#t;open

There were not many places that Lily felt safe. No matter the location, old or new, she found herself mapping out each room, each exit, each person. Her mind was constantly taking in new information, preparing should anything go awry. Unfortunately the expectation in this day and age would always be that something could go wrong. How many times had it before?

However there were still pockets of joy in the world that could not be darkened. Walking between the tall shelves of Flourish and Blotts on a rainy afternoon was one of them. Her finger slowly glided over the spines as she flitted by the titles, not searching for anything in particular, just happy to be there. The smell of the pages alone was enough to settle a frazzled mind, wrapping around her in a familiar embrace. It was perfect. Well, almost perfect, except that the book sections had all been moved about. Could nothing stay as it was?

“Sorry, have you seen the potions section? They’ve moved it and I’m all turned around.” Lily quietly asked of another cloaked figure as they glided by her.

23:09 - 18 hours since initial defect.

We don’t go home. 

That’s the point Villanelle is sure of when she’s out here in the grand emptiness of the interstate highway in upper state New York off of a little place called Cuylerville. She isn’t sure of where exactly she is now because Cuylerville could of been an hour or five days ago. She had ditched the car she had been using back somewhere in Letchworth with the former owner dead in the passenger seat-it’s a long and simple story really but who has the time. 

Now she’s grazing the side streets that are too long, too cold and too open on all sides to really read the queues, any sent handler could come along the grassy inlands and ambush her, bludgeon her in the dark and drag her open skull back into the forest. Yet, as her legs dragged her forward with astounding spite and a slim will to live, she spotted a gas station only a couple meters into the distance. 

Villanelle appeared from out of the dark of the empty roads, limping ever so often from the wound on her left thigh branding dried splotchy marks against her faded blue jeans. She reached closer to the gas station and it declared itself useless as any other. Not many people were there, but a car in the front  probably owned by the workers. She walked past the store front and up the back end and seen a pickup truck illuminated by the condescending fluorescent lights from up above. Her shiny little beacon of freedom calling out to her in it’s vintage raggedy siege. It was left unattended as she had hoped, it’s owner probably still in the store. Villanelle tried for the drivers side and of course it was locked, the passenger- that too. She had half the brain left to just hide out in the open trunk but her hand was already at the back door of the passenger seat.

 It clicked and it opened. She slid into the back- and then to the front. Her eyes trained to the store front now, she could see two people at the check out, a customer with their back turned still shopping around. She would only need thirty seconds, less if she wasn’t exhausted. Yet, she still had the mind to hotwire the thing, and as the truck roared it self alive, Villanelle heard the door click. 

They swung the door open. She startled, jolting up from her crouched position Quickly, she thought, hands in the air, a disheveled disposition- people respond better if you don’t outright attack them for stealing their car. Feign innocence or something similar stupidity maybe- she’s really good at that shit. 

“Oh my god, oh my god!  Please don’t hurt me.” She stammered her eyes wide, she skidded back practically into the passenger seat. “I just needed to use the car and get outta here. I’m in trouble.” Her eyes darted back and forth between the stranger, the gas station workers who didn’t look like simple gas station workers if she had the time to glance any closer. They were coming outside to investigate. 

Villanelle looked at them and the obvious handlers approaching the truck one of them peeling out a pistol from their back. There was still some distance between all of them so that meant time. But not for long. 

Her facade dropped, her accent slipped.“Get in the fucking truck.” She said,giving them about ten seconds to make up their mind before a bullet went through the windshield- and it did. 

Lily was, by her nature, a creature of habit. More than habits, she relied on a schedule to give order to her life in chaotic times. No matter the day, an internal clock ticked on with great precision, profoundly evident in the timely manner in which she woke each day, even if the previous night had lingered on until early morning. It was hard to tell if Lily had ever truly fallen asleep the night before, her vibrant mind run amok with the worst assumptions. Whispers of worries of what it meant that Caradoc was missing while trying to rationalize holding on to hope.

Still, even with a sleepless night behind her, Lily woke as the harsh sun broke into her room, bringing with it the reality each day must move on. And so she rose, pressing forward through the heaviness about her, walking the same street she did each Saturday morning, to pick up a Prophet from her usual stand, before indulging in her typical pain au chocolat and black coffee to eat at her well occupied table in the corner. 

But something had to give, so with a tremor in her hand, down spilled the morning brew. The high pitched din of the saucer on the floor echoed endlessly in the quiet cafe, the inky bitter liquid pooling around her feet. Beside her own mess spilled another, one more cup lost in the careless accident, its contents mixing with hers, speckles across one more pair of shoes. “Bloody hell, I’m so, so sorry. It just slipped.” At least that was the easiest way to explain it. “Let me get you another.” 

With everybody finishing up breakfast, that was exactly where you would expect Marlene not to be. Having been caged up with a great deal of the school just a few days prior, every bit of Marlene that was generally a people person had run itself tired on just that, people. Something inside her was running a bit wild, the part of soul that refused to be caged, took orders from nobody. Yet here she was. Watching as yet another unknown Auror paraded through the courtyard as if he was protecting the place, like he could stop anything. What a load of Hippogriff shit. 

Marlene curtly nodded at the unfamiliar face, taking an angry bite of the apple she had nicked from the Great Hall much earlier that morning before students had started filing in. The students shouldn’t just be watched, they should be trained. Taught to defend themselves instead of rely on the unreliable. How long would it take for the school to realize that. “Ridiculous,” she muttered under her breath to whoever seemed to stand by where she now sat perched on a bench, looking out the window longingly to the skies. “What good is it to just trap everybody a little bit more? More security. More rules. Less actual protection.”