[center][b]Bertha Ashdown
10:06 AM[/b][/center]
[hr]

Bertha liked Ronan. The two had had their disagreements and knew that they’d probably never be the best of friends, if Ronan even did ‘friends’, but, ultimately, they worked well, if not together, then independently, toward the same goal. Unfortunately, the universe had not seen fit to bestow on either of them a great patience, and so, as Ronan’s voice echoed magically around the corridors of Rosaline Hall on a loop, glitching at the end of the sentence before beginning again like a broken record, her eyes rolled. And rolled again.

“Crucial information has been acquired! Report to the meeting roo- Crucial information has been...”

Either it was some serious information or Ronan had decided to irritate them into coming quickly. Or both. Regardless of the former, the latter was inevitable.

“Finite incantatem,” after a minute of the endless notice, Bertha waved her wand, and Ronan’s voice vanished from the air, filling the hall, once again, with a blissful if slightly eerie stillness. Raising the tip of her wand to her throat, she broke her own silence, voice magnified across the mansion in the same way, “In case you didn’t catch that, please come to the meeting room. Now, please. See you in a moment.”

Her message did not repeat. They had enough to deal with without splitting headaches as well. Still, although Ronan was usually direct, if not a little abrasive, there was something in his tone that she picked up; could it be excitement? Or fear? Perhaps both. The two went together so readily these days that they had become virtually synonymous. Instinctively, like a virus passing through the airwaves from him to her, her own heart began to quicken. She placed a hand on her chest and breathed deeply, gently closing her eyes. Rashness was the easiest way to make mistakes.

She stood up and stretched her legs. She had been resting recently, resting a lot, and now her limbs had begun to dully ache. The previous week, she had been hit in the chest with the business end of a particularly nasty curse; although she had been quick enough to block the worst of it, she was still only just working off the after-effects and had been under strict instructions to take it easy, as though Bertha were the kind of woman to take anything easily. Perhaps now there would at least be something more challenging.

She pushed open the door to the meeting room and strolled in, noting that, despite being a little slower on her feet than normal, she still wasn’t the last. Without saying anything, apart from shooting a curious look at Ronan from across the other end of the room, she took a seat.