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!
In a matter of speaking, things had been... well, good-ish for Alex later. He'd made up with Xander and the two had slowly began hanging out once again when they had the chance which was nice. Cool, even... although, sometimes inconvenient because lately it seemed that whenever Alex was in his presence, his stomach had taken to do some sort of fluttering thing. He had a sneaking suspicion that it was what people referred to as 'butterflies' in his books, something that typically happened when you liked someone, but Alex had chosen not to refer to his weird stomach feeling as butterflies. It sounded kind of lame and so he was working on a different analogy for it - one involving a creature crawling into his mouth in the middle of the night and taking control of his stomach, like in some weird sci-fi movie.
One thing that was not good-ish for Alex lately though were the new Durmstrang students, the ones that had taken initiative to start cornering him when professors and prefects weren't near. Apparently even though they were no longer at Durmstrang with their no muggleborns policy, the mentality of 'you must hate mugbloods' had still stuck with them. They hadn't done anything to him yet besides the odd hex, mostly they just liked to gang up on him and poke and prod with words, but... it was enough to make him want to avoid them altogether which was what had led to him ducking into an abandoned classroom nearly half an hour ago where he'd been hiding ever since.
Luckily for him, he'd had the latest Ironman comic stashed in his bag and as he sat cross-legged in the corner of the classroom, flipping through the pages, he was quite comfortable - or he was until he heard the tell-tale squeaking of the door. Cautiously, Alex reached for his wand, aiming it in the direction of the noise just in case.
Post by STEFAN ARGENT on Jul 30, 2020 19:15:29 GMT
codes to the stars
Stefan knew it sounded kind of bad, but more often than not, he wished his parents had stopped at six children. Or... maybe five, considering how often he wished Tristan could fade out of existence, or even three, considering how crowded the shared bedrooms were back at home in Godric's Hollow. But no, he existed, and had to be stuck finding his own places to hide and be alone for once in his life.
Luckily, despite holding seven years' worth of students, Hogwarts Castle still held an abundance of seemingly abandoned rooms, nooks, and crannies. Tristan had yet to find him in the particular room he was headed to at the moment, which meant that it was still a safe place to be, and hopefully get to read a book instead of actually going to dinner. He really didn't want to go to the Great Hall--not today. Not with brothers there.
He clicked open the door without a second thought, shutting it behind him before anyone could walk down the hallway and ask him what he was doing. The old desk with the chair by the window was just across the room, and he had made it halfway before he noticed wide eyes and a wand pointed right in his direction.
"Uh, I can--go?" Stefan's voice squeaked a little at the end of his sentence. Getting hexed by an older student really wasn't about to improve his day. "I thought nobody else knew about this room!"
The person who stood before him was not, in fact, some menacing Durmstrang student here to start trouble and... when Alex squinted, the bespectacled boy actually looked kind of familiar? Which made sense with the Ravenclaw tie and all. Alex just couldn't remember his name - which was probably to be expected, given he always had been shit at putting names to faces.
"Uh, no. It's... fine. I just thought... you were the enemy," he said, lowering his wand after a quick assessment said this kid was no danger to him at all. Hell, even he could probably take him in a fight - uh, not that he was going to. It wasn't that he was a lover, not a fighter, but more so because he had no reason to fight the guy and he ran away at any sort of confrontation as it was.
Alex's brows furrowed as the boy announced he thought nobody else knew the classroom existed because that couldn't be right, could it? "Well... it's along the hallway in plain sight. It's not like it's hidden away like Narnia or anything?" And unfortunately, the classroom didn't take you to an entirely different world, although Alex wished sometimes that it did. It would be nice to escape from Hogwarts every now and again.
Falling into silence, Alex was contemplating going back to his comic still spread across his lap when a voice sounding particularly like Zoe's said it was 'rude' in his head - or maybe it was Xander's. Apparently all Australians sounded the same in his mind. "So... are you trying to hide out or...?"
The enemy? That was a new one. Stefan was pretty sure he wasn't anyone's enemy--he tried to keep to himself when he could. He tried to avoid upsetting people in general--even with a wand, he wasn't sure he could take anyone in a fight. Especially not someone older and taller like this boy.
"Just hiding, yeah--didn't want to be around people. I hope I'm not your enemy." It seemed like a cruel joke that an introvert would be born in such a large family and then sent to boarding school. "My brother--he was making fun of me after class again." Stefan pressed his lips together, shrugging. It wasn't like someone else was going to care, someone who he didn't even know the name of, even if they'd been in the same school for who knew how long.
