5 november 1991, evening, diagon alley   ( open )
All Atticus really wanted to do was go home, have a drink, and sleep for about twelve hours, but the world wasnât really into giving him even the smallest of mercies lately. Instead, here he was in Diagon Alley, just coming out of Amanuensis Quills with a stack of too-expensive leather notebooks for the members of the Wizengamot, which was annoying in and of itself, given the number of supply closets he himself had found in the Ministry stocked with perfectly acceptable notebooks. But the Wizengamot was full of a bunch of pricks, and of course they wanted nothing but the most beautiful and expensive leather-bound notebooks for their notes, especially for the Crouch trial.
The Crouch trial. On one hand, it was a good thing they kept sending him on ridiculous errands, because it was a good distraction from listening to all of the information, but on the other hand, the work he was doing was for the very thing that was worrying him the most at the moment, so no amount of distraction was really helpful. He had known Barty, heâd spent his first year at Hogwarts looking up to him, had heard his father talk about how much promise he had, and now he was going to have to watch him get executed. At least he wasnât naive enough anymore to think that wasnât what was coming for Barty. It felt a lot like a warning, though, especially with how keen everyone seemed on forcing him to do work for the case.
He was so distracted with his thoughts that he didnât notice the person very deliberately walking in his path. Someone forcibly knocked into his shoulder, sending the notebooks flying across the cobblestone street.
âReally cool, mate. Maybe at least try to make it seem like an accident next time,â he sighed, bending down to pick up the stack of notebooks that had been scattered to the wind in the collision.Â















