Back to September || BACK TO SCHOOL EVENT

Mister Lupin looked just about as guilty and uncomfortable as she was, which should have curbed her mouth but sadly failed. They were terrible, feeding the worst parts of each other's personalities. Mali grew impatient, standing there and listening to the man throw barbs. "Mm." she agreed, tapping her foot and craning her neck to see down the rest of the line. "That's true. Accidents and foolish men dabbling in dark magic." There was no use tiptoeing around the issue any longer. Mali thought he was dark, black souled.

The man implied yet again that he was innocent of such accusations and Mali rolled her and flipped open the book before taking on an expression of mock surprise. "You're in luck. S'right here, next to the chapter on how to come up with a better cover story than heating up your cauldron." Her attention returned back to the line, turning away from the man with an irritable Hmph and a whip of long dark hair. A witch at the front was counting Knuts out to pay for a large stack of books and Mali snapped, removing herself from the line and shoving her abandoned purchase on a random shelf and stomping out, unable to tolerate being in the man's presence a second longer.

Mali was ready to leave but was so irritated by her encounter that she didn't trust herself to apparate away without splinching something off, so she headed towards The Leaky Cauldron to cut over to Muggle London and walk the few blocks home. The witch trudged along the cobblestone, pausing when she noticed that she could see her own breath. How odd, what was even more curious was the fact that she was shivering on a hot, sticky summer day. Moments later she heard the screams and whipped around.

It was a horrifying sight, a swarm of scraggly black cloaks swooping down on panicked, fleeing shoppers. A mix of children and adults scrambled to take cover in the shops. Dementors started to break off from the group one and two at a time, gliding towards the shop or down the street. Mali couldn't move, like her shoes sprouted roots that buried themselves in the cobblestone. Her hand dove into her bag, grabbing blindly for her wand. It wouldn't be much use, the patronus charm was too complicated for her.

One of the lone dementors whirled around and floated towards her with purpose, accompanied by death rattle as it breathed in deeply, sucking down every ounce of happiness, including her own. Mali could feel it being drawn out of her body. Her worst memories were dragged out of the little boxes she packed them in to ignore and forced to the forefront of her mind. Green flashed across her eyelids as she squeezed them shut, her own anguished sobs filled her ears, both in memory and in reality.

She slapped her hands over said ears, trying in vain to block it all out. Her knees buckled underneath her, sending her hard to the ground. Mister Fischer's terrified face swam into view, his whimpers mixing with her cries. The memories felt suffocating, like they were smothering her and snuffing out her ability to feel anything other than grief and despair. At the very back of it all she heard the dark being's terrible, ragged sucking. There was Theo's easy little smile, it's meaning twisted by the Death Eater as he rose his wand and there was another flash of green.

Mali somehow ended on her back, cowering away from the terrible looming figure. "NO!" She was screaming and it was unclear if she was talking to the memory or the creature swooping down on her. "NO! STOP!" A rotting, scabbed hand curled around to the back of her neck, long fingers ice cold against her skin. The creature leaned low, coaxing her head up as it lowered it's hood. Tears slid freely down her cheeks, fatigue setting in. Her resistance began to die down, reduced to a feeble fist bouncing off the thing's chest. An agonizing ripping sensation started in her chest and spread outward, like her soul was being ripped from her body fiber by fiber.

Everything was growing dark, the memory of screaming and curses intensified. All felt lost, hopeless and desolate. Suddenly a beautiful wolf made up silver and light charged over, repelling the creature as it lowered it's head, it's gaping mouth hovering a mere inch from her own. Mali gasped, the air warming the suffocating weight lifted. To say that she was shaken and distraught by what she relived was an understatement. Wide, terrified eyes searched the alley, both for the creature and her savior, settling on Remus Lupin. Mali trembled and sobbed as she babbled out "He killed them! Theo killed them!" That was never a question, she witnessed it herself but revisiting the images tore the scab clear off the healing wound. "Oh my god" she choked, pressing the heel of her palms into her eyes in an attempt to erase the ghost images that lingered in her mind's eye. "Merlin, Mister Longbottom! Theo killed them!" Every feeling over the matter that she repressed, all the shock and horror and guilt that she couldn't afford to address, came pouring out of the hole the dementor tore. 

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Remus Lupin

The excitement in Diagon Alley was palpable, Elias mused as he swept in and out of the shops, accompanied by resident Dueling professor and cutie pie Aje Odili. The students, and even their parents, seemed ecstatic to be swanning around and collecting all their supplies, ready for the school year to start. The sales, of course, helped, Elias thought as another one of his Slytherins waved at him cheerfully, but on the whole the event was certainly a success.

