#(a.)

buzzfeed unsolved // @magistreign

since when did you acquire a fear of bears ?  “but you used to LOVE Mister Cuddles!“  he dangles the aforementioned teddy bear in front of her face, his frown twitching as the urge to giggle becomes increasingly difficult to withhold.

what’s the worst pain you’ve ever been in?

“when i was a girl i had a nasty riding accident. got thrown from the thing, got my leg stepped on. i mean, i suppose i’ve had worse injuries dueling, but there’s something about pain when you don’t expect it, hm?”

what’s your happiest memory?

"i don’t know. i suppose my sorting, for a total cop out answer. not much has happened in my life enough for anything to stand out.”

you can stop one person in the world from speaking. Who is it?

laying on the floor in an odd place, wrapped in a blanket

“S’cold,” Alecto offered to the voice and footsteps she’d heard and couldn’t bring herself to identify. To identify, she’d need to turn her head – since the presence wasn’t one she recognized right from the start, anyway. Oh, well. The festivities had run on for quite some time, and by now Alecto was still self-aware enough to admit that she wasn’t sure she’d even notice Amycus by footsteps alone at this point in the night. 

Maybe it wasn’t cold. In an effort to bring some composure back to herself, Alecto started cataloging things about the way she’d been found, and realized she’d shed her robes at some point, and was left with just one of her dresses. She shook her head out of the hood she’d formed with the excess blanket to look past it, and at the person she could now sort of identify. Was he a housemate? Maybe he was a friend of her brother’s?Not in her year from school, whatever he was. She squinted one eye, like that could help. “Hello –?” The word drawled on; Alecto blew some hair out of her face through pursed lips, and tried her best to look like someone who was not drunkenly wrapped in a blanket outside the bar. “Please tell me you don’t need this blanket. Because I need this blanket.”

desperately trying to put something back together after taking it apart out of boredom/curiosity 

What Alecto wanted to do was fix an unwavering glare on Layla. It felt like the right choice, and oh, did she want to. She could feel her eyebrows wanting to knit together in as unimpressed a fashion as they were capable of, and her mouth was ready to sit immobile and angry. But in the end, she had no motivation to fight, and that won out over her usual instinct to show how little she cared for others’ judgement. Something told her no matter what sort of look she fixed on the other girl, Layla would meet it tenfold, and that was just far too tiring. Her mind was positively taxed as it was. 

“I found it on the table when I walked in,” Alecto said by rote. She did not meet Layla’s eyes – Alecto was sitting, and she refused to look up while justifying her actions. Felt too much like asking for forgiveness, and dumb though the situation was, it surely was not something Alecto would apologize for. Not to Layla, of all people – a family member, maybe, and even then she’d prefer to act as if she had no clue what the issue may be. But playing dumb could be tiring, too. “Figured I needed something to do while waiting for that top secret meeting to wrap up and my father to allow me home. I take it it has?” Alecto snorted delicately, the sound quiet enough to pass off even if her snooty tone definitely left no room for alternate interpretations. “I can’t even put this stupid evidence-whatsit back together, so surely you’ve not been sent out to invite me in.”

throwing an object across the room in frustration

As childish as the action was, Alecto found it hard to feel ashamed in it. Normally, she preferred to shy away from making a big production of her emotions; in a perfect world, she wouldn’t have any, and in even a perfect version of the world she lived in, no one would ever acknowledge the ones she possessed. Still, she could admit there was something so soothing in the catharsis of the show of it all. And of all people to witness it, Alice Fortescue really wasn’t so bad. She’d admired the older girl’s skills in the time their dueling-club days overlapped. And it’s not as if a code four would have the means to report this incident to Alecto’s family so she could be questioned anyway. 

Alecto glanced over her shoulder to meet Alice’s eyes, a slight curve to her lips all she could muster in greeting. “I just could not be made to deal with it anymore,” she said by way of explanation -- accompanied, of course, by a sweeping gesture at where the umbrella in question lay several meters away. “It’s been charmed to rain on me, I swear.” 

yelling or screaming at the top of their lungs because they ‘just need to let it out’ (a) 

She startled at the presence of someone else. Maybe it was the sort of thing she should have expected -- after all, screaming usually alerted others to your presence. Especially when there were no words in the scream, just a pure release of sound, some frustration. Anger. Alecto turned on her heel to face him, arms crossed over chest in protection against -- what? She didn’t know. Judgement, maybe. The need to fall back into the role that had her screaming in the first place. Yes, looking back, sitting on one of the benches that lined the street and just shouting into the night was not the brightest idea Alecto had ever had. So much fo her supposed intellect. 

