From the Ashes

Who: Ryan and William, interruptions welcome
When: Monday, December 21st
Where: Staff Lounge
What: Ho ho ho, little boy, have we got a surprise for you! Er. Staff Secret Santas.

William arrived at the staff lounge with an armful of scrolls, a basic divination kit floating behind him, and a poinsettia flower pinned to his robe. The holiday decorations certainly were pushy this year; it had taken William three tries just to get the thing out of his hair and pinned down over his chest. At least now he had an excuse to wear his favourite worn jumper.

"Do you have any ideas for how to best go about this?" he asked Ryan, directing the box of tiles and tea leaf packets onto the table before depositing the scrolls nearby. The tiles and scrolls he ignored; the tea leaves he plucked from the box and doused neatly with hot water. They were far more useful in keeping him caffeinated than in attempting to predict the future.

"Arithmantical or divinatory techniques? Apparently I told the headmaster randomization wasn't a feasible method, but I'm afraid I don't remember it." He hadn't been all that surprised to hear it, though. He had no idea what he'd have done if he'd been randomly assigned someone he wasn't prepared for, and somehow he didn't doubt that he would have been.

Who: Audrey and William
When: Monday morning, Dec 21st
Where: the Divination classroom
What: awkward grading discussion, ahoy!

As Audrey had begun teaching classes, she had grown fond of finding her predecessor's notes and comments among the papers and gradebook he had left behind. He had identified the third years who were taking Divination for an easy pass. He noted which students in the fifth year Gryffindor-Slytherin should be sitting as far away from each other as possible. There was even a notation for the pair of Ravenclaw NEWT students who appeared to be sitting the class largely to write a thesis on how all Seers were frauds. (There was a side note on which scholars he had guided them towards.) Every class had detailed notes on accomplishments and disasters, and students to keep an eye on.

Which made it all the more baffling that there was just one scant mention that William Beckett, Librarian and former Ravenclaw, would be sitting his NEWT after an independent study. Not a grade, not an essay, not even any mentions of meeting times to discuss how his studies were coming along. When Schechter had asked after Beckett's exam grade, Audrey had actually had a horrifying moment where she had to admit to the headmaster she didn't know he was one of her students.

Audrey's goodwill towards Professor Trohman was running pretty low at the moment.

At this point, she had two essay topics that should be generic enough for any Ravenclaw to tie to advanced Divination, and a colleague on his way to sit an exam. She was actually kind of looking forward to hearing what Beckett had been studying.

Who: Anyone and everyone!
When: Sunday morning, December 20th
Where: The staff lounge
What: Weekly staff meeting. Let's get this holiday party started!

"So Professor Saporta will be in charge of decorations," Brian concluded, still without any idea of how that had come about, and hoping it hadn't actually been his decision, as he feared it might have been. "Professor Smith can handle the trees, and that should put us in good stead for the end of the week. Hogwarts has a seasonal decoration charm, which I can put into effect now, that should save us all a great deal of trouble."

He cast the charm, the castle recognizing his authority as headmaster and bending neatly to his will. Garlands sprung up around the sideboard, crystal icicles glistened overhead, and a sprig of holly landed neatly on the tea tray. Excellent. "Professor Urie will be accompanying the carolers to..."

Snow began falling lightly in the staff lounge. One the sideboard, a festive wooden reindeer ornament leapt to the floor, charged beneath the table, and dashed through the door with a squeal, singing "FA LA LA LA LA," in a high-pitched festive wooden reindeer voice. As Brian opened his mouth to speak, a shower of miniature candy canes fell out of the air to rain down on everyone's heads.

"For fuck's sake," Brian said. Overhead, a candy cane wobbled loose from its perch on a twinkling icicle and smacked him on the nose. "Keep going," he ordered, pointing back at his staff, and went off down the hallway in a swirl of headmasterly robes, following the singing reindeer.

Who: Jon, Gerard, William
When: Last Wednesday, following this and this
Where: Inside questionably fine art
What: A magical menagerie

William wasn't sure what had happened. One minute he'd been with Pete, and the next he...hadn't. He'd fallen, his legs getting tangled up in something as he passed through the door of the temple ruins they'd discovered, and he'd registered grass and nearby running water before he hit the ground hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs. It could have been worse, he thought, pushing himself up on slightly shaky hands. He could have fallen headfirst into a rock and split his skull open, or into the water itself and drowned.