But there was something else the other boy had said, and Stefan spoke the next words cautiously, but hopefully. "You read Narnia?" Not everyone at Hogwarts was familiar with Muggle books, and Stefan, who grew up in a wizarding neighborhood, wouldn't have either were it not for the fact that he looked for them at every opportunity. They were an escape from the insular world of the magical community, where magic was an excitement instead of just another way to torment him.
Didn't want to be around people. It was a statement that Alex could relate to... and hard. People were overwhelming, at the best of times, and usually he tried his best to avoid them - partly out of fear that they'd whirl around and be nasty to him, but also because half of the time. he just didn't know what to say. "Your, uh... your brother... why would he make fun of you? Isn't family meant to stick together?" Alex asked, a crease forming between his furrowed eyebrows. He didn't have a lot of experience with the whole family thing, truth be told, but he couldn't imagine Zoe making fun of him in a million years.
There was a certain tone to the boy's voice as he asked if Alex read Narnia, one that had Alex blinking because, "You know about Narnia?" That wasn't... well, very common in Hogwarts at all, for students to be familiar with muggle books. "I borrowed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from the library when I was... nine, maybe? And, uh, it's not my favorite fantasy book, but it's a good series. I think, anyway. I used to read it and imagine what it would be like to visit another world and -" He was rambling. Shit, he needed to not do that. With his glasses, the boy looked like he could be kinda like Alex - a bit reclusive, a bit nerdy - but appearances were deceiving and for all Alex knew... he could just be some cool kid who didn't give a shit about Alex's love over books and his childhood imagination.
Why? Well, that was a question Stefan would probably ask himself until the inevitable heat death of the universe. If the other boy didn't have older brothers, maybe he didn't understand. Apparently some people got along with their siblings, but Stefan wasn't sure how that even happened. Maybe, he thought, he needed to go into the science of sibling dynamics, instead of astronomy.
"It's meant to stick together, but I think that's just something they say in books. I think half my brothers would kill me if we got stuck together." Let nobody find out a charm to do that. Maybe now that he'd thought of it, whenever they did Boggarts, his would be a Tristan full of glue. Stefan's shoulders slumped as he stared at the floor. "I'd rather talk about Narnia. In the Muggle side of town where I'm from they've got these little boxes where you can pick up books and put some back, and I got them out of there." He hadn't really had a lot of books to put back, and he didn't want to give up his science ones, but he'd always made sure to return them. "I really liked them, but I think I like science fiction better."
"Like Lord of the Flies," Alex mused aloud, before grimacing. Okay, well, maybe not exactly like that. Although, the boy and some of his brothers were British school boys... so... kind of. He wondered if, like in the book, killing would start over a tug of war for power - or maybe for more petty reasons, like finding one another annoying. Who would the boy opposite him parallel with character-wise? Piggy? Curiously, Alex asked, "What's your name?"
"Oh, an... an exchange thing? We, uh... we used to have one of those where I grew up but... everyone kept stealing the books -" Not because they wanted to read them, Alex presumed, "- so... they, er... well, they stopped doing it."
Alex fell into an awkward silence for a moment, not sure what else to really contribute to the conversation until the boy mentioned liking science fiction, A.K.A. his favourite genre to read. Instead of asking like a normal person what the other boy's favourite book was, Alex instead blurted out excitedly, "Do you know what the meaning of 42 is? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, without a doubt, hands down, was his favourite book series to ever exist.
Post by STEFAN ARGENT on Aug 13, 2020 17:41:32 GMT
codes to the stars
"Too much like Lord of the Flies," Stefan said darkly. He hadn't liked that book at all--he'd only finished it because he thought the ending might turn out alright, but it had only gotten worse. The thought that the world was full of awful schoolboys was too depressing to think about--he had to escape it at some point, right? "I'd probably be useless on a desert island." Between the glasses, the clumsiness, the fact that he really didn't want to hunt for his own food--the only redeemable thing would be that, as a wizard, he could probably start a fire with his wand. "I'm Stefan. What about you?"
It was only the mention of 42 that knocked him out of his melancholic state, his eyes lighting up as he looked back at the other boy. "The answer to life, the universe and everything!" He had only found the book this last summer, but it seemed to be everything he had ever wanted in a good book. "Don't spoil the rest of them for me, though. I've only just read the first one. I didn't find The Restaurant at the End of the Universe yet, and I don't know where to buy it." It wasn't like he had much money, but he could probably scrape some together. He'd done that to buy books before.
