Absit Omen RPG

“.. if you play the distressed grandchild, I think?”

Ari placed the back of her hand on her forehead and tipped her head back, as if affected.

“… I’ve only really met him after he got his eyeballs reversed by Spectre.”

“His what?” Ari hadn’t quite caught the detail of ‘eye’ as she’d been a little distracted trying to perfect her distressed grandchild look. She’d missed this story somewhere along the way.

“I’m sure he’s… sensible under regular circumstances…”

“Well, here’s hoping they don’t make anyone Deputy Head Healer.” Ariadne shrugged, eyebrows raised, and tucked the card back for safekeeping. “Though he might be sick of my family.” She grinned, more at the thought of this mission than how her family had been unavoidably wrapped up in the hospital.

“Anything else we need to do now?”

OOC: Transfiguring the outline of a snapshot from ages ago into a letter!

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion. Noam Chomsky

Gabrielle Dagon
4C Burgoyne Burbidges Lofts
Barking
London

Ariadne Gamp
107b Diagon Alley
London

Gabs,

So mum told me not to speak to anybody outside the family about this, but I could really do with doing just that. Mum said it with this finality and gravity, the sort she puts on when she’s trying to be tougher than she needs to be. Doing the whole serious auror act.

When it all came out last year it was like I fell off my broom mid-match. When she told me about what happened yesterday I think my stomach made a new home between my knees and my head just seemed to be spinning like a top. It was all A LOT.

So, it turns out Dad wasn’t Dad, my gran is still alive but pretending to be my dad, but then also pretending to be a healer. I know, right, what the heck? My gran’s like a metamorphmagus like my aunt but she never used it for fun stuff. I swear I should have inherited it, I will never get over being jealous. Like if the world could gift me it right now as karma for my gran misusing it, I would be a saint for the rest of my life.

Anyway. Aunt Andie and Uncle Ceph figured it out by the time it was almost entirely too late. Mum and Raine and some others apparently came rushing to St Mungo’s to help them. My grandpa was there, and it turns out my gran wanted to rescue him. There was this big fight[1] and someone set fire to the place, like it wasn’t already dramatic enough.

Then they thought my grandpa had escaped, but now they think he’s turned himself into an umbrella?! You can see how my head was spinning. Like, I always thought my grandparents were super strict, posh and entirely up themselves. We used to joke at how the hell my dad was their son because he’s so different, but clearly my whole family are completely bats (apart from uncle Ceph and cousin Tia maybe).

It had been so much easier first thing on valentines day. I woke up oblivious to the fact it even was valentines day. I miss that feeling of blissful ignorance, that optimistic, ordinary morning. Is it wrong to be simultaneously thankful for not witnessing any of this shit while also frustrated at missing it firsthand? Maybe I am one of the crazy Gamps after all.

So anyway. I’m writing this from their house[2]. My aunt Andie lives here now, and if I peer through the curtains I can see some sketchy Daily Prophet reporter hanging around outside. Like one of the ones people warn me not to talk to at work as a colleague, let alone talk to them about my family. Ugh! I felt it might be safer to come here because I swear someone was hanging around outside our flat in Diagon Alley pointing a camera at our windows. They can be disappointed to only see Virgil and Nick in their undies instead.

It’s kind of cosy here but at the same time weird as, because it’s here I associate with my grandparents the most. Also I keep hoping my dad will actually come home from wherever he is. I don’t like the thought that my gran has been impersonating him, but that explains why he didn’t meet up with me. I thought he just didn’t give a shit. But now he won’t come home for real so maybe Gran wasn’t so far off. He’s probably having too much fun somewhere.

Solly, the house elf is fussing big time over everything. Especially today as Aunt Andromeda has insisted on coming home. She got impaled by an umbrella and blasted by some pretty violent spells so she’s walking around like and old person. I’m just really glad she’s ok and you know, not an umbrella. The house elf is also trying to over compensate, when Ceph told her the news yesterday she wailed all night and tried to blame herself for not realising. She’s quite sensitive for an elf I guess.

