time: 7:44 PM date: 7.14.79 location: zabini estate general starter -- OPEN TO ALL
they’re not playing the right songs, sirius notes, as he wades through a stream of people. the weird sisters are good, but it’s their faster tracks where the magic happens. but there’s some benefit, at least, to their pop-y hits; the slower beat makes the marble floors easier to navigate. before this whole ordeal of pretending to be alice, sirius hadn’t experienced being this alice’s height since fifth year. he tugs at his (alice’s) dress and scowls. fourteen minutes as alice fortescue and he already understands why that girl is so wound up all the time. he’d been trying to get through to the bidding since 7:30 -- no small feat considering he can no longer see over the crowd, and that he’s been trying to avoid everyone alice knows before someone sees through the rouse. his mood doesn’t improve once he’s at the table, either.
the next time someone needs help, sirius is going to keep his mouth shut. it’d been his surprise that had done him in, really -- that frank hasn’t sent alice onto the field yet. and the timing had been too perfect. the day he’d spoken with alice was so soon after he’d found out about the auction that sirius hadn’t thought twice before offering to switch places with alice for an hour. you can get your field experience, he’d said, and i’ll go enjoy myself. how’s that sound? i’ll even bid on a few things for you. and now, three mouthfuls of polyjuice potion later, he’s never regretted another decision so much in his life. sirius snatches a pen from a nearby table and scrawls a shoddy imitation of alice’s signature next to frank’s training hours. she had mentioned she wanted them, right?
then, his eyes catch on something else: the statue of venus. automatically, he pulls another card from the pile and begins to write down sirius -- before he catches himself and scribbles the “s” from existence. then, he writes alice fortescue again. not allowing himself to think better of it ( though alice bidding on a black family heirloom must be a strange sight ), he walks toward the statue.
