With the capture of Verandi Farley and several high-ranking Trossach members, the British wizarding world has finally caught a break. The rate of rogue werewolf attacks have started dropping at a steady rate and, hopefully, things will stay that way. The Ministry is starting to loosen some restrictions, like not arresting werewolves standing on the street for loitering, however there’s still an obvious power imbalance between wizardfolk and werewolves.
The Cotswolds pack are continuing to advocate for the rights of werewolves and petitioning to change the legislation that has been set in motion by the current Minister for Magic, whilst the remaining Trossachs members are trying to stay out of the spotlight and keep a low profile… for now.
Whilst the British wizarding world seems to have calmed down, the same cannot be said for over in Northern Europe where a rebellion of magical creatures has risen. The state of things has gotten so bad that the European Ministry has enacted protocols to protect those under eighteen whilst their adult witches and wizards fight to keep control of their countries.
Students from Durmstrang have been sent to Hogwarts to keep them safe and those not old enough to attend school have been sent to live with relatives or designated British Ministry officials outside of Europe for the time being.
Will the low rates of werewolf attacks in Britain continue? How long will Durmstrang students stay at Hogwarts? Will the creatures usurp the wizardfolk in Northern Europe? Only time will tell.
SEPTEMBER 2019 It's been a very long, eventful summer in the wizarding world. A baby was stolen, several high ranking Trossach members were imprisoned, and werewolf attacks have drastically dropped as a result. What will happen now school has returned?
MAY 2019 An attempt to capture the beta of the Trossachs has been launched. Were the Aurors successful in their mission? Go read more here!
The first day of September was always an exciting time for every wizard out there. The school year was starting again, and no matter how one felt about studying, it was the day you'd see your friends again! Elated voices of children, anxious nagging of mothers, and a thousand hoots and meows mixed with the smoke from the locomotive.
Amongst all of that there was one figure sticking out from their midst, not only because he was taller than most people, but also because there was scarcely any emotion on his face. His eyes were sunken in, his freckled skin pale - he looked more like an imprint on a shroud than an actual person.
His movements were strangely stiff as he got on board, making his way through the train and looking for an empty cabin, ignoring the greetings of friends of various sizes and ages. It was as to him none of them were alive, merely obstacles in his way.
Rodrik Belanger wasn't the boy he'd been when he left Hogwarts at the end of his sixth year. There was something awfully wrong about him.
There was nothing Zoë Valeria looked forward to more than the Hogwarts Express. Maybe her love of Hogwarts wasn't the most obvious thing to guess, looking at the way she tossed her trunk up above the seat to be promptly forgotten until someone reminded her that leather jackets were not part of the school uniform--but it was the truth.
Because the truth was that summer was always Zoë's least favorite time of the year. The big house, the one that was far too big for the two people and one house-elf that lived there, was in her opinion the loneliest place in the world. And somehow, she felt it wouldn't feel so lonely if she was there all by herself, because spending every single meal with her mother and her last shreds of sanity seemed to drain her of all energy.
And she totally needed that energy if she was going to finally make the Quidditch team this year. Or get Grace Longbottom to kiss her again. Either one would be fine with her.
Sitting with one leg up on the seat, she watched the people pass by her compartment. She'd been one of the first on the train, ready for the snack cart right away, even if it wouldn't actually show up for hours yet. A bunch of first years filed past, looking a little lost, and then, far taller than all of them, her best friend.
"Rodrik!" she said, waving an arm out to stop him in the aisle. "In here!"
Walking through the hall of the train, Rodrik remembered how 6 years ago his big brother Vaughn, a sixth year and freshly re-elected prefect was guiding him through the train, hands firmly planted on the little kid's shoulders as he led him to a cabin with his own friends -- Rodrik used to be a lot more shy back then, and that first day he didn't want to leave his brother's side. Damian was amused by it, but Vaughn didn't let him pick on Rodrik. Neither Hugo nor Damian had ever needed such comfort, and as far as Rodrik was concerned, neither did Vaughn.
And now it was Rodrik's 7th year, and all he yearned for was Vaughn's hands on his shoulder's once more. He felt like a little lost boy, walking through the long hall, eyes gliding over the cabins, looking for their destination, where Vaughn's friends would be, ready to give the kid a chocolate frog and amuse him until his nerves settled.
But there was no Vaughn. No guiding hand.