There was no temple in sight, and no curious rabbit-eared equine, and no Pete. There was, however, a garden gnome, sitting on a nearby rock sunning itself without apparent alarm at his abrupt arrival. And a gargoyle carved out of the rock, William noticed a second later. A bat-winged gargoyle funneling water from the stream, upon whose bank William appeared to be resting. A low growl caused him to spin around, flailing for balance on the ground, where he saw a griffin lounging on the grass between two towering trees, its beak stretched wide in a gaping yawn and leonine tail lashing lazily behind it. There was a pegasus not far from it, and a winged creature the size of a cockatrice that William almost mistook for a dragon until it stretched its wings and he recognized it as a wyvern. A wyvern, so close to a pegasus? With a gnome undistressed by the proximity of a griffin?

He tried to stand up, only to find that his legs weren't cooperating. More than not cooperating; bound and weighted. He struggled in blind panic for a second before looking down to try to free himself from whatever was holding him prisoner, and registered with shock the presence of gleaming green scales and delicate webbed fins.

"Oh bollocks," he said faintly in surprise.

Who: Pete and William
When: Wednesday, midday
Where: That is an excellent question.
What: ...the hell happened?

There had been an alarming number of staff disappearances over the past day. Not deaths, not that anyone knew, but it was enough to make even the most optimistic of Hufflepuffs look solemn over their morning porridge. The headmaster had assigned substitutes to hastily rescheduled classes and declared that every spare minute be spent in finding out exactly what was going on.

William had been buried in books for most of the morning, but so far the only plausible explanation he had come up with was 'Portkey', and both Headmaster Schechter and the Defence experts had sworn the possibly-Cursed painting currently locked away behind wards in an unused classroom wasn't a Portkey. Presumably everyone had also been careful not to touch it, which was further evidence against the Portkey hypothesis, but William hadn't been able to come up with a better suggestion.

There was a spell called a 'compleat bauble' listed in one of the Elizabethan-era texts which seemed to detail the containment of a person or persons within a small glass sphere, but the foundation of the spell seemed far-fetched to begin with, and William hadn't heard mention of anything resembling a glass ornament being discovered in the castle. Surely something would have had to set such a spell in motion, and ostensibly they would have heard about the event.

( William was on his way to investigate the suspected instigator of the disappearances now. )

Who: Mikey, Spencer & William
When: Sunday 22nd Nov
Where: Mikey's Rooms
What: General awkwardness

Mikey sighed and leaned back into his pile of cushions, pushing a stray essay away and smoothing down the covers a little. The bed was comfy and he had Spencer company for the evening and though they were supposedly getting some work done, it was obviously meant to be one of those evenings were they just talked about the possibility of giant invading dungbeetles all night or skipped everything in favour of going straight to bed.

Except they weren't actually doing either. It was just bits of marking punctuated with awkward little stints of conversation. And where ordinarily going over his first years' thoughts on tortoises to teacups wouldn't have been too bad, it was suddenly becoming less and less palatable.

"Hey," he muttered, nudging Spencer's foot with his own. "So apparently someone rigged Schechter's office with fireworks the other week. And then managed to get out with their lives." Or supposedly they had. Either that or the Headmaster had hidden the bodies pretty well.

Who: William and Nate
When: The Monday after William's Weekend of Isolation (23 Nov.)
Where: Library
What: Questions and research and indirect-message-passing, oh my!

Nate had never thought of himself as a studier. Maybe it was a result of the Hufflepuff stereotype, maybe he was just a bit of a slacker, but he'd always tried to do his homework as quickly and correctly as possible, and never really worried about it beyond that. He'd definitely never voluntarily gone into the library.

He'd thought that he hadn't changed in the five years since he'd been at Hogwarts, but fighting with his teenage instincts during the de-aging had proved him wrong, fairly definitively. He could accept that, probably. That didn't mean he wanted to admit that he was actually doing research for something completely unrelated to any of his classes.

But after his debacle with Delving Into the Infinite Mysteries of the Spark Magnificus, it seemed fairly apparent that he was never going to actually understand anything about magical theory and origins unless he found the right books, and that was why they had a librarian, wasn't it?

