Billy Coopers emerged from the main Magical Law Enforcement floo network particularly disheveled. He had become less and less of an early riser since his assignment to Britain, and the fact was troubling to him. He had spent the better part of thirty years waking up at 5am, some of the time accompanied by magical trumpets blaring reveille at an uncomfortable volume, but usually of his own accord. Early rising was something one learned, and Billy had taken pleasure in being cogent multiple hours before his friends and family. His duties at the Ministry started rather later, and perhaps it was age catching up with him but he had found his bed more and more appealing in the early hours of the morning.

It was a particularly shameful morning for Billy on this note, in that he had woken up only a score of minutes before he appeared in a burst of green flame at the Ministry, and he had not had time to appear particularly presentable, his blue and black robes still in the process of magically ironing themselves, and bearing a stain that the enchantments had not yet removed. He made for his small office with a purposeful gait, not hurried but certainly eager to begin the day and put the unfortunate morning behind him, hopefully with the help of a strong cup of coffee. He didn't see any particularly close acquaintances, but noticed a pair of aurors he dimly remembered giving him wary, almost scared looks. They had probably been part of his last Lake District expedition, he figured. It had barely been a week ago that he and a group of more seasoned aurors put two score of rookies through what Billy considered to be a realistic representation of rugged-terrain magical combat, but which he had heard termed by both sides as 'cruel', 'ridiculous', and even once 'nightmarish'.

The DMLE was less busy than other parts of the labyrinthine ministry, it being a department necessarily of wide lulls and violent spikes of activity, but there were still paper airplanes buzzing around, witches and wizards bustling about in various degrees of hurry, and the sound of a hundred voices all dictating quietly to an enchanted quill. He waved his greetings to the receptionist, a particularly friendly recent Hogwarts graduate named Lisa, with whom he'd shared several bored conversations. She nodded, her hands occupied, but called in her high-pitched voice "Good morning, Mr. Coopers!". When he continued walking past her desk, she spoke again, this time standing with a brown parcel in her hands.

"Package for you, Mr. Coopers. Down from International Cooperation."

Billy stopped and accepted the packet, absentmindedly checking for any outward distinguishing features as he responded.

"Thank you kindly, Ms. Halifax. Some nonsense from one of my folk back in the States, I reckon. If that's all, I gotta be on my way." She nodded, sitting back down, and he bid her farewell as he walked off, parcel in hand. His accent was as strong as ever, and it was odd for him to notice it. A sea of British folk talking to him in their way made his voice stick out like a sore thumb even to him, foreigners [especially from the Americas] particularly rare in the Ministry. He put it out of his mind with ease, though chuckled to himself at the thought of him picking up some of the English talk, wondering what Louise would think of him talking about 'biscuits' and 'crisps' and 'blokes'.

He entered his office and threw his package on the wide desk, enjoying for the millionth time the modern advances in space-creating charms as he surveyed an interior of an office that was at least four times larger than it appeared on the outside. It was a well-upholstered room, with carpet and a soft chair behind a mahogany desk covered in well-ordered but numerous piles of papers and documents. The Stars and Stripes hung on one wall, with the flag of the Wizarding States, a flag which in his opinion resembled the Stars and Bars a bit too much, hanging on the other. He sat down and opened the package, leafing through papers with a bored expression. They were mostly report requests, authorization acceptances and other miscellany. He found the most pertinent, if regular, request, one from his superiors at the embassy, simply wanting to know his lesson plans and send them back to Boston almost ritualistically, approval guaranteed as soon as the request was received. He had a great deal of autonomy, and he appreciated that, happy to be relatively free of red tape [though he found the idea that a parcel that weighed nearly a pound full of forms counted as 'free'].

He checked his schedule, reminding himself that his only actual training engagement today was with the actual Aurors, an occasion he looked forwards to. He had been forced to help regular Law Enforcement, seeing as the Auror numbers were rather low by themselves, but your average policeman [or whatever the Brits called them] didn't have much of a mind for real combat. Aurors were different, and being elite fighters with a dedicated interest in improving, they were a joy to teach. The pace at which they learned, however, made his job that much more difficult, seeing as he needed new curricula much more frequently than would be otherwise expected.

He sat for the better part of an hour in front of a sheaf of parchment, noting down ideas, most of which were immediately discarded. There were dozens of half-started paragraphs, with headers including 'Applications of Muggle Weapons', 'Appiration Prevention', 'Directional Appiration' and 'Scry-Sniping', a phrase he had become immeasurably fond of in the twenty minutes since he coined it. Frustrated at not having a particular direction, he eventually crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into empty space, an enchantment on the room teleporting the parchment to the recycling bins forty or so floors above him. He'd do something simple and familiar, have them fight three-on-three mock battles, maybe changing team numbers to introduce to the usually-numerical-superior Aurors the terrors of being outnumbered. It would be a good day.

His mind made up, he began working through the rest of the pound of missives, his quill a blur of measured, neat strokes.