Pausing in the middle of the crowded road, eyeing some sparkling silver earrings and tugging his earlobe thoughtfully, Elias turned to Aje with a smile. "Do you think I should?" he asked, gesturing to the earrings with a wide gesture, nearly hitting the vendor. Elias paused. "I'm not sure they're my style." chewing his lip thoughtfully, cat's eyes narrowed, Elias continued, "I wonder if earrings would look good on you..."

His very important musings were interrupted by a slimy, cold feeling, as if someone had poured icy water down the back of his neck. Despite the sunny day, it was suddenly freezing outside, sending goosebumps up Elias' skin and making him wish that he'd worn a sweater, or possibly five. And then came the dread.

He didn't understand what was happening at first. The sky got darker, grim, as tens of creatures floated down with great malevolence. The terror, the sadness was suffocating, and Elias clutched at Aje's arm, trying to keep his knees from crumbling. "What-" he choked out, pressing his eyes shut against the deluge. He let out a strangled gasp as an image started to unfold under his eyelids - bits and pieces from his time as a captive of the Snatchers - and it came to him, though he couldn't particularly find it in himself to care. Dementors. One of them came too close, tugging on something visceral inside of Elias as awful, rotten memories floated to the surface, and he flailed and gasped out a Shield charm, hoping that it would help him to feel as though there was some possibility of ever being happy again. It wouldn't work for long - it might not even help. Elias didn't know. He was drowning, inside his own head, and he didn't know how long he could keep his head above water.

His hand tightened on a forearm, bringing him (somewhat) into the present. "Aje," he squeaked out, feeling as though he'd been stepped on, feeling as though he was freezing to death. "We need to move." He knew it, but he couldn't do it. So much for being a wizard - right now, Elias felt about 2 inches tall.

Whatever else he thought Mali guilty of - she certainly didn't back down, at least not in front of him, and he had to appreciate that in a person. Otherwise, he would have felt guilty being so rude to her. But she dished it right back, so it was game on as far as he was concerned. "I wouldn't know what that's like, but I imagine that's very difficult to deal with, yes." Remus' words were so pointed they were almost sharp, but he tried his best to keep the edge from his voice. He couldn't let this young lady know how under his skin she'd gotten; for many reasons, but most importantly, that irritation might make him look even more suspicious to her. Better to just adamantly deny everything she said about him, even if it was exhausting.

At her next barb - he did sort of open himself up for that one, he supposed - he rolled his eyes much like the bratty teen he was channeling, acting in this manner. "I told you what happened, miss." Eventually. Kind of. "Perhaps you remember calling the Aurors on me?" Not that that was really any convenience to Remus, when half the Auror department was made up of Order members, but still. The implication. At last, Mali seemed done with him - and the store in general, apparently, as she left soon after. Remus was left to simmer, and eventually make his purchases...and then everything went to hell. A very cold hell.

And Remus stuck himself right in the middle of it all. He ran through the street, icy breath on his neck and long black cloaks tripping his feet. He was as susceptible to the dementors as anyone else - some could argue even more so, given his deep wealth of terrible memories - but he felt very strongly that that vulnerability also made him stronger against them. Because he'd hit absolute rock bottom so often in his life, smashed repeatedly into it really, he had marvelous appreciation for the things that made him happy. They were always, always kept at the forefront of his mind - easily transformed into the spirit of his Patronus. He aimed that wolf now at one of the cloaked bastards, shining and bright. It threw the dementor into the air and away from the figure on the ground - revealing her to be Mali Johar. Oh, gods.

Remus' Patronus was running back to him, but Remus met him halfway, and the wolf followed at his heels as Remus closed the rest of the distance between himself and Mali. She looked terrible...and then began the sobbing. That was a relief, an indicator that she at least still had her soul residing inside her, but any encounter with a dementor was unpleasant and would require aftercare. Remus wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy, much less young girls who slightly irritated and inconvenienced him. Remus' Patronus bit at the approaching scraggly black cloaks and threw them sky high as Remus himself knelt next to Mali. "You're okay, Mali. Listen to me. It's gone, but we have to leave here. Now. I'm going to stay with you, you won't be alone, but we have to leave." He took her hands to warm them up in his own, and paused as words began to pop up out of her sobbing noises. She was reliving her worst memory, surely, the one the dementor pulled out of her. Remus had no idea who Theo was or who he killed, but it hurt his heart all the same. In his anger at Mali's accusations, he was blinded to the fact that she may very well have a basis for that level of caution and paranoia.

