all, and both her parents had needed to switch their citizenships over, which her grandparents had done with great pleasure. She doubted that encouraging the country to relent, to move back and treat others humanely would be simple. She knew why they hadn’t stepped in before, and she’d accepted that. There were always happenings that needed the ICW’s attention, after all.

That didn’t mean she liked it, of course. She was a child of the largest populations of people of the twin islands, and it had only been in the lifetimes of her parents that the British Ministry had let go of their hold on her home islands. Tituba, however, was still technically in a Commonwealth realm, and asking nicely or putting sanctions on was not going to enough to have those in power from abusing Muggleborns. She did hope, though, that for the Doctors Jones and Bridgeman, the shield of the ICW as a good enough protection over them, that it would work.

As any good assistant, she’d watched her fellows speak. They all excelled in their field, or they never would have gotten this far. She’d smiled and nodded at the proper places, filed away jokes and responses to include herself, and then it was her turn.

“I’m Sonia Lazare, an assistant— or the assistant, I should say. It’s good to be able to see all of you when I’m not behind a desk or running an errand for our Mugwump.” She pressed humor into her tone, knowing it would make her accent grow thicker. So be it, she’d spent more of her life away from home than at home at this point, and her Trini accent was lighter than she would like. “I grew up in Trinidad,” she didn’t bother giving the name of her village, though if she’d grown up in St Augustine like her parents, she would have as it would have had a higher chance of being known, “and I went to quite a small school. I went to university in Barbados and took a senior year apprenticeship in México. I worked for one of my delegates for a year, brought myself here, and I was temping until I was chosen by our Mugwump; I’ve been her assistant for nearly three years or so.”

Sonia caught her breath. “I look forward to getting to know all of you better. I’m not a poor Keeper when half the team’s incapacitated, though I must say, I’m a better attacking midfielder, my mother saw to that.” She gave a grin, hoping her joke would go over well enough. Like most mages, she was an avid fan of Quidditch, but the women's football team did better than their Quidditch team, so it was really less painful to cheer for.

[attr="class","tags-sonia"]☆ @all, 738 words ☆