#dated. october 1980

“Ded you know there’s this thing in the Department of Mysteries called ‘The Veil’ and as part of our training in Magical Artefacts we get to study it but we cannae get too close cause if we go through, there ain't no coming back. It’s like a one way portal to the bloody underworld.” Lex rambled on to his neighbor in excitement for the event at hand.

“How many people on average do you think go home with someone they usually would at events like this? All mystery and mayhem.”

Of all the things that had changed for Ella over the last year the one thing that hadn’t changed was her love for an extravagant party. Plus— she felt this was exactly what the JWL needed to wash themselves of the disaster that was the previous year. With the champagne flowing and the donations coming in, Ella was excited with this lovely lead up to her birthday week. If only she could sus out someone she actually knew. 

“Dicky, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to obliviate someone for?” Betty asked curiously as she set his order down in front of him.

“Cardoc, love,” Molly said sweetly as she laid eyes on who would hopefully be her hero. Not the evening she hoped to be spending with him, but maybe one that could offer him some joy nonetheless. “I hate to spring this on you, but we’ve had some entertainers come down with a case of Scrofungulus and I was wondering if you’d be able to step in?”

“Oh my god!” gasped Marlene in surprise. “I didn’t know you were out.”

The hand on her collarbone was only partly for show, just as the statement was only partly a lie. Before today, Marlene had been blissfully unaware that her ex of sorts had been mingling in the same streets she was. Until half an hour ago, when she had spotted him in the middle of her shift, in the middle of her gym. It had been a successful avoidance thus far in that she had kept it up, though her lack of productivity on the matter of what to say to him proved far less successful. She stood tall but wordlessly in front of Davey Gudgeon, though she felt about four feet shorter than she really was.

A masquerade, Hestia had thought, was supposed to be exciting and fun. She had experienced very little of either through the night. Cleaning up the younger witches who were too sloshed to keep their identity secret, shooing away the people who might take advantage of that--- And that was a full plate as it was, without her worries about some of the art. Why hadn’t they blocked off the corridor of Muggleborn artists? Hestia asked herself as she escorted a pair of ne’er do wells back into the center of the museum. But they weren’t the only ones, and her job was far from done. Her barely touched glass of wine sloshed as she charged up another corridor, glaring with a burning fire that rivaled the exhibit on the art of the Salem Witch Trials.

“Enjoying yourself?” Hestia asked the lone witch tersely.

“Bilius!” Molly called, trying to get her sister-in-law's attention, “Billy! We need more apples for the bob tank, can you grab them from the table?” She crouched down to the level of the crying child, a third cousin from Arthur’s side of the family, maybe. “It’ll be alright love, Billy’s gonna get us all sorted.”