And then, there it was - Mister Longbottom. Remus felt a renewed chill then, and had to take a moment to restrengthen his Patronus before coming back to Mali and what she just said. There was no time to talk about it now, but he definitely wouldn't be leaving her alone one bit once they were safe. If she knew something about Frank's death, he was determined to get it out of her. Maybe find out who this Theo was. Remus reached into his pocket and withdrew one of the homemade chocolate frogs he stowed there after his earlier purchase (he wasn't going to give them all to his children, come on, this is Remus Lupin we're talking about here). He pressed it into Mali's hand with an order to, "Eat this," before scooping his hands under her arms and trying to haul her to her feet. They had to go, and Remus had to quickly decide where...the closest, safest place he could think of where he could still hopefully keep Mali under his attentions until he got his answers. To Gringotts they would go.

Seamus had mixed feelings about this time of year. The air of excitement was infectious, the students gleeful, and the emotions running high and happy. As someone who rather liked that kind of atmosphere, liked being around people running around absorbed in their own lives, this kind of event was perfect for Seamus. As someone who could, occasionally, see himself in flashes of students running by (a first-year buying a cauldron they were inevitably going to singe a hole in, a third-year eyeing a textbook dubiously, a sixth year curling up with his girlfriend) it was a bit more painful, particularly in the older students. Things had changed drastically for him around that age, and he wished he could have held on to innocence and ignorance rather than the burden of experience.

But life had to go on. It had been 5 years since the battle of Hogwarts, after all, and he couldn't just mope for that length of time. He was no broody Slytherin. He was a pyrotechnic genius and spell inventor, and he had work to do in Diagon Alley today picking up supplies. And dodging his most recent fling, who was great and everything but just wasn't... her.

He was surveying a booth outside of the Weasleys' shop (a paradise for the explosive personalities in the wizarding world) when he started to feel cold. It wasn't the ordinary kind of cold that he thought it was initially - not prefacing a rain, or even snow. Something much more nefarious was raining down from the heavens, and Seamus spun with widening eyes as the street erupted into wails and tears and a few, a bare few, silvery forms holding the tide of despair at bay.

Seamus fumbled for his own wand, trying to pull on a happy memory as his breaths started to come fast and shallow, mind and eyes clouding with memories and tears respectively. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts - where were his happy thoughts -

Chest constricting, he clutched at the display and looked around, frantically. A cat patronus, familiar to his former Head of House, gambolled by briefly, batting at the Dementors with an elegant paw, and his head cleared for a moment. Following the path of the cat, his eyes widened at the sight of another silvery figure... this one human-shaped and lovely and very much dead. His heart squeezed uncomfortably, and his eyes (already wet from the Dementors) ran further, but he managed to will up the image of his first kiss with Lavender and conjure a faint, but still present, fox to guide him to her side. He took a step, and then another, following the fox as closely as possible and grabbing the occasional individual to follow him, hoping that the creature would keep the Dementors at bay for a while. He didn't wave, but he made eye contact with Lavender Brown partway to her side, and the patronus in front of him flickered with emotion.

His friendship with Elias was unlikely, they were definitely on different ends of the spectrum. The man was outgoing, social and the word 'magnificent' seemed to roll around in his brain whenever the man came up. A little sparkly, maybe. They were an odd couple, as they strolled down the narrow streets of Diagon Alley. Several times students would wave and Aje would lift his hand to wave back before realizing it was at his companion,not him. He was jumping the gun, the students didn't know him yet. He was looking forward to next year when he could lumber down the very same street and students would be waving at him. His excitement at starting the new position was bubbling pleasantly in his chest, loosening him up.

His companion was like a niffler, drawn to something shiny in a stall and nearly smacked the now annoyed looking vendor. Aje laughed, the sound rich and deep. "Everything is your style, my friend." It wasn't common to see Aje so relaxed that he was visibly enjoying himself, but the event was spectacular and the company was good. At Elias' comment a mock of confusion colored his face. "They are not my style." Him with earrings, good luck. Aje was too clean cut to even consider such a thing. Even so, he was having too good of a time not to play into the joke (Elias had been joking, right? Right?) his lips curled up into a smile "It would need much more sparkle."

The laughter soon died on Aje lips as the air around them took on a deathly, biting chill. His friend felt it too, grabbing on to his arm. He laid a massive hand protectively over Elias', his attention turning to the crowd. All around him people gasped or sobbed, some collapsed onto their knees and others looked up in horror. He saw it then too, a nightmarish storm setting over the crowded alley in the form of clouds made of moth eaten cloaks and putrid beings. Dementors. They used to haunt the wizard prison, used as guards, but were deemed too inhumane and here they were, subjecting innocent people.. children to their cruel influence. All the warmth Aje had felt earlier, the excitement, the joy was sapped out of him as they swooped overhead. Fragments of memories began to surface. His mother's face when learning about his father's death burned into his mind's eye. It mingled with other memories, there were distant shrieks, left over from his time as an auror and red colored everything.

