From the Ashes

WHO: Adam and Bob... and Nate... and Hayley...
WHERE: Bob's House of Pain, aka the Infirmary, a corridor, and Hayley's Office of Doom.
WHAT: The few, the proud, the memory-having.
WHEN: Friday afternoon (11/13)

While Adam was not a fan of Bob, he had heard a rumor, and that rumor was something to the effect of the following: Bob Bryar, nurse extraordinaire, retained his memory in a way that - sweet Merlin - so many other teachers had not. And man, did Adam ever need some sympathy. And possibly someone to put him out of his misery.

That was why he aimed toward the infirmary, anyway. Bob would have fun spells and potions and unctions and whatever else and he would understand why it was so damn hard to be adult-but-trapped-in-a-teenaged body. Also, Bob was probably swimming in his robes just as badly as Adam was. Adam couldn't remember being this short. And now he was. And it was weird. Even thinking "At Least I'm Not Patrick Stumph" didn't make him feel any better.

He burst into the infirmary. "Bryar! I need help!" he said, hoping that, well, Bob was around to witness his dramatic entrance. Otherwise it was a waste.

Who: Bob and Gerard
Where: hospital wing
What: coffee monkeys are wonderful things
When: Saturday morning around breakfast (11/14)

It was with great reluctance that Bob dragged himself out of bed and over to Betsy's dishes when she woke him up. He cleaned them with a charm, then filled them again. She immediately set in, eating as quickly as she possibly could while still maintaining an air of dainty sophistication. Cats, go figure.

He really wished he could go back to bed, but no doubt the daily influx of confused, de-aged amnesiacs would be starting up soon, which meant he should actually see about making it into the hospital wing. Sighing, Bob got dressed, trying to ignore the way his seventeen-year-old body practically swam in the robes, and did just that, albeit not without some trips and stumbles. Brian better fix this soon, Bob had been overjoyed when he'd grown out of his teenage awkwardness and he was not enjoying this reminder of it. Not to mention that he really, really was not looking forward to aging at an increased rate over what would no doubt be a very short period of time. Nobody ever thought about trying to fix things like this in a gradual, easing manner. Bah.

Who: Mikey and Spencer
When: Monday morning (the 9th -- backdated)
Where: Mikey's rooms
What: Rude awakenings

The bed was really soft, and really warm. Spencer couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up on something like this, and he wasn't particularly interested in trying. It was a waste of enjoying the soft sheets and blankets pulled up high around him, nothing like the grimy pallet on the greenhouse floor that was his usual place of rest. He wasn't even that interested in working out what had happened. If this was the Death Eaters' idea of torture and imprisonment, he was living out the rest of the war here in style.

Also, someone was pressed up warm and comfortable against his back; comfortable, at least, until they shifted slightly, and Spencer groaned. "Ryan," he mumbled. "Watch the fucking elbows, seriously," and that, rather than a mysterious bed, was the thing that woke him up.

Because Ryan wasn't here, of course, hadn't been here for a very long time and also, despite the many complications Ryan fucking Ross had brought to Spencer's life, naked snuggling had not been one of them. Spencer squawked and shuffled backwards and away from the stranger as quickly as he could, rolling over to try and grasp some small idea of what the hell was going on.

Who: Maja and Gabe
When: Friday the 13th (backdated)
Where: the Great Hall
What: youthful meetings!

Maja went to sleep one night a proud new member of the Swedish police force, and woke up eight years later at a school in Scotland. Or so explained the note she found by her bedside when she awoke. She authenticated the note three times, and performed a quick field test on herself to check for befuddlement charms, but it only took a single look out of her bedroom window to prove that she was definitely no longer in her little apartment in Gothenburg; last time she checked, her neighborhood had not had nearly this many turrets.

The whole situation was highly unusual, but made for a nice break from the two weeks of desk duty she had been expecting to wake up to. (For the record, the mishap with the hedgehogs had not been her fault. And even if it had been, it certainly wasn’t enough to warrant punishment by filing. Not even Karlsson had expected that multiplication charm, and it had been pure bad luck that Maja had triggered it just as the Director entered the room).

All in all, a surprise visit to Scotland wasn’t half bad. She poked around the room briefly, dressing in the unfamiliar robes she found in the closet, and ruefully acknowledging that it seemed she was never going to get any taller. Then, following the rough map sketched onto the back of the note she had apparently left for herself, she made her way down a ridiculous number of stairs to breakfast.

