Dark Dissension

Invitations for the following (plus 1 guest)

Ms Hannah Abbott
Mr Jude Alderton
Mr Laetus Chambers
Ms Seren Fawcett
Mr Justin Finch-Fletchley
Mr Seamus Finnigan
Ms Daphne Greengrass
Ms Ainsley Innis
Mr Neville Longbottom
Ms Morag MacDougal
Mr Harry Potter
Ms Demelza Robins
Mr Zacharias Smith
Ms Nephthys Spinks
Mr Dean Thomas

( Invitations by express owl post )

Who: Seren Fawcett and Jude Alderton
What: He’s going to take her to dinner, because he’s a soppy sort of puppy.
Where: Her house, and then La Lanterna, because Jude wants to shock her with muggle culture.
When: 1 March, evening
Rating: PG-13
Status: Closed; incomplete

Flowers were always tricky. Different girls like different flowers, and they all found different things romantic. Seren, he thought, was a strange girl. Not strange in the way that every Unspeakable was strange, or even strange in that typical Pureblood strange way, but her own kind of strange. She was smart – too smart, maybe, and somehow he thought that she would see roses as an easy way out. They were pretty, but they didn’t really require thought when it came to buying them for a girl, they were just the first flowers most people went for. He had considered bringing her a set of working lungs (not human, those were too hard to find, but maybe rabbit), but that reminded him of work and the whole point of going out was to talk to her outside of work. So, in the end, he settled for a small bouquet of crocuses, which meant gladness – because he really was glad to see her, and daffodils, which meant respect and also that the sun always shined when she was near. And if she didn’t understand their meanings, they still looked pretty.

Unspeakable in Love were usually unromantic, which most people outside the department found ironic. They saw love as something to be studied, and learned from, and most of them were so wary of it that they avoided relationships. But Jude was a hopeless romantic, and he always had been. He liked dating – being close to someone, making them smile – and ever since he started dating again about three years ago, he felt a lot like a teenager. None of his relationships seemed to fit like his marriage had. They all took too much work, or they found each other impossible to understand, and they always left him feeling more discouraged. Discouraged, because he was getting old. His thirty-second birthday had just passed, which was depressing enough, but spending it alone was downright sad. He wanted to be back in love, and more than that he wanted to love someone.

He knew that it wasn’t that simple, and he wasn’t expecting fireworks when he stood on Seren’s doorstep, but it was nice to try again. And he did like her, a lot. He liked having someone to argue with, someone who understood what he was talking about when even he didn’t know what he meant half the time. He liked her – the little things, like how her right foot always seemed to shuffle a little when she walked, or how her nose scrunched up slightly just before she smiled, and how she slipped into other languages when she started cursing.

He hoped he hadn’t scared her off when he mentioned Jeanine and Lucas, and the moment he remembered that he tried to push them out of his head. It wasn’t fair to her to think about them while they were out together, although he did think it was only right that she knew.

Jude took another second to compose himself, to check and make sure he had his wallet, and to try and bring his hair into some sort of order (pointless), and then he rang the doorbell and waited.

Who: Seren Fawcett & Jude Alderton
What: Poking, prodding, the usual
Where: Department of Mysteries, Love Division
When: Earl afternoon, Wednesday, 27th February, 2005
Rating: PG
Status: Closed; Complete

Seren was pouting. Not only was she pouting but she was mildly whining. Dwyre was trying to act all superior, as if she wasn't just as confused if not more so. She and Seren weren't that far off in age which was rare in a single division and it meant Dwyre was always trying to prove she was better than Seren at the job. It was really annoying because Seren had not only been at it longer but she'd spent the beginning of her career in Romania. Dealing with death in Romania was not like dealing with it in Britain. It clung to everything there, the energy of it vibrating. Dwyre always assumed Seren was lying. Stupid bint. "This is pointless!" Seren announced loud enough that Dwyre jumped and nearly fell off her chair. The redhead gathered up a few bits of parchment and turned on her heel.

"You're just going to abandon me?" Her colleague's voice was shrill and high with panic. Serves her right.

"No, I'm going to find someone else that might make sense of it. What would I do, just go out for an extended lunch and never come back?" The sarcasm was still faintly echoing in the air between them when Seren headed for the door, suddenly reminded that she hadn't eaten in two days. Once she entered the main hub chamber with its spinning doors, though, all thoughts of food had already vanished.

The Love division was distracting. There were always hearts floating about, actual hearts, and Seren always wanted to pluck one out of the air and dissect it. She'd never been able to dissect a human heart before. It was like waving sweets in front of a child, really, and it wasn't fair at all. With a slight pout on her face she went in search of the person she'd come for. He may not prove to necessarily be the most useful of all the people in the division, but the truth of it was most of the people who worked in Love were women who even Seren found creepy. She didn't generally get on famously with women anyway, never mind old, haggard women experimenting on people's loved ones. At least Seren experimented on a single person, never pairs or groups.

Finding her desired bloke at his desk, Seren made a beeline for him. "Hey Jude, love," she greeted with a bright smile before dropping one of the pieces of parchment on his desk in front of him. "You've any experience reading a soul map from your department's perspective?" If he told her she had to go talk to his head she would wither away and send Iollan to deal with her when he was done trying to shove that damn soul back in its body.

The map looked just like a silhouette of a person, a mere outline, but various parts of the body were coloured in different colours and some of the spots had patterns. The colours and designs shifted and seemed to vibrate on the paper. A large portion of the chest and part of the head kept shifting back and forth between a fuzzy purple, a zig zagged grey and a hazy blue. While the rest of the map kept fairly consistent, those two areas were blinking in and out rapidly. Death hadn't been able to figure out why because the human heart wasn't really their domain in anything more than a physiological or anatomical way. "I've been staring at that thing for hours and I can't figure out why it's all wonky. And it was like that before we ripped his soul out, so that's not it."