His face was dumb and blank, lips parted slightly and the hand over Elias' was clenching hard, nails digging. Someone said his name, reaching in and pulling him out of the nightmare unfolding in his head. His name sounded strange, like he had cotton in his ears, but he heard it. It was Elias, and he was right. They needed to move. He looked at his friend, face still very much blank, for a moment as he waded his way back into the present, past the awful memories that were trying to drag him under. "I have you." he said as he peeled out of Elias' grasp. "But I need my hands."

A Patronus charm was tricky, even for people who viewed things like wandless magic and animagi forms as child's magic. His first attempt at the charm produced the silver mist, it was strong and bright but wouldn't sufficiently drive the dark creatures away. Cursing under his breath, Aje focused in on his single happiest memory, returning home after being away for years. His family had grown and with the money he was able to send back, they had flourished. His siblings were happy and healthy, their smiling faces at the forefront of his mind as he cast the spell again. The bright light, wispy light of the patronus charm burst from his palms, taking the form of an ethereal badger. "I will take care of you." He looped his large arm around Elias to drag him along as he pushed his way through the alley, badger running dutifully ahead of them and swatting any large looming cloak that drifted too closely. It was small in size, but the badger didn't seem to mind honey badger don't care

He guided them to the refuge of a shop, this one a small independent apothecary. The store was empty, decorated with fallen streamers and low hovering balloons from the event. It wasn't perfect, but he was finding it hard to keep the focus needed for a patronus. Aje needed a moment to regroup, refocus, and recast the creature. It faded into nothingness the moment he closed and slumped against the door. "Are you alright?" he asked, running a hand over his forehead and through very close cropped hair. "We can leave in a moment, I just need a minute. We will go to the bank, others were." A funny place to him, but people seemed to be fleeing up the alley and dashing for Gringotts, some even left shops to do so. It was strange to him, but enough people were heading that way, there must be a reason. Maybe it was because it was the biggest structure and could hold more people, meaning safety in numbers. Maybe it wasn't so much about safety at all but the desire not to feel alone after the dementors sucked all the vibrancy out of a person. He was certainly glad he had Elias with him.

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Elias Lâu

Luna, initially, wasn't at the event. She was down in Knockturn Alley, an unlikely place for such a person but Luna needed a new writing desk, one of the pixies she was studying having gnawed through (or sawed through, knowing pixies) one of the legs. One wouldn't immediately think of Knockturn Alley when shopping for furniture, but Luna loved antique things, they carried their own personality and stories. Having had an unsuccessful shopping trip, she was about to wander off to stop by the event and chat with some of the current Hogwarts professors when the commotion put her on alert. It wasn't laughter filling their air, but an entire different emotion accompanied with an unmistakable cold.

Having been present at Hogwarts when Dementors 'guarded' the castle, Luna was familiar with the chill that got under one's skin and froze them to their core. She plucked her wand from behind her ear, happiness being pulled out of her by long, low rattling breaths. Her mother's last moments surfaced in Luna's full mind, but the scene was chased away as she focused on happy things. Harry taught her how to do it, and Luna, while not Hermione, was accomplished in her own ways. Ginny's face started as a dark red spot, hovering over her mother's broken body and sobbing father. It gained power, brightening and becoming clearer but it wasn't enough to chase away the darkness. Neville's face now. The terrible memory morphed into a wonderful one, she and Neville working in her garden. A warmth radiated through her, chasing out the cold and Luna pushed that warmth outward as she drew the tip of her wand through the air with a cry of "Expecto Patronum!"

A beautiful, ghostly hare burst from her wand tip and bounded ahead of her, repelling the awful creatures before circling back. Luna held her wand out like a sword, dashing through the chaotic streets of Diagon Alley with her hare sprinting next to her. Somewhere along the way she passed a huddled mass being menaced by a single dementor, the creature intent on getting it's Kiss. Luna whipped her wand towards the duo and the hare bounded off after the horrid creature, which shrunk back from the patronus. In another situation it would have been a silly site. A large, looming creature chased off by a ghost like bunny rabbit. The hare reared back on it's legs, asserting itself between the woman and the Dementor. A paw swiped towards it and then it was bounding again, chasing it back.