I heard them mentioning Morgenthau, Virgil’s boss, was involved. I wonder if he thinks my grandparents are like ‘normal’ unspeakables or if they’re just crazy. Like does he know what they were working on? How they went all weird? Will Virgil go all weird too? What are they going to do to my gran? Like send her to Azkaban? Do experiments on her? What about my grandad? Is he stuck as an umbrella?

Sorry for like dumping on you Gabs. I just miss how we could just talk about deep stuff in the middle of the night in the dormitory at Hogwarts. Nick and Virgil are great but they’re not you. Please send me something sane. Tell me about your weird customers or what your family’s up to at the ranch. How living with Wav is going? Like, maybe I can crash there one night and put the world to rights?

Love,

Ari x

1.	14th Feb, 2012, Dashed to Pieces
2.	the house at Godric’s Hollow

Josie made Ariadne laugh. The girl had no qualms about cracking a joke or speaking her mind, even if it wasn't always appropriate. How on earth she and Theta had ended up such good mates, Ariadne wasn't sure. Theta Pepper was so restrained and ... good.

Meanwhile, Josie Flint was wolf-whistling and singing about the birthday girl as if it was entirely normal.
"You're a living court jester aren't you?" Ariadne shook her head, chuckling. "How are you not in trouble up to your eyes?" It was a somewhat rhetorical question, and Josie wasn't hanging around to answer it, jumping to her feet.

"We are going to be responsible adults."
"What, we're going swimming?" Ariadne asked, pursuing her without a second thought as to whether it was a good idea, just keen to be in on the laugh.

On the beach, there were people skipping into the waves, shrieking at the temperature. Josie skipped from pile of clothes to pile of clothes, waving her wand.

"What on - Josie? What?" Ariadne watched a pair of trousers triple in size, and began laughing at the sight, "Oh my charm, they're going to kill you."

“For Queen G?” Ariadne asked, momentarily muddled, “Oh, so they don’t trace me back to The Prophet you mean? I can’t quite picture myself writing for Witch Weekly… I’m not … flamboyant enough for fake scandal.”

Ariadne wiggled her fingers and pulled a dramatic pose which might suggest she actually was the opposite of her claim.

“I can ask,” she shrugged, “and there are like friends of friends who are healers, or I can pretend…” She reconsidered and wrinkled her nose, disliking the idea.

Raine moved on, resolving where the testing would take place, suggesting Abby should be involved. Ariadne nodded along in agreement, fine with the suggestion. Although she didn’t know Abby well, her reputation preceded her.

“Cool, yeah, I’m down for that. Do you think Abby will want to try some too?”

As Raine spoke, Ariadne’s wand sprang to her hand and an ochre colour bag landed in her bag, commanded by magic. A slightly tatty business card rose out of it, the state of it only due to being carried around for months upon months. She extended the Deputy Head Healer’s card to Raine.

“He gave the lot of us an open invitation to go to him, you know, about the whole psycho grandparent business.” She shrugged, “I never went, of course, but perhaps now’s the time… bad idea?”

Ariadne nodded.
"Sounds like a good idea. You'll get further than I did with the Prophet archives." Ariadne gestured to the scrapbook. Worth the paper cuts, but never going to be quite the same as actual reports.

"Part of me isn't surprised it's not investigated. You guys must be busy with actual dark wizards and the likes. Priorities, hm? It's not like someone's turned up without their memories in the middle of Diagon." Ariadne imagined that the auror office was incredibly busy, and regrettably some of her family were to do with that.

"Besides asking Nick to source us some, I reckon I might go poking at St Mungo's. See if anyone has ended up there because of it, or has encountered it. Healers are all confidential, like?"

Ariadne drummed her fingers on her knees, a determined look in her eye. "They might give me nothing but no harm asking." She shrugged and looked back up at Raine.