There was something completely different - a mop of bright blue hair way below his eye level, demanding his attention. He stopped by the cabin door, casting his dimmed eyes upon his best friend, Zoe Valeria. Any other year he'd have been happy to see her, a bright smile would be plastered across his face as he'd lean down to give her a hug, but...
"I want to be alone." And he turned away, his hand dragging over the polished wooden surface of the walls as he continued his way.
All the energy seemed to be punched out of Zoë in a single second as Rodrik left the cabin. Without a thought, she leaped out of her seat, pushing her way back into the crowded aisle, ignoring the fact that she was leaving her trunk unattended. Rodrik's familiar head of brown curls was visible several people in front of her, even as it was bowed in sadness. Zoë bit her lip, trying to figure out how to push her way through the narrow aisle. The people in front of her now weren't easily frightened first-years, but she needed them out of the way.
"Coming through!" she cried out instead, weaving a hand in between the people in front of her, using her shoulder to push them out of the way. She'd never been to a proper rock concert (a shame, she thought), but she was familiar with the idea that if you just sounded very purposeful, people would let you to the front of the crowd.
Or to the back of the Rodrik, as the case may be.
"Rodrik," she said more pleadingly this time, grabbing his arm, tugging on it to make him stop. "What's wrong? And don't tell me it's nothing. I know it's not. Come back, I'll buy you some chocolate frogs. And I'll give you a hug."
He'd barely taken a few steps when he could hear the compartment door slam wide open and the surprisingly booming voice of his best friend rang out behind him, accompanied by disgruntled complaints from people she was pushing around. Merlin, must she always be so loud and disrupting?
And, as expected, she was tugging on his sleeve like an untrained puppy. What part of 'I want to be alone?' did she not understand? Did he have to spell it out to her? He wasn't in the mood for her energy and-- Chocolate frogs? Seriously?
He turned around, yanking his hand out of her grip and stared at her for a couple of seconds. Just stared, ignoring the people that were squeezing past him. They can get past him if they wanted it hard enough.
"Chocolate frogs and hugs won't bring Vaughn back," he said, his brother's name getting stuck in his throat. "Nothing will, so you might as well leave me be."
"What... what do you mean?" Zoë felt stung as Rodrik yanked his arm away from her as if she'd been covered in poison, but she didn't move to grab him again. Her eyes searched him, the tension in his jaw, the pain in his eyes, even as she had to tilt her head way up to get a good view of his face. "What happened?" Last she'd heard, Rodrik's brother might have been a werewolf, but they were planning to help him out. Had he been captured in the raid that was all over the papers? Or worse...
"You are coming to my compartment," she said firmly. "It's not good to be sad alone." Merlin knew that was true. She'd spent far more time sulking alone in her seventeen years than she wanted to do in her entire lifetime.
Someone elbowed her hard in the back as they tried to squeeze through the aisle, and Zoë had to hold onto Rodrik again, this time lacing her fingers into his, something she never really wanted to do but was more polite than yanking on his arm again. "Come on. I will get you the chocolates. And I'll protect you from, like, boring prefect meetings and stuff."
Rodrik Belanger wasn't the type of person to get angry and scream and rant and rave. No, he was the kind that broke down sobbing and turned all his anger inwards. But, Merlin, and everyone else that can be called upon, those words had his jaw clenching so hard he thought his teeth might shatter.
Yet Zoe was ignoring the expression on his face and insisted on bothering him, and then she laced their fingers together, which for a second or two took Rodrik aback because she would never do that. Nevermind the fact that she was into girls and that they still had that whole stupid arranged marriage ordeal hanging over their heads, in Rodrik's experience Zoe Valeria was more likely to get her way by repeatedly punching you. Being soft? What the hell.
Those few moments of confusion were enough for Rodrik to lose his determination to leave, and he followed her into the compartment. But as soon as he shut the door behind them with his free hand, the anger came back and he freed his hand once more, crossing his arms and leaning against the closed door.
"What do you mean? Are you really that dense?" he hissed, volume low. He didn't need the entire train hear of his grief. He didn't want pitiful looks of sympathy, he just wanted. To. Be. Left. Alone.
"He's dead! Gone! Buried in my back yard with our grandfather who he was named after! They killed him! The werewolves! They killed him, just..." he started, his folded arms quickly opening to gesture wildly as the volume of his voice increased. "Just because he was trying to help Rowan's sister! Ugh!"
