#mfletcher

In a little while when the store closed, Gwen had a potions date with Lily where the two of them would be making a few refills the store needed, but as she waited for that time to tick closer, Gwen slowly meandered around her own store to make an inventory of what ingredients she’d need to get back in soon. Most were things she could just order, but a few required some bartering and work to get things tracked out.

She was in that zone when the bell over her door chimed, and it took Gwen a moment to respond. “How can I help you?” she asked as she turned back toward the front. 

Reggie was exhausted when he finally got home. He felt like he’d been running around all day, but now that he’d dropped off the protection charm to Alice, his day was officially done. He’d figured he would get home and make dinner, but as he stepped through the fireplace, Reggie paused. There was a jacket draped on the couch that Reggie definitely hadn’t left there.

He surveyed the room, then followed a noise to the kitchen. He leaned against the doorway, watching as Nate puttered around in front of the stove. “Thanks for finally bringing my jacket back,” he commented by way of greeting. “I was wondering if I’d ever see it again. Well, off you at least.”

Reggie pushed off from the wall to join Nate where he was cooking. “Is it going to be edible?” He paused for a moment, then asked, “And I guess more importantly, how are you feeling about tomorrow?”

LOCATION: Prewett House DATE: June 21, 1984 @emmaofvanity & @dogstxrsirius & @mfletcher

Alice turned the knob and pushed the door open one-handed because the fingers of her other hand were currently locked around the ear of one Mister Mundungus Fletcher, pulling him down the hallway in her wake like an errant child. Alice flashed a perky smile at the sight of the room’s current occupants turning to face her and her reluctant cargo.

“You’re here already, splendid! Sorry I’m a bit late. Someone was a little bit reluctant about showing-up for the team-meeting. Thought it would be fun to play silly buggers for a bit,” she explained to Sirius and Emma, pulling Fletcher forward and releasing him towards the middle of the room like she was making a longshot with a Quaffle. “Now that I think we all understand the direness of the situation, though, I’m sure we’ll all be quite keen to shape-up and do our best, won’t we?” Alice raised her eyebrows at Fletcher, a silent order to cooperate now.

Alice walked briskly to the table by the window -- the largest object in the small study, although the empty spot on the wall where an enormous portrait had once hung struggled to seem larger by the weight of its absence -- and let her satchel drop onto the scuffed old wood with a weighty thump. She pulled out sheafs of parchment and even a few garishly-colored Muggle map-pamphlets (why they folded their maps like that instead of rolling them like sensible people Alice would never understand, although admittedly it did make it easier to carry them around since one could just chuck them in a bag without taking the time to put them in scroll-cases to keep them from being crushed), tossing them onto the table as she talked.

WHERE. Xeno's house WHEN. june 27 1984, mid-morning WHO. @mfletcher

Xenophilius's morning had consisted of the mundane: puttering about his house after Pandora had gone off to her flat and then work, feeding Marlowe, having his morning conversation with Greta the lovely house ghost, his mum calling to chat for a moment, and then sequestering himself into the little alcove he uses as his office cum writing space.

Perhaps an hour or so later, there was the distinct pop coming from the floo. Only a handful of people had access to it, but he'd not been expecting anyone. Brow furrowing, Xeno set his quill and notes down carefully onto the burgeoning pile at the edge of his desk and stood, mindful of the soreness in his ribs. Evan had healed most of his injuries, but the ribs still twinged. But that was what happened, he muses as he pads toward the front room, when one was thrown into a bust stop.

A pop and, then, a familiar face steps from the floo, Xenophilius leaning against the edge of the couch, arms folded across his chest as he shakes his head in amusement.

Peter: He was just an employee and then a fellow Order member originally, and Gwen can't even pinpoint where that changed. She's become fiercely protective of him in the years since and thinks it's a tragedy that Peter so rarely gets to win. He's been winning lately, though, and Gwen dares anyone to try and stop him. The situation is so precarious. She'd hate to see him fall.

Fletch: Gwen doesn't fully understand Fletch, but the parts of him she does look all too familiar: survival instincts and a desire to thrive despite it all. She respects the hell out of him for it, even if she won't tell him that.

Glenda: She's a pretty, perfect little thing, isn't she? Everything about Glenda looks like a happy life, but Gwen wonders what all lurks below that surface. She seems to understand the system perfectly, even as she bucks it from within, a system Gwen is envious of her ability to navigate.

EVENT: The Leaked List LOCATION: Burns Farm, Wiltshire DATE: June 24th, 1984 FEATURING: @helloxhestia incorporating: @emmaofvanity @ofdorkass @mfletcher @dogstxrsirius

After disarming three traps and nearly being disarmed by a fourth, Alice was in no mood to be patient with the fifth one she came across. Her team had found plenty in their searches too, enough so that Alice had lost count of just how many of the vile things had been littered across the farmstead so far. (Hestia would want to know later, she was sure; Alice would just have to hope that everyone’s memory would be keen for the debriefing afterward.) It seemed like overkill, especially when the targets were simple Muggles—and one muggle-born who hadn’t even yet held their first wand—which led her to conclude even more firmly than she had before that these had been set for the Order rather than the family.

(Alice was just glad that her team had come early enough to start disarming the traps before the family found them the hard way—although didn’t farmers start their day very early? So where were they? Maybe they’d already found one, and retreated to the safety of their house? She hoped it wasn’t because they’d already found some traps and perished.)

Her terse warning to Hestia—”Reached Wiltshire site without incident. Triggered a booby-trap on arrival. No injuries. Searching the area. Will update when we know more”—dispatched by her silvery skunk patronus minutes after Emma had almost immolated herself at the hands of a gnomish decoration was seeming less and less sufficient the longer they searched and the more such traps they found...but so far, no one was dead or dismembered, so there was no sense calling for additional back-up and endangering others. Not when there was still every chance that Death Eaters would be popping-out of the woodwork all around the country at any moment. Alice’s team was doing just fine—mostly—so the only thing to do was to keep doing what they were doing and hope things didn’t get worse.

Alice should have taken her own advice and not let her focus drift, but too late—her attention wavered and the spell she was unknotting with her wand snapped loose with an ugly snarl before she could catch it. Alice jumped backwards out of the way as hungry mint leaves suddenly shot-up to half human height and stabbed towards her like jagged steel blades. One of the spears caught her ankle, slicing a thin line through the soft leather deep enough to draw blood with a sharp flare of pain. Alice yanked her leg away, glaring at the razor-edged mint leaves, as she snarled “Episkey!” at herself. The wound closed, leaving a dull throbbing behind; Alice ignored it, knowing the pain would fade quickly on its own and quicker as she focused on other things.