Details

There isn't much glamour, Merlin knows, in the life of a Ministry bureaucrat, but this work can be important. Part of the knack lies in learning to pay close attention to minor details and realising and doing something about it when something seems off or odd. Perkins managed to foil an embezzlement scheme at the Dartford camp in Kent because he noticed and started questioning expenses that were being submitted for reimbursement without proper receipt backup. Small stuff, you know, a few knuts here, a galleon there, but it added up to real money. I talked with someone last week who noticed two inventory identification numbers were transposed in a monthly report--a simple mistake--but it had been going on for half a year without anyone realising it until she made the floo call and got things straightened out. Now St. Mungo's is no longer chronically short their supply of Skele-Gro every month.

I've been finishing up the epidemiological report on the Epping Forest diphtheria outbreak, when something caught my eye in one of the personnel files I was combing through (I was compiling the list of the individuals who worked in the infirmary there). Now why, in Merlin's name, would a muggleborn have a reference to an Auror case file in his personnel records, under the parentage records section?

Very peculiar. It may be nothing . . . but I think I'll request a copy of the file to try to learn more.