"I'll let you know if Nick agrees, or when I have some. You can like pass out on my bed or I can come round your place. Your trip, you decide."

"Well if you're doing the footwork, I can at least be the purse..." Raine seemed to take it well, but Ariadne still felt awkward as Hades for asking a friend for money. Nick and Virgil were so generous with things like sharing food, so she could keep up her third of the rent and buy other things they needed. They both earned more than her at the Ministry. Perhaps her mother had been right about getting a job there.

"I'll keep track of the budget." Ariadne offered immediately, feeling she had to put on some sort of grown up disguise now. "Not just the doughnut budget," she added hastily, and flipped to the back of the book of cuttings. "Got to put my arithmancy skills to good use." She shrugged it off, seizing a quill to ink budget at the top.

"Thanks." She managed to say, finding her manners to look up at Raine poised on the end of the sofa. "Not just for the money," she elaborated. "For getting involved, y'know, off duty sorta. Including me. My mum will kill me if she catches wind though, Raine. So you can't let her find out." Ariadne dropped the quill to wave both hands in discouragement of this idea. "Wait until we 'bust the case'." She winked, finding her stride again, and laughed at the silly Muggle expression. She hoped Raine didn't get into trouble, too, but the way her former dormitory-mate had suggested trying the drug suggested Raine didn't think she was at risk of that.

"... mere, insignificant trainee..." Raine reasoned, and Ariadne scoffed. Auror trainees weren't insignificant. It was bloody hard to get accepted as one, so Ariadne wouldn't have dared do something to jeapordise it so early. But she did accept and acknowledge Raine's intention to take risk to solve a puzzle.

She received her book of cuttings back, and slid it onto the cluttered coffee table.

"Is Nick more likely to spill the beans on his dealer, or to get you some contraband?"

"Well, he did offer," Ariadne recalled, narrowing her eyes as she remembered, "but he also said he wasn't turning in the person he bought it from, and neither was V, but he on the other hand had brought it up with Yavin Morgenthau." Virgil mentioned Yavin quite a bit.

"I'll ask Nick tonight after work, but, uhm," Ari shuffled a little on the couch, "I'm not hoarding galleons right now if I'm honest, Raine. Prophet only pays so much to lowly trainees."

"Hm..." Ariadne pouted in thoughtful agreement at the suggestion to press Nick a little more into finding out who he dealer was. She scribbled it down on her reporter's notebook with a battered pencil.

"... I could try Muse, if you're willing to... trip sit? .. Make sure I don't throw myself off a building or whatever."

Ariadne raised an eyebrow, and twisted on the sofa to look up at Raine perched on the arm of it.

"You, try Muse?" She asked rhetorically. It wasn't that she didn't imagine Raine to be into that sort of thing - but Merlin the way even her aunt Andie smoked gillyweed she (hopefully jokingly) confiscated from a criminal had taken her by surprise. "I always thought aurors had to be straightedge when it came to that stuff?"

For the first time in what felt like a small forever, Ariadne Gamp was not rushing off to report on a quidditch match. She’d spent yesterday at the Wasps-Portree game and then the evening down on the beach with an extended invitation from some younger Ministry people.

The next match wasn’t until one that afternoon, so Ariadne had risen late and was fortuitously dressed by the time there was a knock at the door. Out of habit she assumed it was someone for Nick or Virgil, her flatmates.

“Coming!” She called brightly, unravelling her legs from beneath her, brushing hair from Virgil’s feline companion off her denim legs.

“Hey!” Ariadne’s greeting to her old housemate was genuine.
“Hey - Did Virgil say I was coming? It’s about Muse.”
“Yes! Yes he did,” Ariadne, nodding as she stepped aside and extended an arm into the space in gesture. “Come in, come in. Thanks for coming over.” She swung the door shut on the hooting cacophony of the ground floor’s resident owls, and twirled her sycamore wand to cast a wordless muffliato to fade the interruption from ears.