Who: Nate and Gerard
When: Wednesday, 13 November
Where: Random hallway #72!
What: De-aging shenanigans!

Nate's teenage years had been fine, as far as those things went — he'd actually enjoyed them, which was more than he could say for some people he knew — but that didn't mean he wanted to go through them again. Twenty one had been a well-deserved age; he'd kind of wanted to experience it for a little while longer.

Instead, he'd abruptly lost six years and a fair bit of height, which Nate didn't appreciate in the slightest. When you were around William Beckett, Gabe Saporta and Ryland Blackington for significant periods of time, you needed to keep all the height you could get.

Thankfully, he'd managed to keep most of his memory, even if his body and his mind kept on giving him conflicting messages. Some of his friends — well. Nate was grateful.

The hallways were in chaos, full of people who had kept their memories leading around people who had lost their memories and attempting to explain all the recent changes in the decor. The piles of rubble, for example. And even the people with their memories intact were tripping over their own feet, unused to suddenly being awkward, gawky teenagers again after being years past the worst of their growth spurts.

Nate was in the middle of dodging a flailing elbow when he saw Gerard. "Gerard!" he said, waving, before wondering if that was a good idea. Gerard looked... hunted.

(He was too distracted to avoid the elbow, which hit him in the stomach before the student attached to it drifted past, complaining, "I have acne again!")

Who: William and Spencer
When: Friday, before dinner (13th)
Where: The library
What: Back to school

Spencer's eyebrows were not quite singed off; they weren't even that charred, really. He gave his reflection a satisfied grin before he headed back out into the hallway, keeping a wary lookout for Schechter. He was pretty sure that he couldn't get a detention -- couldn't even get suspended; they didn't suspend teachers, right? -- but he wasn't stupid enough to think he was going to escape the Headmaster's wrath entirely.

The best course of action after setting off highly illegal fireworks in the Headmaster's office was, of course, to split up, so Spencer headed down through the corridors rather than going back immediately to Ryan's rooms. He planned on staying the night there, whether Ryan liked it or not -- evil plants! trying to eat him! -- but until then, he had someone else to catch up with.

"A kid laughed at me when I asked where I'd find you," Spencer announced in a cheerful undertone, pushing his way into the mostly empty library and heading for the desk. "Apparently thinking you'd ever change was a gross show of optimism on all of our behalf."

Who: Gerard and Mikey
When: Mid-morning, Monday the 9th
Where: the Batcave (AKA, a secret walk-in closet off the laundry room on the third floor)
What: a very confused reunion

Fuck, Hogwarts was a wreck. There were signs everywhere: reconstructed walls, skittish portraits peering around the edges of scorched picture frames, a subtle hint of Dark magic lingering in some of the hallways. And blood, Gerard could smell blood and decay lingering in the stones beneath strong cleaning charms. Blood always lingered.

But apparently that Lazzara fucker hadn't been lying, whatever his issue had been with Gerard and walls, or whatever. There were students in Hogwarts again, flooding the corridors, chattering about classes and exams. Gerard had the urge to bundle them all up and make sure no one was hurt. Surely there shouldn't be children around when there was still the smell of recent death and Darkness in the castle. But they were there, and worse, some of the students knew him--he'd had a bad moment when one had come up to him while he was hugging a wall and making his way down to the third floor.

"Is everything okay, Auror Way?" she'd asked, and she had her hand on her wand and was scoping out the corridor for signs of trouble. "Is something wrong?"

He'd eyed her warily and tried to edge away, but she'd just followed him, frowning, and then had finally given up, muttering something about what pricks Aurors were when they hadn't met their coffee quota for the morning. Gerard frowned after her, but he didn't have time for mysterious students that appeared to know his mid-morning habits. He was going to meet up with Mikey in their old, time-honored Hogwarts location, and they'd figure things out together. He'd relaxed a lot after hearing Mikey's Patronus, but he'd still feel better when he saw his brother for himself.

Thankfully the third floor laundry room wasn't one of the boarded-off areas, and Gerard was able to slip in undetected by any students or adults. There were piles of laundry, mounds of it, which was... odd. The house elves had never let it get that bad, not when Gerard had been a student. Gerard put that on his mental list of things to investigate, and was about to head towards the back left corner of the room and start humming the Entrance Music, when he caught a whiff of mold and heard a grunting clatter. He spun around, wand raised.

