#olopen

It had been a while since Solomon allowed himself to truly enjoy a Hogsmeade weekend. It wasn’t that it had lost its novelty over the years - he’d always find time to appreciate getting away from the school and getting himself a drink without the need to sneak out or hide bottles under his bed, but lately it seemed there was too much on his mind. Stretching as if, despite its titanic size, Hogwarts was too small to contain him, he pawed his pockets in search of a cigarette pack and came out empty. “Crap,” he mumbled under his breath, spinning around in search of a familiar face who also happened to be a smoker. What he found instead was one of the infamous URN flyers trailing around a familiar silhouette. “Oi,” he called after them, “wait up, you dropped this--” Solo had a copy of it in his own pocket, and he held out the piece of paper he’d grabbed from the floor, offering it back. “Hi. Two very important questions: one, do you have a fag? It’s a life or death situation. And two, you planning on going to this protest?”

Every Sunday morning started the same way for Delaney --- with a jog around the castle, followed by training at the pitch. It was not Quidditch season yet, but it will be soon enough, and the Gryffindor wanted to start it off in the best condition possible. She paced herself as she ran, listening to the sound of her breath. In. Out. In. Out. She felt her muscles start to ache, but it wasn’t enough for her to stop. Taking advantage of the fact that it was still early and she had the entire quidditch pitch to herself, she got on her broom and practiced her dives and rolls. She always found it weird practicing by herself because of the huge contrast from actual matches. Silence, instead of loud cheers and thunderous applause, filled the air. Empty benches stood where students dressed in their house colours would sit during an actual match. Distracted by the lack of noise, Delaney realised too late that she was still diving towards the ground. She knew there was no time to maneuver her broom upwards and jumped off before it hit the ground. The landing was rough, but it would’ve been more serious if she hadn’t done that. Exhausted, she plopped down on the grass in the middle of the quidditch pitch, and winced as she heard her broom crash into the ground and roll to a rest a few feet away. Her knees and right arm hurt --- she probably injured herself but she couldn’t be bothered to check. “...so much for perfecting my Wronski Feint,” she sighed. 

There was something nice about dancing on the Quidditch stands. He grew bored so quickly of dancing in studios or old abandoned classrooms, he liked to feel more texture and life in the area around him- something dancing with other people usually provided but here at Hogwarts he was a lone dancer. He longed for the summer days where it was warm enough to take practises out onto the grounds, where he could feel grass soaked with dew under his feet for hours on end, when it was cold out he still liked to dance on frost or snow but sooner rather than later he had to run back inside to warm up his feet. The stands felt solid enough, once he’d climbed the seemingly endless stairs he’d slipped off his shoes but left his socks on- splinters was not something he needed- and had walked the length of one of the benches. They were solid, no doubt about it, but not like the ground, in certain places he heard the creaks and felt the wood bend ever-so-slightly under his weight, he was sure to pace and test the waters on several levels before he accepted the seats wouldn’t break when he jumped from one to the other. The stands lacked the texture of grass under his feet, dew clinging to his clothes, but being so high offered a sense of freedom he rarely experienced. He could feel the wind whipping through his hair- sandy in colour, at the moment- and hear it whipping by his face when he pushed up onto the balls of his feet and followed with a row of pirouettes along the lowest bench.

The string was taut in her hand, the wood warmed by the sun and she breathed out heavily through her nose, allowing for the cooling rush of the spring breezes to slip from her lips like an exhaust pipe as she released the carefully oiled string. The sound of the sharp whistle on the thin target made her flinch. The flap of a scrapped sweater far beyond repair and far beyond being a hand-me-down caught in the spring breeze, the arrow dug deep into the wood behind it, echoing around the silent edge of the forest. Penny let the bow fall to her side and she walked, near silently through the dense underbrush and as she reached for the arrow the world began to spin around the center, the feathers flickering and taunting into dark patterned swirls. Penny stuck her hand into it’s vortex, determined to retrieve her arrow, and she was caught, spinning and whistling through the air until she slumped. Her head hitting the harsh edge of the potions desk, a cut splitting open, blood marring her already spinning vision and she THUMPED onto the ground.

Who knew research could be so exhausting? Haneul apparently didn’t or he would’ve just asked for the knowledge rather than flicking through book after book to try and figure it out. He was on a quest of sorts, a quest to have options in his life whether he be in the UK or Korea, because whether he liked it or not the next school year was going to be complicated for him- if he even technically stayed in school with his parents suggesting otherwise- and Haneul was sure there had to be a solution of sorts. Apparition was out of the question, that much he had already been aware of though he’d read over several books in the library to confirm anyway. He’d already known the distance was too great, that not only was it difficult to apparate long distances safely but there were boundaries on how far he could go, he couldn’t just pop in and out of a country whenever he felt like it, if that were possible all sorts of people could use it for all sorts of bad things and, though of course his intentions were good, laws were put in place for a reason.

