Lin Ze felt that lately, he and the word "choice" just weren't getting along.
First, Mr. Delacour had given him two options, and now Crouch had come along with three.
He felt that if this kept up, sooner or later he would be trained into a professional sufferer of decision paralysis.
Still, the three options Crouch had offered really did tempt him a little.
No, not a little.
Every single one was very tempting.
Staying at the Auror Office and continuing to grind combat experience was the safest route. The Records Management Office was practically an intelligence hotbed tailor-made for him. As for the international joint Auror training-
To be honest, he knew the least about that option, but Crouch's attitude when introducing it had instead made him extremely interested in the training program.
Anything that could put that expression on the stern director's face definitely wasn't simple.
But he wasn't planning to decide right away. Crouch had given him three days, and he intended to make good use of them to thoroughly investigate the pros and cons of each option.
When he left Crouch's office, the corridor was deserted except for a few Ministry of Magic employees hurrying past with documents tucked under their arms.
Lin Ze straightened his collar and was just about to head back to the Auror Office when he suddenly heard hurried footsteps behind him.
"Lin! Wait!"
He turned and saw a middle-aged wizard with disheveled hair running toward him.
The man's robes were wrinkled, with one button done up wrong, and his briefcase swung back and forth as he ran, nearly hitting a portrait hanging on the wall.
"Hey! Watch where you're going, boy!" The old wizard in the portrait waved his walking stick angrily, but the middle-aged wizard didn't hear him at all.
"You are..." Lin Ze looked him over, then remembered where he had seen that face.
This was the head chef of the Ministry of Magic canteen. What was his name again...
"Barney Flume! From the canteen!" The middle-aged wizard ran up to him and bent over, gasping for breath. "Finally... I finally found you..."
"Looking for me? What is it?" Lin Ze instinctively took half a step back.
Had someone from the canteen seen those reviews of their dishes I wrote in my notebook last week? The mashed potatoes were too salty, the fried fish was reasonably fresh, and the pea soup was suspected to be leftovers from three days earlier... Although everything he had written was true, being confronted about it still wouldn't look very good.
"I heard you've been asking around about the Ministry's various departments?" Flume caught his breath, straightened up, and looked at Lin Ze earnestly.
"Uh... more or less." Lin Ze shrugged.
"Then could you help me?" Flume lowered his voice, looking as though he were conducting some sort of underground transaction. "Do you know who's been holding up the canteen's supply purchases lately? The new deputy head of the Logistics Office, that fellow called Parkinson. He slashed our ingredient budget by thirty percent last month!"
"Parkinson?" Lin Ze's brow twitched.
That name was in his notebook.
Seymour Parkinson, the Wizengamot's administrative liaison, but also someone with real power over supply distribution in the Logistics Office. More importantly, his notebook recorded that Parkinson was suspected of tampering with the trial records of three suspected Death Eaters.
"Yes! Him!" Flume's face flushed red. "I went to argue with him, and he said something about these being extraordinary times and every department needing to tighten its belt. But I went to the Logistics Office to check the procurement list, and the tea he buys for his own office is imported from Sri Lanka. Eight Galleons a pound!"
"Tea that costs eight Galleons..." Lin Ze drew in a sharp breath.
That was more than his weekly rent.
"So you want me to investigate him for you?" Lin Ze asked.
"Not just investigate!" Flume clenched his fists. "You have to help me dig up dirt on him and show him there's a price to pay for cutting a chef's budget! Do you know that after he cut our ingredient budget, we can only afford dead fish that's been frozen for a month? I'm a chef who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu France, for goodness' sake. Looking at those frozen fish every day makes my heart bleed!"
Watching the anguish on Flume's face, Lin Ze silently saved this information in the "to-do" folder in his head.
There was nothing strange about Parkinson engaging in shady dealings at the Logistics Office. The Death Eaters had been infiltrating the Ministry of Magic for so many years that a department as ripe for graft as Logistics was bound to have their people in it.
But for Parkinson to actually dare touch the canteen's budget was going a bit too far.
After all, the Ministry of Magic canteen was one of the few places in the entire Ministry that could bring everyone together.
"All right, I've made a note of it." Lin Ze nodded. "But it'll take some time."
"No problem! As long as you're willing to help, I can wait as long as it takes!" Flume excitedly grabbed Lin Ze's hand and pumped it several times. "Once it's done, come to the canteen and I'll personally cook you something special! I can't promise anything else, but my steak and baked snails are second to none!"
"Baked snails?" Lin Ze paused. "The Ministry canteen serves those?"
"We used to. We haven't been able to since the budget cuts," Flume said through gritted teeth. "That bastard Parkinson actually said snails weren't a necessity!"
It took Lin Ze quite a while to calm Flume down before he could finally get away.
When he returned to the Auror Office, he spotted Frick from a distance, sprawled across his desk with his face buried in his arms and his shoulders trembling.
Ben Frick.
The Auror Office's universally acknowledged "king of gossip," he liked asking around for news and was particularly good at drawing information out of people.
But he had one fatal weakness: he couldn't keep anything to himself.
Once he learned a secret, he either told someone immediately or nearly suffocated trying to hold it in.
"What's wrong?" Lin Ze walked over to Frick and patted him on the shoulder.
Frick raised his head. His freckled face was full of an almost despairing anguish, as though he had just been kissed by a Dementor.
"Lin, I'm finished."
"What do you mean, finished? Did your girlfriend dump you?"
"No! It's much worse than that!" Frick looked around, made sure no one was nearby, then leaned over and lowered his voice. "I accidentally overheard Crabbe and Goyle talking this morning."
Lin Ze raised an eyebrow.
"And?"
"They... they were talking about how to deal with you." Frick's voice trembled badly. "I didn't catch the details, but it seemed to have something to do with the Logistics Office. They're planning some kind of 'frame-up operation'..."
Lin Ze's expression didn't change at all. He merely narrowed his eyes slightly.
A frame-up?
Crabbe finally couldn't hold back anymore?
"Then why do you think you're finished?" Lin Ze asked.
"Because they accidentally caught me!" Frick wailed and buried his face in his arms again.
"I was hiding behind a filing cabinet, eavesdropping, when I accidentally kicked over an empty flowerpot... The way Crabbe looked at me, it was like he wanted to skin me alive!"