A dark, surly little man glared back at him, arms full of yellow sheets. It had a red, pointed hat and a mean sneer, and was definitely not the laundry room elf Gerard had known since he'd been twelve years old.

"Whatchu lookin' at, scruff?" the little man said, and Gerard narrowed his eyes.

"You," Gerard said through clenched teeth, leveling the wand at the gnome-thing's head. "Are not Portnoy. Explain. Quickly."

Healer Bryar,

I'm certain you're dealing with more pressing issues at the moment, but if you should happen to have some spare time, I would appreciate a consultation or any wisdom you may have on what to do when one has just undergone roughly nine years and fourteen inches of growing pains in the space of a few seconds.

Essentially: Everything hurts. Please advise.

Sincerely,
W. Beckett

Who: Gryffindor versus Slytherin (as represented herein primarily by Pete and Gabe; weigh in at your own risk *G*)
When: Dinnertime, Saturday (14/11)
Where: Unfortunately, publicly, just outside the Great Hall
What: Dun tole joo - Gryffindor versus Slytherin, round two: fight!

Unfair advantages were beautiful things to have, and this week Gabe had had a couple: 1) he'd started out on the older side of the staff in the first place, and 2) even if he hadn't been actually in the basement at the moment of age-fuckery, he'd still been a fair way away from Schechter's office.

On the other hand, various acquaintances and family members could have told you, if you'd gone to Spain to track them down, that Gabe as a teenager had been an enthusiastic, unfocused, but generally harmless kid. Gabe in his early twenties had been a bitch. (And any student who'd had Potions on Friday would back this one up.)

Case in point: for the past five minutes, following Pete down to dinner, he'd been ragging on Gryffindor's quidditch team, their win, their supporters, their inferiority to Slytherin, their coach, Pete's obvious bias, and the fact of, "I don't know, dude, are you blind or just too short to see your team fucking cheating?"

And yes, Gabe had sought Pete out specifically to do this.

Who: Ryan and Spencer
When: Friday morning (13/11)
Where: Ryan's rooms
What: Sixteen going on seventeen.

It had been a really weird morning. Spencer had woken up to a note hovering above him that said, in his own handwriting, DON'T FREAK OUT, and then promptly freaked out, because his bed was somewhere strange and unfamiliar and surrounded by about thirty evil looking plants. Spencer wasn't going to admit anything, but it was possible he'd shrieked, grabbed the note, and made a run for the door, only to find himself in quarters that clearly belonged to a teacher. If Ryan had thought it was funny to put him here after he'd fallen asleep, Spencer was going to be really cross.

The note, thankfully, had a bit of an explanation on the back, such as the explanation was. Spencer had a little bit of trouble believing it; it still seemed like an elaborate sort of prank, and Spencer wasn't really that impressed. He was especially unimpressed when he got dressed -- in some robes that were way too big for him, the sleeves covered his hands entirely and he kept tripping over the hem -- and found that he was stuck in the greenhouses, with a ten minute walk before he even got to the castle.

"Hey," he said, pulling aside a fourth year Slytherin when he got in there. "Do you know where Ryan Ross is?"

The fourth year blinked at him. "Professor Ross?" she said, and Spencer stared. "Who wants to know?"

"Um, me," Spencer said. "Spencer Smith, hi."

The girl raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Professor Smith has a beard," she told him icily, and then it took him another ten minutes of arguing that probably, Professor Smith hadn't been born with one and didn't she know about the apparent deaging thing going on before she finally deigned to point him up about a million flights of stairs.

Needless to say, by the time he reached the rooms with Ryan Ross in a little brass plate on the door, Spencer wasn't in the greatest of moods. "Ryan," he said, pushing open the door, "do you have any idea what the fuck is going on? I woke up in the greenhouses. The greenhouses. Surrounded by plants that want to eat me." He knew, they'd clutched at his arms in a very menacing way when he made his escape.

Who: Brendon and William
When: Friday night, reverse-aging week
Where: A hallway near Hufflepuff
What: Kids these days

William didn't usually take to wandering the halls late at night, but then his face didn't usually look like a war zone for clogged pores, either. Apparently regressing in age meant oily skin all over again, in addition to the other more obvious and annoying physical problems.