So now he was on portkeys. They seemed a safer way to travel over greater distances and it was handy that once created they could be used multiple times, he could link his house to the castle or perhaps Hogsmeade and travel between the two much more safely and accurately, except it couldn’t be so simple. He was sure, just like with apparition, there were laws against popping in and out of countries via portkey, the sort of laws he didn’t really know because he’d never had reason to think about it before, hence his quest. There was plenty of information about portkeys; about how to make objects into portkeys, how to remove the charm from objects, how one could make travel safer and more accurate; but Haneul was less interested in the magical side of the art but the lawful side. If he were to own such a portkey would he need some kind of permit? A visa? He didn’t want to put effort into securing a portkey that could fulfil his needs only to find he couldn’t legally use it.

Penny let herself just sink into the sand of the beach, she could feel the water lapping at her feet, icy cold and goosebumps began to dot up her skin. Words were thumping around in her head, zig-zagging and getting caught in a dozen brambles of her mind. Dead. Hurt. Injured. Wizards and wolves. They were one in the same right? But they were rouges. Moon knows that there were bad seeds in their community. Take Greyback for instance, a lone wolf, a rouge, a demon and a black stain on their race. There was no doubt this was deplorable, hateful, ignorant. 

So many dead. How many more must they lose, how many more before vengeance and truth comes out. These wolves were not her family. They were not her clan. They were nothing like her father, or her cousins (excepting maybe one... two... three?). Penny truthfully only knew her family, her clan, the other clans. She only knew her family, and the subjugation, the glares, the jeers, the hatred that was pointed at them like so many knives wishing to slaughter anyone from that ‘cursed’ lineage of theirs. Yet she knew, deep inside, that her cousins never really thought she was part of them, the great otherness that was pack life. She was a wolf, in all the ways except the more prominent, a stain. Who never really had to deal with the laws that kept them so deeply down in the puddles of their own piss and the ink of government laws. She couldn’t imagine what possibly drove those lone wolves to do such a thing, but at the same time she could. It didn’t make it right. But it certainly had it’s own spin, a devil’s outlook, something she knows is buried between even her most pacifist ways. You keep kicking a beast while it’s down and it’ll snap. Werewolves and wizards, cut from the same clothe all. Human.

The beauty of a Howler, one could argue, was the surprise element.

Solomon had expected retaliation for his actions at the Slug Club Party for quite some time now, but all he got from the Flints so far was radio silence. No word of disapproval, not even in passing. As the days slowly passed, suspicion gave place to relief, and he allowed himself to relax, thinking that maybe not even acknowledging him was their way of showing contempt, their way of saying again and again: you're not one of us. He couldn't be more wrong. Solomon may have been on a warpath lately, but if anyone in the family was well versed in the art of war, that someone was the old matriarch, Mabel Flint. No one could quite hold a grudge like Mabel - and all Solomon knew of cruelty, he'd learned from her cold, silent anger, and her ring-heavy hands. She knew how to bid her time, to give him a false sense of security.

He didn't expect the bright red letter when the owls came in during breakfast - but once he'd realized what he had in hands, it was already too late. Her voice boomed from the parchment, filling the Great Hall with a rising wave of insults - "YOU TRAITOROUS LITTLE DEGENERATE! HOW DARE YOU SHAME THE FAMILY THAT HAS GIVEN YOU A ROOF, THAT HAS FED YOU, UNDER NO OBLIGATION EXCEPT THAT OF NOBLE SELFLESSNESS?" Solomon wished he could fight the goddamn letter, but he knew that would be of no use - all he could do was wait for it to die down, and let Mabel have her little revenge. He supposed he deserved that, after his altercation with the Minister, but it still stung. "YOU ARE NOTHING BUT AN UNGRATEFUL SERVANT, BRINGING SHAME TO OUR FAMILY AND YOUR OWN - HAVE YOU NO OUNCE OF RESPECT FOR YOUR POOR LATE MOTHER? FOR YOURSELF?" He kept a smile on his lips as she went on and on, but it never quite reached his eyes - Solo was no stranger to shame, but he couldn't just let the Flints win. "DO YOU EXPECT TO LIVE ON CHARITY FOREVER? PUT YOURSELF BACK IN YOUR PLACE OR WE SHALL DO IT."

“Unglaublich...” He doesn’t curse per say but he does complain under his breath as he drops the three heavy tomes he’s been carrying around, along with the leather-bound notebook, the permanent green ink bottle that decided to break and splatter everywhere and the fancy hawk quill. He’d left the last class of the day in a hurry to go back to the library but now he stood there in the hallway feeling a little at loss, his skinny arms having failed him once more. “No-- wait-- don’t step--” Theo clumsily warns, switching up from German to English but not in enough time so whoever had been walking ends up stepping in the puddle of green ink and he grimaces in return. “...I--- I am so sorry--” He draws his wand, anxiously looking up to face whoever he’d just stained the shoes, swallowing nervously and trying not to look like a deer caught in headlights. The problem with permanent magical ink is that no matter the spell he used, it’d leave vestiges for about...forever.