Which very neatly fitted itself into another quandary: how to make sure that William was okay, and maybe try to find out what information he could, without being too obvious about it. He'd been thrilled at the first rumours of Saporta and William being completely indiscreet (how did anyone in this school expect to keep any secrets whatsoever? Except for Professor Blackington, but that was only a matter of time) in the hallways, worried at the news that Kara had seen Saporta carrying a Beckett-sized person down to the Hospital Wing, and more than a little unsettled by Gerard's vague report.

And then William had disappeared for the entire weekend. He was a little pale, Nate noticed, making his way through the mostly-deserted library. "William?"

Who: Bob, Gabe, William, Gerard
Where: Bob's rooms/the hospital wing
What: Nightime visitations (what happened after this).
When: Late Thursday evening, November 26th 19th (whoops)

One of the nice things about being the healer, in Bob's opinion, was that his rooms were right next to the hospital wing, with doors connecting them to both the wing itself and the adjoining hall. This meant that as long as he has some means of acquiring food and drink (Auror Way, random first years, and the occasional Summoning spell seemed to do fine), he need never actually leave his bubble of safety and risk running into a peeved Lazzara. Not that Bob was planning on hiding away for the rest of the school year or anything crazy like that. Just until the Defense professor cooled down a bit over his forced delivery to Williams. So, sometime after the Christmas holidays, perhaps.

The unfortunate thing about having rooms right next to the hospital wing was that people had no trouble finding him. Which was a good thing, really, since it wasn't as if Bob wanted anyone to be in pain or something longer than they needed to be just because they could find the healer. Still, he couldn't help a small sigh of regret as he was called away from his current game with Betsy (Bob was going to win this one, he could feel it) by someone banging on the door.

Bob limped over to the door and opened it.

Who: Gabe and William
When: Thursday, immediately following this
Where: William's rooms
What: You can probably guess.

The journey to William's rooms had in theory been more accelerated than usual, but in reality probably took longer, owing to the number of times they'd paused along the way so that one or the other of them could pin the other against the nearest wall. They'd definitely scandalized a couple of portraits in the corridor outside William's door, which was practically in his rooms and therefore fair game (in William's opinion) for indulging in the same sorts of things that were about to happen inside them.

His door guardian raised an eyebrow and ruffled a few feathers when she saw them, but didn't offer any comment besides her customary, "Riddle?" spoken with perfect neutrality. They were very well-matched, William and Phix.

He didn't have the patience for riddles at the moment, however. "Now," he growled. Her tail lashed once, but his door swung open obediently. Phix might have been Sphinx, proud and aloof, answering to none, but she also knew William well enough to know when not to push him.

William twined around Gabe as the door closed behind them, the heavy scrape of stone-on-stone preceding perfect stillness. His arms wound up over Gabe's shoulders and into his hair, and he turned his face into Gabe's neck to inhale his scent again. "You should take your robe off," he advised, chasing the smell of smoke and musk into Gabe's hair and nuzzling into dark curls.

Who: Gabe and Ryan (spectators and interruptions welcome!)
When: Thursday after dinner
Where: Staff lounge
What: Serious chess business

Scrabble was all very well and good, but it wasn't a game for real men - it was just a spelling bee crossed with parquetry - and Gabe would feel that way even if he hadn't been banned from playing after the time he got caught drawing an extra leg on a P when he needed an R.

Chess was a completely different matter. Chess had history and tradition and application and gravitas. And also Gabe didn't completely suck at it. It had actually been quite a long time since he'd played a round, and so help him, there was going to be one tonight. He had the board all set up on the table in the staff lounge - Western rules and all, he was making sacrifices, man - he just needed a victim partner and--

"Fuck it." He also needed the pieces to stop rearranging themselves. Bloody animated English chess sets.

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: 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."

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: 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.

[in response to this]

Mr. Novarro,

I must say I'm surprised to hear your report, considering how highly esteemed Botollinger is among scholarly witches and wizards of a certain generation. In fact, of the many texts in which he is referenced, I can't remember even one of them ever calling him anything like an obtuse windbag of epic proportions filled with arrogant pomposity.

I'll take your suggestion for a new subsection of the library under consideration, although my concern is that once the students find out such a thing exists and clamour to vote for their own selections, it will expand until there is nothing left on any other shelf and the stacks crack under the weight.

I don't know how Auror Way fits into any of this, but I shall do my best to distract him with wild gesticulation and invented crises, should he appear to be heading in that direction.