With her patronus keeping the dementor at bay, Luna fell to her knees by the woman. "Oh, you poor dear. Let's get you out of here. Come on, you've got to stand." Luna was a slight woman, petite and wispy which gave her the ethereal feel she was known for, not someone who would be able to drag someone out of an alley. "You can stand, I've got you." she encouraged, hooking an arm under the woman's and hauling her to her feet. "Let's find you some chocolate." She led the woman away from her spot in Diagon Alley to a nearby store. Sugarplum's Sweet Shop. It hadn't opened yet, a tragedy given the amount of children who'd flooded the alley these past weeks to gather their school supplies. Luna, a previous student of Professor Lupin, was well versed in the medicinal properties of chocolate. Luna, balancing the woman with an arm over her shoulder, pressed her face to the glass. The shelves looked stocked, just waiting for the shop's grand open but the door was locked. No matter, she was a witch.

Except her patronus would fade if she occupied her wand with another spell and there was likely an anti unlocking jinx on it. Resourceful little thing that she was, Luna eased the woman down and crouched down to her eye level. "You stay here, alright? I'll be right back." Patting the woman's knee, Luna dashed away and her patronus followed. The wispy witch wasn't gone long, maybe a minute tops before she was back at the shop with a large rock in one hand, wand in the other. Winding her arm back, Luna heaved the stone at the window, shattering it. She carefully climbed in through the broken window, unlocked the door and returned to the woman's side, pulling her up again. "Sweets'll make it feel a little bit better. Then when you feel stronger we can go find where everyone else was going. Oh, this would be a dream under any other circumstances!" Her hare guarded the entrance, bounding back and forth between the door and broken window as Luna deposited her new friend again and was lost to the shelves to pluck up handfuls of chocolate frogs before returning to her companion and depositing them in her lap.

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@raven
If you have any problem with this, let me know. Sugar Plum's Sweetshop is an actual store in Universal's Diagon Alley so I figured we could use it here simply for plot purposes as a not yet open source of candy.

A flash of light suddenly cut through the darkness, bright enough the Raven could make it out even with her eyes closed. Immediately the weight that had been slowly crushing her into the ground seemed to pull back. The frigid air eased slightly, as did the pressure on her lungs. Air flooded in as the mental image of her brother began to strengthen. Raven managed to look up, her face red and streaked with tears. Her whole body was shaking. An ethereal bunny rabbit was facing off with the Dementor that had been hanging over her. It would’ve been almost funny had Raven not felt so utterly drained. Then there was a blonde woman in front of her. One of Longbottom’s school friends, if she remembered correctly from her auror days. She was too small to lift Raven herself, but the thoughts of Jake were growing stronger in Raven’s mind now that the darkness was slowly receding from her mind. She managed to push herself up on shaky legs even as tears continued to drip down her face. In the depths of her soul, Raven was a fighter. Always had been. It was what had kept her alive this long. She was too shaken by what had happened to really process the rest of the street around them as the blonde woman helped her stumble toward a shop.

The door to the chosen shop was locked, and Raven was briefly abandoned in favor of finding a way in. Had she been a little more cognizant, the former auror would have grabbed her rescuer’s hand and begged not to be left alone. Not with all the memories still swirling in her head. But as it was, she was too tired. She had barely even processed that she was alone before the blonde was back, breaking a window and crawling in. Then the door was open and Raven was being hauled inside. The blonde was taking, and Raven was just barely present enough to hear the words, although they sounded far away. Even the floor beneath her and the candy counter against her back hardly felt real. The only thing that did feel real was the sharp pain in her chest. Jake was gone. And Raven had nearly gone with him. She never should have survived that torture. Not when her brother hadn’t.

A small pile of chocolate frogs being dumped in her lap pulled her back to the present. She looked up at her rescuer as if seeing the blonde for the first time. Only then, as the kind face danced and blurred, did Raven realize she was still crying. She didn’t even know why anymore. For the brother she had lost? Or for the pieces of herself that had gone with him? “Thank you,” she choked. Her voice sounded hoarse and foreign. She forced herself to take a deep breath and let it out before she used her shaking hands to open up one of the chocolate frog packages. The confectionary creature was quick, but so was Raven. Even on her off days. She managed to get hold of it before it could disappear, and the frog went limp as the magic wore off. Raven used her free hand to wipe the tears from her face. “There are others out there. You should be helping them.” Not some washed up auror who couldn’t even save herself. She took a bit of chocolate, her damp red eyes locked firmly on the floor of the store. Three years on and she still wasn’t used to having to let others save her. If this woman had gotten hurt trying to help, Raven never would have forgiven herself.