“Do you want tea? Coffee? Virgil’s got all manner of fancy stuff,” that unspeakable job kept him very financially buoyant in comparison to Ariadne’s measly trainee income from the newspaper. Not that she was jealous. No. Merlin the thought of working in that place after everything. Eugh. “How have you been? How’s auror training?”



The rhythm of polite hosting fulfilled, the witches gravitated back to the open plan living space, and Ariadne’s wand summoned what looked like a scrapbook from her bedroom. It had oversized cuttings sandwiched between the pages, with the recognisable quality of newsprint. A book followed[1].

“So yeah,” Ariadne fidgeted on her end of the sofa, “Virgil brought it up and Nick said he’d tried it. Offered us to get some, but call me lame, I smoked gilly for the first time at Christmas and puked in a flowerpot.” She held a hand up towards Raine in vague defence of what her housemates might have teasingly claimed she was a lightweight for.

“It captures someone’s memory, so you can relive it like a random selection pensieve.” She flicked the cover open on the scrapbook, revealing a series of cuttings and notes. “Virgil was sceptical who would donate memories or be desperate enough to sell them.” There was a handwritten note in Ariadne’s handwriting of how Nick had described his first interaction with it: Summer’s day, swimming with friends. Happy.

“He reckoned they weren’t copies, because they were too authentic. So whoever it belonged to can no longer experience it. Also, that they had torn edges…” She’d stuck the torn part of the paper Virgil had illustrated with.

“Which then begs the questions who is desperate enough to sell their good memories, and what’s the going price for them?” She gestured a shrug with upturned hands. “So I thought maybe I could go offer some in Knockturn and see who wants to buy, but Nick and V thought I might have a bit of a death wish…”

1.	On Memory Magic

Ariadne cackled and got busy assembling drinks, letting the subject drop now the optimum amount of awkward embarrassment had been achieved. She heard Nick’s arrival and was about to give her flatmate a nod and a grin when she noticed the snippy girl from earlier introducing herself, and the birthday girl bumbling towards them.

“Hah, good luck Nick,” Ariadne chuckled under her breath, and then smiled at the scene, watching it unfold, clasping drinks for her, Theta and Josie. Curiosity sated for now she carried them over and plopped back down on the ring of cushions in the middle of the tent. “I prefer sharks when I’m in the boat,” she remarked to those around her, and exercised some of her quidditch trivia. As a trainee quidditch reporter, she was expected to know all manner of weird stats and facts. “The Fijian national quidditch team has a shape shifting one for a mascot. It’s like animagi, it shifts between human and shark form.”

Ariadne shrugged as Shade was whisked away, but didn’t miss the way Theta waved and smiled. She mimicked zipping her mouth at the protest and just raised her eyebrows. She guessed he was kind of cute. It wasn’t something she had thought about much, so glanced back at the wizard’s retreat for another look. She imagined Virgil would have some acerbic comment about the guy if he was witness.

“I don’t think this year is the one for us to be lucky in love,” Ariadne remarked, “much as I feel I was lucky with that blind date the other week. Another drink?” She offered, getting up from the cushions to approach the table of them.

“But maybe I’m wrong,” Ariadne turned back, raising her voice a little, “weren’t you all cozy with the Head Auror?” She chuckled, well aware that this was an auror trainee’s birthday party.

A stripy cushion sailed towards her head.

“Can we not talk about werewolves for one afternoon?”

Ari didn’t know a Tessa Fenneken from Shade O’Connor at this point of the conversation. Both were blonde and giving her looks of one kind or another in this tent.

“What is this?” Josie asked, taking the flyer and distracting Ariadne from scowling back at the rude girl.
“Flyer from Zeta, they’re going to protest Zonko’s next Hogsmeade weekend because there’s some joke product that makes you look like a werewolf. She’s trying to rally some voices from outside school.”