Sincerely,
The Benevolent Dictator

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: Maja and William
When: Wednesday, November 4 (Week 9)
Where: the Library
What: There has got to be a map of this place.

Looking for a runestone in the drafty halls of Hogwarts, Maja found, was like looking for a bowtruckle in a beech tree. The castle was overflowing with cursed objects; on her first day of searching (nearly a week behind her self-imposed schedule, thanks to the house elf infestation) she found a coil of Hangman’s Rope, a nastily enchanted doorknob, a Ming vase promising a very grim death to whoever broke it (the curse was a poorly done thing for such a delicate artifact, and had clearly been tacked on in the early nineteenth century), an exceedingly ugly candelabra of poisonous candles, three petrified dodo birds, and a Snake Snare. The last was something of a close call, but she managed to extricate herself with all her limbs intact, so she considered it a success.

Forget beech trees – it was like looking for a single bowtruckle in the Ed Forest; there were cursed objects anywhere and everywhere, and it was impossible to know where to start. Her attempts at a locating spell had failed miserably, but that was hardly surprising; you didn’t hide something that dangerous without making it Unlocateable. She had expected a difficult task, but it was frustrating nonetheless. Nor did it help that she kept getting turned around in the castle. The suits of armor were constantly relocating, and the moving staircases seemed to have a personal grudge against her; again and again she found herself arriving in the same corridors, while entire floors went unsearched because she couldn’t find a way to access them. It was almost as if the castle itself was trying to keep her out, and the thought niggled at her uneasily.

On the third day of her search, she lost patience and went to look for a map. Finding the library turned out to be a relatively simple job; she just waited for the students to come out of class, and then followed a couple of girls whose bags looked like they were about to burst at the seams from the weight of the books.

The library was impressive – high ceiling, giant windows, towering bookshelves, teetering book piles – but Maja had a mission, so admiring the book selection would have to wait for another time. She strode quickly over to the front desk, and the young man who was sitting there. “I’m looking for maps of the school,” she said. “Blueprints, floor schemes, whatever you have.” Belatedly, she realized she hadn’t introduced herself, and stuck out her hand. “Maja Ivarsson, Swedish Police.”

Who: Gabe and William (and Andrew)
When: Saturday, mid-morning
Where: In the corridors near Andrew-the-ghost's hideaway
What: How could an awkward lanky librarian be this hard to find?

Gabe finally actually had some time - well, a little, since marking the sixth-year essays hadn't taken as long as he'd thought it might, but he'd been invited to stop in at the Slytherin quidditch team's strategy session this afternoon, despite the fact the whole team was well aware how rubbish he was on a broom, so there was no way he was missing that.

He'd been trying to catch up with William since Tuesday, and really trying since Thursday, but possibly Beckett had actually evaporated with the force of his horror (and scorn for Spencer and Pete) because he'd proved absolutely impossible to find. Gabe had even tried asking William's favourites - the tiny, serious Ravenclaws - if they knew his whereabouts, but in the subsequent staredowns Gabe had actually been unnerved first. He'd hex anyone who mentioned it.

And because he was so busy, it'd taken him this many days to think of the guy - well, ghost - he'd come up here to see. It wasn't at all Gabe's usual neck of the woods, and he wasn't sure precisely which room he was looking for, but he did know where the much-discussed Ministry bird was bunking these days (the Slytherins learned everything eventually, if you were willing to pay for it) so he knew where he was avoiding.

Which meant he was skulking out of a side corridor when a voice said, "Don't tell me you're hiding from Hayley as well."

Gabe may have flinched, but only a little. "Hey, I have time, but not that much time," he declared, turning back to face the floating (and grinning) ghost. "And I'd prefer to use it finding William. Any clues?" When Gabe had been catching his breath after the whole Travis thing, he'd managed to have a bit of a chat with Andrew, and the guy had known a lot about William. Telling things. That had been what finally made Gabe decide to trust him. Provisionally, at least.

Now the transparent grin just widened, and Andrew said, "This way, loverboy!"

The big problem with ghosts was that you couldn't punch them in their incorporeal arms.

[written on a piece of parchment left impaled on a Caterwauling Cactus needle in one of the greenhouses and thus creating something of a minor vegetation uproar]

Our deal is null and void. The shampoo is off the table.

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