WHO: Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis, plus NPC firsties. WHEN: Thursday evening. WHERE: Their dorm. SUMMARY: Daphne and Tracey have a Gulliver's Travels moment. RATING: PG STATUS: Complete!
“You know, this seemed like a much cleverer plan on Tuesday,” Daphne muttered. She dropped the tiny, squirming orange tabby clenched between her fingers back into the diorama on the table. It mewed miserably and darted into one of the model houses.
So far, the search for runaway diorama figurines was not particularly successful. Since discovering their apparent mass exodus that morning, Daphne had briefly panicked and then done a quick once-over of the room before she had to leave for class, missing breakfast entirely. It was not long until dinner now, and the most they’d turned up was a few miniature familiars (two owls, three toads, a cat, and two crups) and a truly disgruntled Beater. This was proving more difficult than she expected, and all for a back-up diorama.
If it weren’t for the fact that this unexpected hitch had left thirty-five clay figures gallivanting freely about the dorm room, Daphne wouldn’t have cared. But the size of the figures meant that they had taken to hiding themselves away in most improbable locations, pushing breakables about, getting into sock drawers, and committing other minor but pervasive offenses. And when you did manage to spot one and summon it, it tried to fight you with hands and teeth and pin-sized wands. The damage they could deal was small, yes, but not entirely painless, and absolutely annoying.
Before turning back to join the others, Daphne glanced down at what she and Regina had dubbed the “Herbology House Elf” - he was still swatting himself over the head with a rake. Apparently, he was under the impression that the escape of the other figurines was his fault, and that he had not yet adequately punished himself.
“I need to meet someone for dinner,” Astoria suddenly proclaimed, looking irritated as one of the first year girls darted around her, wand aloft. “Sorry, Daphne, Tracey,” she added, sounding not very sorry at all. “Good luck...I’ll keep an eye out.”
Her sister was out the door before Daphne could respond with anything more than a dismissive wave of her hand. It didn’t matter. The firsties she and Tracey had recruited - Colleen, Verity, and Lalita - were much more amenable, free of teenage ennui, and did indeed seem to be taking this as some sort of enjoyable scavenger hunt. They’d even set up points amongst themselves - the girl who found the most figurines got to have the bag of Bertie Botts’ Colleen’s mum had sent her. It would have been funny, were it more effective. Instead, Daphne was beginning to wonder if the figurines hadn’t found their way out of the dorm entirely.
Giving her wand a playful spin between her fingers, Daphne threw Tracey a grateful look. “They seem to be enjoying this a good deal. More than I am, at least.”
“It’s good exercise, I suppose.” Tracey had enlarged her eyebrow tweezers so that they now resembled serving tongs and was plucking up a struggling Quidditch player from the floor, ready to drop it into the chasm of the waiting jar she had previously used to contain her stinky teddy bear. Across the other side of the dorm, a first year gave a cry of triumph as she similarly located one of the escaped figurines. Tracey gave hers an examining look. There was something familiar about its pinched little features.
A second or so later, she had it. “Did you intend this one to look like Marcus Flint?” she asked, then dropped it into the jar.
“Hm?” Daphne looked up from where she was crouched on the floor, inspecting some odd scratches along the base of the wall. Those hadn’t been here this morning, had they…? “Oh, er. I don’t think we did? Unless it was one of the others that did it.”
Looking back to the wall, she frowned. No, those scratches definitely hadn’t been there before. Merlin, this was like those hunts her father went on sometimes; the tracking bits, at least. Except there were generally less tell-tale signs of activity in the dorm than there were in a forest. Daphne laughed a little and peered under a bureau. “You should have seen them on Tuesday. All of the faces looked like melted candles.”
“You’ve done a great job on them,” Tracey assured her. Too good a job, perhaps. Each figurine appeared to have a mind of its own. She straightened up, brushing out the folds of her skirt. “Perhaps I ought to replicate this one for Ursula. The most manageable form of her brother yet.” She gave the glass a tap, and the miniature Quidditch player shook his fist at her, then - while it was a bit too small to tell for sure - gave her what she suspected was a universally rude hand gesture.
Rolling her eyes, she turned back to the first years. “Perhaps you better expand your range,” she suggested. “Try the common room?”
“Yes, I think you may have to – ah!” A flash of white something shot out from behind the leg of the bureau, and Daphne clamped her hand down over it, dragging the figure of an elderly Witch out into the light. Considering the Witch looked to be roughly seventy, she was evidently quite vigorous, and gave Daphne’s knuckles a series of angry kicks. All to no avail. Daphne rose and tossed the Witch back into the box – this round of Invisible Barrier charms seemed to be doing their job where the first had not.
“I think Tracey’s likely right,” Daphne finished, brushing her hands off and looking brightly at the first years. They were being briefly distracted by Cinders who, sensing a crowd, was showing off by rolling onto his back and purring loudly at the girls. “There were loads more than what we’ve been finding in here, and they had hours to slip beneath to door and wander the whole area. If you’d like, take Cinders along with you – he was the first to find one earlier anyway.”
Looking delighted, the girls were off in a gaggle, cat in tow, chattering as they descended the staircase to the Common Room. Daphne reached for Tracey’s jar so that she could deposit the Flint lookalike.
“Ursula would find it entertaining for sure,” she agreed belatedly. “Though perhaps without the animation charms. He’s a bit…sassy.”
