#mtmshopping

The winter holidays had always been Roy’s favourite time of year growing up. Spending inordinate amounts of time and money on selecting the perfect gifts for his sisters and friends, always looking forward to the way their expressions flood with happiness when they unwrapped them. The camaraderie of spending time among friends drinking and laughing together. The bright lights and decorations that festoon shop fronts and music spilling out of open windows. Roy used to feel as if nothing could shatter the exuberant joy Christmas season brought out in him.

Now he feels as if everything is a little dimmer. Addie used to pour her own joy into the season, dragging him to different shops, pleading for extra whip cream on her hot chocolate. Now Roy stands at a street vendor, spotting so many things she would like but unable to purchase them. He doesn’t know where she chose to sequester herself and the thought of being unable to gift anything to her hurts more fiercely than he imagined.

Roy moves on and spots a vendor on the side alley of Diagon he traipses through that sports hand made jewellery he thinks Lyra might like. His fingers touch one in particular and seconds later his body is deposited into an alley, dingier and void of people. When he steps out of the alley, disoriented from sudden portkey travel, Roy looks around to find he’s in a muggle area.

Adelaide would have known how to navigate this part of London. Roy simply makes an aimless turn toward the right and begins to wander, slow and confused. The faces and automobiles, shops and songs sound foreign to him. Nothing familiar. That is, until a woman steps out of a shop he is near to passing.

“Cecilia!” Roy calls her name as he picks up the pace. A familiar face. Someone he teaches alongside at Hogwarts. The relief that floods his system is nearly palpable.

She had stepped outside and traveled to Diagon with intentions of doing right by her friends and purchasing them gifts. Namely something fitting for Sirius and James. Emma knows that she’s indebted to them above all else. So when she wanders passed a vendor and stops to lift a knitted scarf, she isn’t thinking about much. That is until her body feels yanked around the middle and she’s spiraling off into portkey travel without warning.

“What in Salazar’s name?!” Emma tumbles from her travel into trash bags piled in an alley. It takes every ounce of willpower not to retch at the lingering nausea of travel and smell of putrid rubbish. When she finds her feet, the short former Slytherin steps out of the alley to peer at her surroundings. Utterly unfamiliar and--oh for Merlin’s sake--muggle. “Seriously? This isn’t even remotely funny.”