"Gone?" Zoë's voice was far quieter than it normally was, as she suddenly felt very small next to Rodrik and his grief. It wasn't something that she knew how to react to. Nobody in her life had ever died, at least not while she was alive. She knew that her grandparents had died when her mum was eleven--she'd heard enough about needing to make them proud that she could never forget that. But as for herself? She didn't have siblings, she had only the one parent--she had plenty of friends, but they were all safe at school. How could she possibly be Advice Zoë if she didn't know what to do?
"I asked because I didn't know," she said defensively, but sat heavily on the seat underneath her trunk, frowning deeply. "There has to be something I can help with--I can't--I can't bring him back or anything, but I'm here. For you." She curled her fingers into the seat underneath her, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. For a moment, she regretted bringing him into the compartment with nobody else around. The atmosphere was too dark, too serious, and she wished she had someone else who knew what to say, so she wouldn't somehow make it worse.
But she didn't. There was only her.
"Sit down," she said, patting the seat next to her. She brought her feet back up on the seat, wrapping her arms around her legs, balling herself up. For once, she was trying to make herself smaller than she actually was.
Gone? Every word she'd said so far had made Rodrik feel like he was being mocked. Somewhere the remnants of his rationality were trying to remind him that she didn't mean anything by it, and that he had no right to be so brash, but fuck rationality. He hadn't spoken to anyone in a month, and now it was all pouring out, from every seam, from every crack, the dam had broken and the waters were coming down, tinged with red.
"Of course you didn't know." he said, looking out the window. The train had pulled from the station, speeding up, ready to settle in its rhythm. "Let me tell you, then." His voice was still full of pain and anger, but now it wasn't directed right at Zoe - it was sent right into the universe. "Tell you how me, Hugo and Damian had to make a coffin out of the planks in our shed. How we dug a grave for him without magic. How we didn't speak at all, because all we could do is cry until we could scarcely breathe!"
Those were the memories that kept Rodrik up every night for countless hours until his eyes were aching just as bad as his wrists had upon throwing in the last shovel of sand. He slumped down in the seat next to her, shoulders fallen down, palms hanging low between his legs. A long, shaky breath later he spoke again, his eyes pinned to the floorboards.
"You know," his voice was a lot more quiet now, "he wanted to open his own winery. He would have, I'm sure of it." Vaughn had been hard-working and determined, and these qualities were what the brother's honored when they decided not to use wands for the grave.
"I wish it had been me instead," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. This thought had bothered him the entire month, too. Vaughn had so much potential, he was going to achieve so much, and all of that had been taken away from him. If a Belanger had to go, why couldn't it have been Rodrik? The wishy-washy third son who drifted through life without a sense of purpose? Even Hugo knew what he wanted to do with his life, and he was 14.
"No!" The full force of Zoë's voice returned as she sprang into action, gripping Rodrik's shoulder with wide brown eyes. "You can't!" The idea of Rodrik, her friend Rodrik, Rodrik who was kind and good and, honestly, liked by more people than Zoë would ever be, Rodrik who had a whole life in front of him, wanting to die? The idea of him dying? It clutched at her heart, the same sharp fear that she had when she saw her Boggart. The fear of everything going all wrong.
"You have to think," she said, desperately wanting to change his mind, "like, if he didn't deserve it, because he obviously didn't, then you don't deserve it either." She released his shoulder, only to wrap her arm more fully around him. It was a rare day when Zoë would be seen hugging Rodrik in public, but this was certainly not a regular occasion.
"You can't wish that," she continued. "Because--well, because you can't. It won't change anything. It'll just make you feel worse." She sighed at the words not coming out quite in the way she wanted, but she hugged him tight, afraid of what would happen if he went off alone as he claimed he wanted.
And there it was, Zoe's voice like the swell of a brass band right into his ears. The tension in the compartment had exploded, with his friend pleading that Rodrik not think about himself in such a depressive way. He turned to face her, his eyes seeking hers. They were so wide, so brown and so... Scared. So worried.
She clung onto him as if she was trying to anchor him in the storm that was going through his heart, and, even though just mere moments ago he'd been angry with her, wanted to do nothing with her, wanted to leave--
Slowly he wrapped his arms around her small frame, hugging back. The warmth of her body against his was comforting, and only now Rodrik realized how much he'd missed human contact over the last months. Hell, how much he'd missed Zoe, his Zoe, always up and ready to go and take on the world.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, hiding his face in her shoulder. There was a bit of shifting around, a few painful pokes with elbows and whatnot, but they settled in a comfortable position and just sat there, clinging onto each other until Rodrik drifted asleep.
