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!
maybe it is all a test/'cause i feel like i'm the worst, so i always act like i'm the best
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Post by MIA-ROSE LINWOOD on May 2, 2020 18:54:47 GMT
light up the sky
It was time. Mia-Rose arranged her hair in the mirror, making sure the bun was secure on top of her head. She had to make sure she didn’t look too different from what she normally dressed like--although that wasn’t too hard, considering that she was already on the farm. She was wearing boots and cargo pants every single day. It would be out of the order for Isobel, maybe, but not for herself.
Still, there was always the fear that someone had figured out what she was going to do. To find her target, she’d had to do a lot of poking around, and despite the “Keep Out” sign on the door of her room, she couldn’t think that the pile of papers she’d been collecting had escaped everyone’s notice. The hope was just that they attributed it to regular curiosity. Mia-Rose had always been the type to lock herself away with adventure books as a child, so if she was reading alone in her room, that wasn’t odd, either.
They would all know when it was over, when it became apparent that she knew how to handle herself after all, doing an Auror’s job.
She jogged down the stairs to the living room, toward her goal: the fireplace. As far as anyone knew, she was just going to Diagon Alley. By the way time zones worked, there was still plenty of daylight left in Britain, so that, too, wasn’t anything strange.
Uncle Richard was coming inside from the porch, though, and she gave him a side-eye as she took a pinch of Floo Powder between her fingers, ready to toss it.
He was covered in snow, the flakes in his beard just as white as the ivory-tipped pipe that was still smouldering in his mouth, even after Sarah had asked him to only smoke outside. He was reaching up to take off his newsboy cap, the snow falling down on the doormat, when their eyes locked, Richard eyeing her suspiciously.
“And where do you think you’re going?” he asked, his words muddled by the end of the pipe.
“Diagon Alley,” Mia-Rose answered simply. Who, in the Southern Hemisphere, didn’t want to have an afternoon of summer in what Hogwarts called their summer break?
Richard looked as if he was going to say something, but he simply squinted instead, with a small “hmph.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Mia-Rose tossed the powder into the flames, pronouncing the name of the London street clearly. She hadn’t really meant to go to Diagon Alley at all, but with Richard watching--well, all it would mean was a trip through an extra fireplace. She stepped out of the fire at the Leaky Cauldron, looked around to make sure nobody was giving her any particular attention, and took another pinch of powder from the top of the mantle.
“The Three Broomsticks.”
---
“Point me.”
A small blue light puffed from the end of Mia-Rose’s wand as it twisted in her hand, pointing north. Alright, she was heading east-northeast--that was correct. This wasn’t the Forbidden Forest where she had learned which paths to follow, but she could always use the compass charm, even when the branches of the trees above her were blocking out the sun.
She felt as if she’d been walking for miles, which was probably true--the place where the werewolf lived was a ways from Hogsmeade, even if it was technically within walking distance. It might have been a good idea to bring a broom, except that it would have invited even more questions about why she was bringing one to Diagon Alley, and then if she had broken it in the process of capturing the man… No, she would walk. She was in good shape; she ran all the time; she was perfectly capable of it. She pushed through another thicket of branches, careful not to get her clothes caught on any thorns.
Up ahead she could see a spot where sunlight filtered through the trees more than where she was standing, and she peered ahead, trying to see if she had reached her goal. She was going to help the Aurors--she was going to capture a werewolf so that Hogsmeade would be safer. Yes, it might have been the Trossachs behind whoever had attacked that Ravenclaw in the winter--but it could also have been someone else. Like the man in the forest, whose existence she had pieced together from papers that she had borrowed from Richard’s room (she had returned them; it wasn’t entirely a lie). And if she could do it while Aurors didn’t, that would be all the proof she needed to show that observing dragons for a living would be no problem for her.
“Hello!” she called out into the clearing, voice sharp. She’d rehearsed what she might say in her mind--should she yell out hands in the air like fictional Aurors from radio dramas? Rush in with a wand aloft like some chivalric medieval wizard? None of those seemed quite practical, which meant they didn’t seem quite right, and she resolved to keep it simple. Find him, use the rope spell on him, and that was that. If only she could Apparate back to keep it quick…
There was a shuffling noise from inside the wooden building that could only be described as a shack, and Mia-Rose raised her wand, ready for the confrontation.
“What do you want?” A gruff voice answered back as the door creaked open.
