From the Ashes

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."

Who: Nate and William
When: Thursday around dinnertime, November 19th
Where: The indoor statuary garden
What: A magical mishap

One of the unfortunate things about having trasgus in residence, William was quickly learning, was constantly having things disappear and show up later in unusual places. This morning he'd discovered two of the sculptures from the indoor statuary garden, a chimera and a merman, flanking the doors to the library. They made intimidating guards, but took up rather more room than the corridor allowed, which meant students had been squeezing in between stone fishtails and giant paws all day to reach literary sanctuary.

He was returning them now to their plinths, attempting to remember which had gone where and in what direction they had faced. There were a few students around, but none he particularly cared to make inquiries of. The visitors today appeared to be a courting couple of older seventh-years, a lone Ravenclaw sprawled out at the base of a wrought stone ogre, sketching various anatomical studies, and a trio of younger Slytherin girls, possibly second-years, one of them nearly in tears over her broken wand. From the snatches he'd caught of the conversation while levitating the merman back onto what was hopefully his rightful pedestal, William gathered it had been damaged in an accident and was currently being held together with Spell-O-Tape.

"Eet haz been een my family for generations!" the distraught girl wailed to her consoling pair of friends. "Eet haz my great-great-great-great-grandmere's hair at zee core!"

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: 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.