Regulation and Control

( Owl to Charlie Weasley )

Who: Aidan Chambers and Ben Dunstan
What: Aidan's first day on the job and he encounters a dancing and singing Ben. It's a wonder he doesn't quit right away.
Where: Labs at Scamander Park
When: 23rd July, early afternoon
Rating: TBR--PG-13ish for language
Status: Open; incomplete

It had been a long and hard process, but it was one of their finest achievements the day Research and Design had managed to tweak the radio enough that it actually worked. For the most part it seemed that the magic interfered far too much with the small device to make sure it functioned properly, but not one of them had actually believed that it was going to remain like that for as long as time itself. Maggie, in particular, having grown up in Muggle inner-city Manchester refused to believe it. She'd wailed a few times about how she could not possibly survive without the radio, and others like Ben and Richard had pretended to know why she loved the radio so much.

When they'd got it working they'd understood. Kind of. The radio was usually in the labs, just sitting perched on the sideboard, and it all depended on who was in that day and working on a project whether it was blaring, mostly muted, or off. Normally Ben blared the music as loudly as he could; he didn't pay much attention to the words anyway so it wouldn't break his concentration.

It was stifling hot today, though, and his sleeves were rolled up, the top two buttons on his shirt undone, the jumper he'd dragged on that morning discarded over the back of a chair pushed against the wall. The lab was empty apart from Ben himself and someone whose name he couldn't quite remember--it was something beginning with L and it sounded like lamb, anyway. The project in front of him was a small glass orb, normally used as a source of light so concentrated it was like looking into the centre of the sun to stare at it. He'd deactivated it, though, and was tinkering with it currently, trying to make it brighter somehow, to use it more effectively against those sensitive to light--vampires were the most obvious kind but there were others he could think of easily.

Humming along to the radio, Ben shuffled from side to side, unconsciously moving in time with the beat of the music. When the song switched and the beat became more exotic and much faster, he started to dance to it, grinning slightly at the other bloke in the lab--Leon, he remembered now--and because of his utter lack of knowledge when it came to anything related to dance began to imitate (rather badly) the dance moves that the Bee Gees had made famous, singing loudly and mostly in tune to a R&B song, the lyrics of which he couldn't quite make it. It was perfectly alright, though, because he quickly made up his own. He'd once heard a song about someone's ass being a spaceship...it seemed to fit in if he sung really fast.

Who: Fred Holden & Graham Pritchard
What: Knitting and Bake Sales (what do you think they're going to get up to?)
Where: Fred's cell, Space division, DoM
When: Early evening, Wednesday, 23rd July
Rating: PG-13 for language, I'm sure
Status: Closed; Complete

They'd removed the bed during the time she was gone. At some point after Rabbit had proved he was more avian than lagomorph Fred had decided again she couldn't risk these people learning too much about her. They'd clipped her nails so short she couldn't wait for them to grow back and she couldn't reach any major arteries with her teeth. Instead she'd started to pull apart the bed frame she hadn't been utilising for sleeping anyway. When they'd found her about to dig into her flesh with a sharp, twisted piece of metal they had gassed her and she'd spent all the hours between then and now in a sensory deprivation tank. Where muggles hadn't quite gotten the full submersion technique down, wizards had. Fred, cat afraid of water, had spent over forty-eight hours in a massive tank filled with salt water. She couldn't even find the walls to pound against. No, she just floated there, suspended, unable to move. She'd been blindfolded and had a bubble-head charm done on her so she could breathe. Other things they'd done had hurt, but that was the only thing that had scared her. Fred had spent more than two days terrified. Maybe they thought they'd broken her with it. Maybe she'd let them continue to think that. Or maybe they really had and she was just lying to herself thinking they hadn't.

All that was left in her room was that jumpsuit she still hadn't put on, the sink, the toilet and a new mattress. They'd replaced the old one with a futon, presumably because it didn't have any springs. She had been unconscious when she was dumped on the cold, concrete floor. By the time she woke up there was a tray of cold slop masquerading as food. It wasn't even that bad as far as food went, if you were human. Two days of not eating anything had taken a huge toll on Fred, though, and the meagre attempt at meat on the plate wasn't going to do much of anything for her. So instead she glared at it and curled up on the new mattress, shivering from the drop in her body temperature but remaining too stubborn to put that stupid jumpsuit on.

( Owl to Lisa Turpin )

Who: Harry Potter and Katie Jones
What: Buying a couch.
When: Sunday, July 19 - Backdated
Where: Hackney, London
Rating: PG for language
Status: Closed; complete

Alright, Katie did have a point, Harry thought as he dragged the couch outside the garage and he collapsed on the clean end, sweating. Godzilla and Killer of Men were looking at him interestedly from the other side of one of the windows, pawing at the glass and biting at one another provocatively. He stood and wiped the sweat from his brow, then drew his wand and fired a spell at it. The couch burst into a fine cloud of dust, and he waved his hand in front of his face so as not to inhale it before it dissipated.

( ...I've only done it with Muggles. )