From the Ashes

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: 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: 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: Everyone
When: Saturday night, Hallowe’en
Where: The armoury
What:

To all staff,

After curfew and following the Hallowe’en Feast, you are cordially invited to attend a holiday gathering in the armoury. Costumes are not optional, so if you find yourself somehow accidentally lacking one upon arrival, there will be plenty available you can borrow from the suits of armour, as they will be dressed for the occasion. Drinks, desserts, and every possible permutation of pumpkin dish will be served, and there will be a festive soundtrack of popular dance music from both wizarding and Muggle cultures to enjoy. Masquerade glamours are permitted in the spirit of the holiday, but please try not to unnecessarily alarm your colleagues. Castle ghosts are also invited to attend the festivities.

Sincerely,
Headmaster Schechter

Who: Everyone!
When: Sunday, midnight
Where: Ground floor
What: The last stand

Anyone who looked out the windows toward the Forbidden Forest at midnight would have seen, curiously, flickers of torchlight moving out of the forest in a wide arc. If this held their attention, they'd have seen the lights coming closer until they eventually resolved themselves into flaming arrows nocked onto the bows of centaurs, driving the remaining horde of House-elves out of the forest.

With the portcullis still raised, the House-elves made for the shelter of the castle courtyard, flinging themselves against the doors to the entrance hall to batter them down. Some of the centaurs' arrows thunked into the doors rather than finding their smaller moving targets, and the flames quickly spread from the arrow shafts into the old, heavy wood of the doors.

The final battle for Hogwarts was about to begin.


(OOC: Treat this like a party post; join in whenever your character is ready and move between groups and locations as needed, link between threads to let us all know where you're going and coming from. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls and overlooked by the towers and gatehouse. If the main doors are breached and the entrance hall is flooded with House-elves, the immediate threat will be to the Great Hall, the classrooms on the ground floor which have presumably been cleared, and the two staircases that lead to the rest of the castle - primarily to Hufflepuff and Slytherin.)

Who: Maja and Gerard
When: Friday night
Where: Just inside the main gates
What: Hogwarts keeps some creepy pets

The first thing Maja saw was a grotesque face. Giant, batlike ears, distended tongue, a mouth misshapen into a horrible parody of a smile – all carved into the cold stone of the Hogwarts front gates.

She glared back at the gargoyle reflected in the narrow beam of her wandlight. Arriving after dark had not been part of her original plan, but she had scrapped the original plan after the third hour of last minute Ministry paperwork – some of which, she suspected, had been created solely for the purpose of intimidating her. Apparently not everyone at the Ministry thought that Sweden deserved a presence at Hogwarts. Maja, however, was no more intimidated by paperwork than she was by gargoyles; she made a face at the hideous thing, for good measure, and gave the password that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs had reluctantly handed over when there were absolutely no more papers left to sign. Slowly, almost grudgingly, the gargoyle slid aside and the gates opened.

It wasn’t until they had creaked closed behind her that she heard the groaning. She raised her wand a little and something stepped into the light, looking remarkably like the gargoyle she had just passed, only with less grinning and more grime. The creature was about the size of a small child, but stiff and gurgling and strangely lopsided. It stepped closer, and another one appeared behind it, and another, like a curious phalanx of boggart-induced hallucinations. Maja raised her wand and then paused. It was possible that these were just some sort of exotic British grounds animals. Not what she would have chosen, but at a place called Hogwarts, who could tell?

On the other hand, one of them appeared to be gnawing on its own foot.

They could be students, she told herself, playing a prank. Or a transfiguration lesson gone awry. She spent a moment weighing the odds of being gnawed on versus causing a diplomatic incident and losing her access to Hogwarts.

The only things Maja disliked more than threateningly gruesome creatures with their limbs falling off were threateningly gruesome creatures with their limbs falling off that she wasn’t allowed to kill. The growing mass of the creatures around her made up her mind. To hell with it, she thought, and began stunning.

Who: Gerard and Jon (and whoever else is wandering the grounds)
When: Friday before dinner
Where: the Grounds
What: patrolling and eluding certain death, etc etc

It was a gorgeous fall afternoon, which meant a good portion of the student population was out wandering around, basking in the crisp air and kicking through leaf litter. Gerard couldn’t blame them for wanting to get out – weather like this wasn’t going to last much longer, and once it ended they’d be stuffed indoors with hundreds of other teenagers. Poor bastards.

Normally he didn’t mind having the kids milling around outside, even if it did mean extra work for him. They were sort of hilarious with all their teenaged drama and posturing – like a live action soap opera. But for some reason, right now it was making Gerard uneasy. Probably just all the weirdness lately – another Venemous tentacula was probably going to spring up any moment now. At least it’d be dark soon and they’d all be heading inside for dinner.

Although if those Ravenclaw and Slytherin fourth years didn’t stop poking at the grindylows under the docks, Gerard was just going to feed them to the fucking squid and be done with it. He felt a little bad for being short with them, but at least they retreated sulkily to the shore, where they’d be safe. Safer, anyway.

He went back to flying his circuit and scanning the grounds for anything out of the ordinary -- oh, look, Gryffindors shouting at each other. Not what he was exactly call unusual. Gerard made a mental note to check back later and make sure it didn’t devolve from shouting to wandwork.

Something still felt off, though. His instincts were something he’d learned to trust during the war, but he was starting to doubt himself a bit now. He was just wondering if maybe he had time to go get a cup of coffee or something, calm himself down, when he saw something odd by the South Wall. He circled down cautiously for a closer look.

Holy fuck, a house elf! Gerard had never actually seen one out and about on the grounds before, so that was odd enough, and then he spotted another three of them. And – Gerard flared his nostrils, frowning. And they smelled – odd. Like old meat. Gerard called down to them, wary, and they looked up at him with blank, filmy eyes. One snapped its little brown teeth at him, reaching upward. The others started up a low, unintelligible moan.

And that’s when he heard the screaming start.