“I--” Why was she answering? There was no need for it now. She wasn’t going to be the interrogator, no matter how curious she was about the werewolf’s involvement in the various attacks that had happened. The first order of business was getting him back to Hogsmeade, contacting the authorities, and watching it all happen. “Incarcerous!” she yelled, and ropes shot from her wand, but they fell short of the confused werewolf. He blinked at her as he began to reach for his own wand, but Mia-Rose had been mentally preparing herself for a duel for ages.
“Carpe Retractum!” she said, hoping that pulling the man closer to her would give her the chance to use the rope spell once more. In a flash of red light, they were nose-to-nose, although from up close Mia-Rose could tell just how much taller than her the werewolf was. She raised her wand again, but all the breath was punched out of her in a moment as he tackled her to the ground, branches poking painfully at her back. She grimaced, bringing a knee up to try and hit the man, to push him off of her.
“What--”
“Get off of me!” Her wand hand was behind him now, but she jabbed the point of her wand into his spine. “Levicorpus,” she hissed, but, with concentration hard to hold, the man was lifted into the air for only a moment before the spell broke. The werewolf shouted in alarm, falling back down onto her chest, his teeth meeting her shoulder. Mia-Rose growled back as pain shot through her, using her left hand to punch him hard in the side. “You!”
Somewhere in the distance, footsteps crunched through the forest, far heavier than the light steps Mia-Rose had taken earlier. A jet of light hit the werewolf, forcing him off of the redheaded girl, and she pushed herself up on her elbows, blood dripping from a mark on her right shoulder.
When Andrew had told Richard that Mia-Rose took after him, rather than her own father, Richard had known that it wouldn’t be too long until he’d hear of her doing something incredibly stupid in an attempt to get her family to pay attention to her. But never something quite as stupid as running off to fight a werewolf.
He’d had his suspicions for months now. It was never anything too obvious, a few curious questions here or there at the breakfast table as she tried to read Andrew’s newspaper from across the room, a few attempts at conversation that Richard firmly stopped upon any mention of his work, or his past, because neither of those were for the ears of little girls.
But, when a week ago he’d left the door to his basement room open for mere ten minutes to go use the bathroom in the middle of the night, he’d returned to the papers on his desk in a different order than he had left them. Someone had been looking through them, and there was only one suspect.
Mia-Rose.
He’d been enjoying a nice smoke of some new tobacco before he’d walked into the house that afternoon. He’d been planning to get a bottle of mead from the fridge and get back down to doing his paperwork, but the sight of his niece dressed for a damn camping trip when she was claiming to merely go to Diagon Alley?
Bullshit.
He had only one other guess -- in those papers that she had rifled through was a notice, issued to all the Aurors. There was a confirmed werewolf located a few miles away from Hogsmeade, their allegiances unknown, and Aurors were supposed to observe their target for a month, to see if they were in contact with anyone else, in hopes that they could kill two birds with one stone.
That’s where she would go.
***
The foliage cracked under his feet as Richard ran through the forest, heavy boots thudding with every step. He had to get there on time -- it wasn’t a full moon night, it wasn’t even the evening proper yet, but the target was an adult, and last he’d checked, Mia-Rose hadn’t been awarded any medals for being great at dueling.
She’d get herself killed, if he didn’t hurry up.
“Point me.” He thought to himself, watching the wand spin on his right palm. But that wasn’t needed, as he heard a high-pitched voice yell out somewhere a little bit due east. Fuck.
His leather-clad fingers wrapped around the handle of his wand as he dashed towards the sound, a small clearing and a shack coming in sight. And in front of said shack none other than Mia-Rose Linwood was having a wrestling match with a full grown man. Richard was about to roll his eyes and call out something about how pathetic the sight was, but then she screamed out, and the man had no mind for sarcasm anymore.
“Petrificus Totalus!”
His lips made no sound, yet the man froze in an instant, rolling right off of his niece, a pained expression carved into his face. He was still very well aware of their presence, but he wouldn’t be a bother...For now.
“That’s uncle Richard for you,” he said, his voice low and steady, as he hurried over to her, ripping the shirt off her shoulder without much ceremony or concern for privacy. Teeth marks, completely human, and yet deep enough to have caused bleeding. “That’s going to leave a scar,” he muttered, putting the tip of his wand on the wound. It pulled over as if a few days old.
“At home your mother will do it proper,” he said, getting up and pulling her up with him by her other arm, his grip on her wrist harsh. The height difference between the two was considerable, so he had no other choice but to lean down to her, as if he was chiding a small child for misbehaving, rather someone who was almost an adult.