Ariadne found it ever so slightly strange to remember she was the grown-up now when Hogwarts stuff reappeared in her life. This time last year she’d have been counting down the days until the Hogsmeade weekends too.

“Oh! Hey.”
“Going to introduce us?”

Ariadne looked round to see a long, blond haired wizard approaching. It took a second but she recognised her old housemate.

“… Ariadne - Ari writes in the Quidditch pages of the Prophet and Josie writes for anything and everything.”

“Hey, long time.” Ariadne smiled in a friendly manner. “We were in the same house, you were in the year above with your twin, Sky. How’s the whole art career going?”

“Easy Pepper - I mean, Ambrose!” Ariadne realised that she was no longer exclaiming to her fellow Gryffindor in the common room with his rogue spells. That there was another Pepper nearby. She drew her wand to tidy the flipped plate of brownies beside Fauna and Gris. “S’alright, they landed right way up,” she reported back. They hadn’t caught fire either.

She had been glad to get over at a reasonable time after attending the Wasps-Portree game at Wimbourne Minster that morning. She’d written her account of the game at the side of the pitch and owled it back to the Diagon office of the paper. By the time it was printed in the evening or Sunday morning edition she would be lucky if 50 of her 200 words made it in, she was accustomed with three games on a Saturday. Had she not been invited she might have gone to the Cannons-Wanderers match that evening to see if she could get some free tips from Ginny or whoever was covering it.

“So yeah, Zeta must have sent them out to everyone because I got one too.” Ariadne continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. She drew a slightly crumpled flyer from her bag which had arrived that morning. “Take a look,” She offered the SAWS flyer to those nearby to study.

“… I’m not letting you two do something like this without me…”

There was the good old Gryffindor Nick! He looked to Virgil suggesting that they’d need to be able to handle themselves defensively, and then suggested he knew enough to hide their presence from someone’s memories if they went asking.

Virgil added his contribution of skills to the cause.
“My mother would be proud of me putting my NEWTs to good use,” Ariadne shrugged as her offering, having excelled with outstanding in charms, and exceeds everything in transfiguration and defence. (She didn’t think arithmancy or herbology would be much use in the circumstances.)

“Are we agreed? We’ll investigate if we hear that level two isn’t making headway.”

“Sure,” she shrugged. “But let’s not give them too long, this could be fun.”

Ariadne’s hand went to her shoulder where Dido’s had just left. In her assigned date’s absence, she glanced about at the other booths, and reminded herself of her expectations. To go with the flow. Best situation, a nice friend would be made, worst case, she’d excuse herself. So far, no immediate red flags. Ariadne glanced over her shoulder to see if she could see Dido at the bar.

As her partner reappeared, drinks in hand, Ariadne beamed quite automatically. She reached out for the glimmering shot, and waited, poised, for Dido to get comfortable again.
“… what I want to be. No idea…” She filled Ariadne in. “… I must have been like six. Mermaid diplomat or something silly.”

“Mermaid diplomat isn’t that silly,” Ariadne retorted, thinking of her uncle Ceph. “But I imagine you’d have to be good at swimming.” She laughed and raised her shot.

“To a lucky night,” she proposed.


—


A witch stomped across the floor of the bar far too heavily for her high heels. Her handbag was clutched firmly in one hand and her shoulders, initially hunched, suddenly lowered into that dangerous, assertive pose.

“Oh,” Ariadne stopped what she had been saying, attention drawn, “someone should have had some Felix Felicis…”

The witch pointed her wand at her date but didn’t cast. The threat was enough for the figure she left behind. Ariadne could make out some raised hands in placation.

“I guess we’ll read about that in Witch Weekly next week,” Ariadne giggled, ducking back into the booth to continue her conversation with Dido. “I’ve never been that girl,” she remarked as the witch made an exit into the February night. “I think my mum was though - she split with my dad when I was little. I mean, I don’t want to be that person, but it seems like everyone around me has been there threefold with exes. Maybe that’s my luck. What about you?”