“The actual Marcus Flint is more fit to take out in public, strange but true,” Tracey agreed. “Although it’s not as if you can just pop him in your pocket if he - oww!” A crup had just bit her on the finger. She dropped it down to join miniature Marcus in the jar, giving it a baleful shake once she had replaced the lid.
“I really don’t want to find one of these in my sock drawer,” she added.
“Got two!” One of the first years had reappeared in the doorway, clutching a shoebox which was functioning as a critter container. “A man and a lady this time. They didn’t appear to mind too much; I think they’re - ew!” She replaced the lid with an emphatic thud.
Daphne grinned broadly at the victorious first year, and stepped over to retrieve the offenders. “Brilliant, Lalita, that’s just fine.”
Cautiously, she lifted the lid a crack and took a peek. Ew was not exactly how Daphne would have described the scene. But to her it certainly seemed that a moment of capture was not the best time to begin snogging one another, as the man and lady were now. Wrinkling her nose a bit anyway, she plucked them up by the backs of their robes and deposited them in the middle of the Quidditch pitch. Maybe the realization that they were stranded on the opposite side of the diorama from the town would spur them to do something useful instead of indulging their far-too-realistic human urges.
“I think I’m winning,” Lalita offered, breathless with excitement. She puffed up a little and beamed happily from Daphne to Tracey. “I’ve found three now, and Colleen hasn’t found any.”
“Watch out; she might just surprise you,” Tracey warned Lalita good-naturedly. She was tempted to tuck her next find in her pocket and credit it to Colleen, but Tracey herself as a first year Slytherin had not appreciated being coddled, and she suspected this lot would be of like minds.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t keep those two separated?” she opined to Daphne with a smile, her eyes on the miniature couple. “I mean, they might get friendly halfway through class tomorrow, and…”
“I know what you mean by getting ‘friendly’.” Lalita, not appreciative of Tracey’s euphemism, rolled her eyes. “I’m not a child.”
Which was precisely the sort of thing a child would say…
Daphne looked at Tracey wide-eyed, trying to fight the wide smile that was twitching the corners of her lips up. It wouldn’t be a nice way to repay Lalita’s help by laughing at her expense, even if it wasn’t meant maliciously. It was just difficult not to be reminded of Cecile, who would have been just as insulted by the insult to her maturity.
In haste to divert the situation, Daphne just nodded. “Well, whatever they do during class tomorrow, surely we don’t need to worry ourselves about that tonight. Not when there are still so many of their friends on the loose. And,” She quirked an eyebrow. “If I’m not mistaken, Colleen and Verity getting more searching in while we dawdle up here?”
The realization dawned on Lalita abruptly, and she seemed to forget the near-slight in her haste to maintain her lead. Once she had disappeared into the stairwell, Daphne sighed loudly.
“They weren’t meant to be this lifelike,” she explained to Tracey as she began rummaging through her trunk for the second time that day. “I’m wondering if maybe the duplication process magnified the animation charms somehow. Made them start thinking for themselves. The figures in the original have been perfectly well-behaved, going about their business inside the box like they’re supposed to.”
“Weird.” Tracey made a face. “They shouldn’t do that unless you messed up one of the spells, and you and Regina are always so careful with your wandwork.”
Another glance down at the couple. A raised eyebrow. “They do seem to be getting along well,” she deadpanned.
Abandoning her current task (no figurines to be found taking refuge in Daphne’s neatly folded scarves and skirts), she let the trunk fall closed with a thunk and joined Tracey by the diorama. “Regina and I weren’t in the best frame of mind when we did this, admittedly,” she observed.
Well, now, those figurines were just getting indecent, weren’t they? With a long-suffering sigh, Daphne reached in and picked the Witch up to place her squarely on the other side of the diorama, with the House Elf. Who was, as it happened, taking a break from slapping himself around. The Witch appeared to catch on, and set him to some new task, having forgotten her paramour already.
“That’s quite enough of that,” she muttered, unclear whether she meant the elf or the frisky figures. “This was a dreadful idea for an assignment. No contest.” Sure, the assignment hadn’t required anyone botch it quite this badly, but Daphne didn’t feel like talking about that.
Tracey nodded with approval as Daphne separated the star-crossed lovers. The last thing the other girl needed, she figured, was for some progeny to arrive on the scene. Would figurines gestate for the same period of time as the humans they were based upon? Tracey was curious, but not quite enough to have to deal with more of the vile little creatures.
“Tomorrow it will all be over,” she said with a sigh of her own. “And on that note, I had better get back downstairs and finish up ours. I’m trying to add pollution to the atmosphere without permanently damaging the trees. Did you know that in Mexico City, the pollution used to be so bad that the birds started falling from the sky one day?”
Muggles, she reflected, sometimes acted as though they were the only ones who had to live on this earth. But they weren’t alone in that regard, perhaps.
“No, I didn’t know that,” Daphne said absently.
At any other time, she’d likely have been very interested and asked Tracey to tell her more about it. Now, however, she was trying to perform a head count on the diorama. It looked much better than it had earlier, but there was a way to go yet. At this rate, she expected she’d be hearing of random housemates finding the things well into tomorrow, and could only hope they wouldn’t cause any real trouble.
After a pause, she added, as if the weight of the fact had just hit her, “That’s awful.” Count completed, Daphne turned to give Tracey her full attention again. She smile encouragingly. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to make that work, though. You’ve pulled off more complicated magic before.”
“Thanks,” said Tracey. She paused at the doorway and Accioed over an apple, catching it smartly in one hand before leaving the dorm with a sigh. Hopefully one of the figurines would fall into the nuclear power plant...