“You’re going to listen to me, and don’t you even dare to interrupt me, otherwise I’ll glue your tongue to the roof of your mouth.” He started, looking right into her eyes, “Let’s start with the fact that I should arrest you for pilfering in state business, and send you off together with your cell mate here,” he nodded towards the middle-aged man on the ground, “And then with the fact that this is the most mindbogglingly stupid thing I’ve seen someone do in my entire life!”
“Never mind the idiocy of fighting an enemy you know next to nothing about without any kind of preparation -- and don’t say that your DADA lessons have prepared you, Hogwarts doesn’t specialize in dueling, I’d know. You know what rushing headlong gets you?”
There was only one thing he could show her that would have a chance of proving a point to this stubborn redhead. He let go of her shoulder, tucking his wand into his pocket and pulling off his right glove, showing her the dark wooden hand that he’d been hiding underneath. And then, without any warning, he pulled it off with a pop, pulling up the sleeves of his sweater so she could look at the stump and all the wonderful burn scars on it. The sight made Richard himself sick to his stomach, so the display didn’t last for long.
Then he continued, “Why the hell would you even do this? What has this man ever done to you? Whatever contrived reason you want to give me, throw it out of your mind. I know you’ve been reading the same news as everyone else and that you think all werewolves are the same, monsters, out to get us all. Have you, even for a second, sat down to remember that each of these ‘monsters’ is a human, just like the rest of us? With their own lives and families? What if your father would be turned into a werewolf? Would you immediately go for your wand?”
“The world isn’t all black and white, Mia-Rose,” he said, the uncharacteristic stream of words finally subsiding, “Think twice before you make a decision. It’ll save you a lot of grief afterwards.”
“We’re going home now.” He silently waved his wand in the direction of the werewolf, unfreezing him, and then the two of them were back in the living room of the Linwood farm. One loud sentence later all hell had been unleashed upon the 16 year old.
Richard picked up his pipe and went back out to the porch, smoke rising up from his pipe so lazily that you’d think nothing had happened.
maybe it is all a test/'cause i feel like i'm the worst, so i always act like i'm the best
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Post by MIA-ROSE LINWOOD on May 3, 2020 1:03:57 GMT
light up the sky
“If anyone hears of this, you’ll be expelled in a heartbeat.” Sarah Linwood’s voice boiled with frustration as she dabbed at Mia-Rose’s shoulder with a potion-soaked cloth. Mia-Rose hissed as steam came from the wounds, though they looked far more sealed over than they had a few minutes ago. “What were you thinking? Think of how many people you could have put at risk. Richard’s job. That poor man who was doing his best to stay away from humans, just as he was supposed to. And you! Your entire future!”
Mia-Rose barely met her mother’s eyes, looking up at the ceiling instead. She was doing her best not to cry, but between the healing potion and the thorough lecture she was receiving, she knew that tears were going to start leaking out from the corners of her eyes at any moment.
“And now you’ve put us all in the position of having to cover up for this rash, stupid decision of yours,” Mum continued. “Imagine if you’d gotten yourself killed. There’s a reason Aurors go through years of training.” She sighed, setting down the cloth and picking up a roll of bandage to stick onto the wound. “You’ll surely never be an Auror after this, if that’s what you were hoping.” Charming the bandage to stay on Mia-Rose’s skin with a flick of her wand, she stood up, hands on hips, as she stared at her middle daughter.
It was an utterly humiliating moment, Mia-Rose thought. The whole family had been here to see her being marched into the living room, dragged along by her uncle like a particularly disobedient puppy. She’d been meaning to prove herself to be a competent witch, and here she was, sixteen years old and being told she was completely grounded until further notice. She wouldn’t be leaving the farm, not even to go to the nearby islands, until she boarded the Hogwarts Express--and, Mum said, if Hogsmeade would be allowed at all this year, they would have to think long and hard before signing her permission slip.
And then there was the matter of the bite on her shoulder. It would never heal fully, and Mia-Rose had known it from the moment her spell had dropped the werewolf right on top of her. An accident that would leave its mark on her forever--although not as debilitating as the stump Richard had shown her in the forest, in a moment of anger. She didn’t know the story, and as her uncle seemed unwilling to speak any more words after the flood of frustration he’d unleashed on her back in Scotland, she wasn’t sure if anyone would ever tell her. Still, she knew there would be questions if she revealed it, questions that, with her parents’ worry about possible expulsion, she didn’t particularly want to answer.
“You’ll have a bath, and then straight to bed,” Mum said, an air of finality to her voice. “I’ll take a look at the bite again tomorrow. Come on, up with you.”