He hadn't needed to keep Clear Countenance potion on hand since his first year out of school. He couldn't very well ask a student for some, either, it wouldn't be fitting. If there was one thing he was relatively sure about, however, it was that students embarrassed about their acne didn't always keep skin-care potions in their rooms where nosy classmates could find them. They found out-of-the-way lavatories and stashed them there instead.

Not that William was speaking from experience or anything.

There were two lavatories tucked into a side hallway near Hufflepuff, as he recalled. With the House so close and nothing else nearby to encourage foot traffic, they weren't used very often. William was in the right vicinity, he was fairly certain. Now he supposed he ought to just start opening doors and keeping his fingers crossed.

Who: Bob, Mikey, and Patrick
Where: Hospital wing
What: Amnesia is not fun.
When: Wednesday morning (11/11)

Having sent another distraught seventh year on her way after reassuring her that yes, once this whole age fiasco was sorted out, it was highly probable her breasts would return to their previous cup size (Bob didn't pretend to understand the mechanics of the eighteen—now sixteen—year-old female mind), Bob flopped back on a bed and sighed. He wasn't exactly sure of what rate he was losing years, currently, since he didn't feel all that different today than he had on Monday, but he figured he still had plenty of time before he hit his teens. Probably. He hoped. Growing pains were not something Bob was looking forward to going through a second time, after all.

Who: Hayley and William
When: Wednesday
Where: Hayley's office
What: The inevitable

It was ironic that after more than a week of avoiding Hayley and her clipboard, William was now seeking her out, but he had his reasons. His reasons, to date, included Spencer, Patrick, Mikey and Gerard, and he was worried that they would keep increasing.

There were staff members coming down with amnesia all over the castle, and no one so far had been able to find cause or cure. Then again, no one else knew that there was an Obliviation specialist present interviewing said staff members for mysterious reasons known presumably only to the Ministry, either. No one except for William.

Hayley's door was open. William closed it behind him and said, "We need to talk."

WHO: Adam and Mikey
WHERE: top of the Astronomy Tower
WHAT: Teenage boys. Nefarious substances. Hormones. Yeah.
WHEN: Friday night (11/13)

Adam was pretty sure he was hovering somewhere between sixteen and seventeen. He was missing tattoos and scars and none of his clothes fit anymore, and he couldn't stand to look at himself in the mirror. The worst part, though, is that he could remember being an adult - which he was now clearly not - and none of his friends seemed to have the ability.

It sucked. And when things sucked, there were steps one could take to make them not suck anymore. And Adam had noticed some shady kids lurking around Hogwarts - at least ones shady enough to suit his needs. Then he went to find Mikey.

He lurked through the halls (he kind of felt like he was Out After Curfew, because he was seriously, like, sixteen, and it sucked because he'd already mastered his hormones and here they were, going crazy, telling him that he totally needed to just find someone to curl up with) and finally made his way to Mikey's room. And, well, hopefully Mikey was in. And could remember anything about him. At all.

WHO: Adam and Gerard
WHERE: 7th Floor, near Schechter's Office
WHAT: Adam has had it up to HERE with these student shenanigans, runs across Gerard Way, who is probably batshit crazy, anyway.
WHEN: Monday morning (11/9)

The thing was - really - that Adam was just not having his authority respected. Things had kind of settled after the beginning of the year and he'd managed to, somehow, get most of his students to take him seriously. Most of them, at any rate. However, he was dealing with a pair of rebellious sixth year boys who seemed determined to stay in detention until they were forty.

Adam was tired of dealing with their detentions, actually, and after the fifth or so transgression (and a month of scraping gum off the bottoms of desks - and not being allowed to use magic, which Adam was sure probably counted as something along the lines of cruel and unusual punishment, but fortunately this was not the United States, ha ha ha), Adam had had all he could stand of them. He'd told them previously that if he busted them again (breaking into classrooms - specifically his own, because apparently Adam's storage closet contained very interesting things that he didn't know about), he was delivering them straight to Schechter.

Which brought them to Monday morning, where he was marching them upstairs to Schechter's office, robes flapping, a look of steely determination on his face. He so badly wanted to grab them by their ears and drag them, which would make this situation all the more delightful for him. He refrained, but it was a very near thing.

"No, don't try and go off down that corridor," Adam said, reaching out and grabbing one by the collar. "I swear, one day I'm going to hex you two into next week and make you like it."