“I’ll have you know, nothing’s wrong.” Her words contained all the tight control she’d shed just moments earlier. Well, of course it did. Nothing would make her want to put it back into place more than being caught without it, in the most embarassing way. Normal, coping people didn’t shout into the night over nothing, she was sure. Probably Moody was here to slap her wrists and tell her to calm down with her pureblood angst, because out there in the area in the night, people had real problems. “I just -- needed to let that out. Won’t happen again, you have my word.” Bitterness tainted the words in her mouth, the air as they met it, and she couldn’t help the flinty stare she fixed his way. “Is that all --?” 

accidentally having fallen asleep on the floor somewhere. 

To say she was just as surprised as Dorcas was to be meeting like this was, perhaps, an understatement. A slight one, sure, because Dorcas seemed fairly surprised by Alecto’s presence here on the lovely, lovely floor in the back of Flourish and Blotts, but she figured it was a fairly even match.

For one thing, lovely though the floor was, Alecto had no recollection of intention to fall asleep on it. She’d had the day to herself -- truly to herself, not to herself in the way it was when someone sent her out to do something and didn’t keep track of how long it took her to return. No, no one had been around the estate this morning, and she’d been able to leave with no questions. There were no boring meetings on the agenda relatives set up sometimes, to keep her busy as they could lest she go off and start doing something silly like making friends that weren’t pre-approved, or forming ideas. Her first stop had been the bookstore. Nice, neutral ground should she run into anyone she knew, but also the sort of place that had always had a calming affect on her -- something she’d picked up in her years as a Ravenclaw. Alecto rarely slept well, or for long, so perhaps this shouldn’t have felt like such a shock. Still, she righted herself from where her head had laid pillowed on a stack of books, and gave a slight, mocking wave at the blonde. “Oh, hi there. Wasn’t expecting to see anyone come my way.” Calm as anything, she picked a book up off the stack and began flipping through it, eyes never leaving the page -- a clear dismissal if there ever were one. “Was there anything you needed help with?” 

sitting on the kitchen floor, humming a tune, and overindulging in ice cream

“Oh, please,” Alecto scoffed out around the spoon hanging out of her mouth. Granted, this was a strange way to be found in the midst of a party, but she had an inkling Longbottom had no feet to stand on, so to speak. So what, she was hiding out in the kitchen, and had found a rather accommodating house elf willing to bring her the finest ice cream the house possessed. Something told her he was only in the kitchen to escape how awful it was himself, and so, he had no place to judge. Thus, with this justification, Alecto removed the spoon and dug it back into the carton with as much prim dignity as she could muster. 

“As if you’ve never done this yourself. Super therapeutic,” She said, scooping up another mouthful to gesture with in his direction. “And a wonderful way to pass the time before someone finds you and drags you back into the party.” Alecto popped it back into her mouth before doing a comic exaggeration of a look of surprise. “That’s not what you’re here to do, is it, Longbottom? I hope not. I’ll share the ice cream with you if you don’t tell anyone I’m in here.” The offer, out of character though it was, was all Alecto could think to do. The evening had her exhausted, and she had no energy with which to recall if he was even okay to talk to anymore. “I’ll even split it fifty-fifty if you know of a better place to hide.” 

sliding down the stairs on a cushion/in a laundry basket, then wiping out and rolling the rest of the way down.

"I think it’s more fun than anything,” Alecto offered in as sheepish a tone she was capable of. She didn’t often have need for it, but she supposed this was the sort of situation that warranted it, especially given that this was Mckinnon’s place of employment, if she recalled. She rearranged her legs so they weren’t splayed from the fall; gave herself something to do as she tried to think how to best phrase her explanation. She saw no point in lying, shockingly enough, as for once there was a genuine and benign explanation for something she’d been found doing. Usually if she was found, she’d had reason to try and hide in the first place. 

“Ah -- I can explain. And with a truthful explanation!” That last part was important. Alecto wouldn’t call herself earnest, really, but it was nice to be able to make the clarification, even to someone like Marlene. "An old friend is being stuck here to recover something that her family doesn’t want in the house. She asked me to something to pass the time ... and, well, obviously this won’t make the list as even I couldn’t manage it, but, well.” Clearing her throat, Alecto cast her gaze around the landing, finding the pillow somewhere in the distance. “You could have a go, if you wanted.”