Absit Omen RPG

“Where I am from, they hunted them. For fun. But papa says werewolves are sick people.”

“They are,” the Professor agreed, “with an affliction that is incurable. But woe betide you pity them.” He shook his head ever so slightly. If anything, those he had encountered, from the two Gryffindor witches to grown wizards, were fierce and stubborn to a fault. They held onto their pride at any opportunity. He folded his arms across his chest, the cold air now chilling the backs of his worn hands.

“But would you not agree that someone who cannot control themselves, and will kill you without question or infect you to the same fate, should be kept restrained at the full moon?” A rhetorical question, undoubtedly, but he gave the boy a moment to ponder it. “And what would be an apt consequence of those who would prefer to be free, and risk others?”

“I don’t want to be scared… I’m not afraid…” Ignan’s pale gaze observed the boy’s metamorphmagus skill, illustrating as he spoke.

“Why would you be?” This could turn into a philosophical discussion. The Professor had not anticipated nor intended that pursuing a student out of bed would lead to discussions of fear and control. Nor was it the time to suggest Feliks should be scared of Lucinda and Greer because they were witches, and wizards should never underestimate witches. As for the Headmaster, he was a bear of a man but not anything sinister. That was half the reason they continued his appointment as Deputy, to provide that balance.

He almost unnoticeably slipped his wand away into his long black robes, which came to the ankles of his boots and fell just short of the end of his white shirt cuffs. The heavy folds were unbothered by the draught from the missing window. Meanwhile the boy was barefoot. The cold would curtail this conversation or pin it keenly in his memory if prolonged.

“What do you know of werewolves, Spectre?”

He was so close to charming the door open and striding away, but she had to pipe up. If he wasn’t so tired, he might have put her incoherent protest down to a thump on the head.

“You want us to hex Feliks for you! Instead of doing something about it! That’s just dumb!”

But Professor Storm had always been a bit of an arsehole, and his patience had pretty much run dry that day, especially towards these insolent Gryffindors. His step slowed, and he drew a longer breath, pale eyes looking up and closing a moment. Had anyone seen his expression it might have appeared he uttered a silent prayer not to hex the girl into next week.

“You really believe it was him?”

He stopped as he asked incredulously. He stiffly turned ninety degrees to look back over his right shoulder, and extended his wand directly at her. His expression lacked any reassurance and suggested he might instead be about to hex her for speaking out of turn.

“Reflexi!” He hissed, turning his wand sharply in an anti-clockwise circle no bigger than her head. Blue light carved a circle in the air before Greer, seated on the bed, and it lit her defiant features in cold blue-white light before erupting into a quick burst of light, leaving behind a mirror small enough to grasp in both hands, but large enough to reflect her clearly.

“Look into it,” he instructed without any warmth. He paused just a beat for her to be confused as to what she was meant to see, other than her own face, “you’ll see what ‘dumb’ looks like.”

Strange boy, Feliks Spectre. They both gazed out upon the dark Hogwarts landscape. Pensive, the boy asked a question. The man paused, considering his answer.

“We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.” An educator’s response, perhaps set against ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ which was often rang true when experimenting with magic.

The breeze ruffled sheets of parchment tacked to the classroom noticeboard.

“Are you afraid?”

“… and look out a window.”

The Professor’s wand twitched impatiently. Holding himself back from the thought of dangling Feliks Spectre out of said window to ask him if he appreciated the view. He’d do it to family, like his father had, but Greyfriar might have something lengthy to say to him, and that would be tedious. This wasn’t Durmstrang.

Instead he closed in slowly, eyes not leaving the boy’s pale moon face, giving all the impression he was searching the young man’s mind for confirmation of this, as he had on their first meeting at the Spectre manor.

“You cannot outrun thoughts,” he advised, “as much as you cannot outrun me.” Yet. He was certain the wand in the clearing was not this slip of a boy.

He had closed in now five feet of the boy, maintaining his intense stare. He twitched his head in reference of the window. At once the air around them moved, the glass of the window had vanished, leaving the classroom suddenly open to the elements and the night’s sky unbroken by the criss cross of the lead.

“In the hole.” The Professor offered by way of explanation, eyes still narrowed from the bright light from her reunited wand. Better to call it that than grave which it was intended. Had he not been there Grant might have joined her wand beneath the mud.

“Don’t lose it again.” He added in a more familiar brusque tone, which always made his students feel was personal criticism than advice. He knew the circumstances of disarming would have been near impossible to defend against given the disguise and surprise, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t learn from the experience.

Without any further words of reassurance or even an expression of relief that she was recovering from her ordeal, he turned on his heel and strode to the door, merely adding: “And don’t be late for Duelling Club,” without looking back.

The student’s silhouette was apparent before the silver light of the moon falling through the window. They were younger, foolish, and protested rather than hid. Arrogant. Yes, of course it was…

“Spectre.”

The greeting was chilly, and lacked any greeting, despite the boy’s attempt to greet him politely. He was stood ramrod straight under his gaze. Like a soldier on duty, caught by his commanding officer. Just like the Durmstrang boys would do if caught, frozen to the spot, staring straight ahead. Interesting. His ebony wand twitched in his hand, keen to issue a hex, drag the boy back to his dormitory by the ear, or send him literally hot-footing there. Instead he took two slow paces into the room, looking the first year up and down. No, he’d hear this excuse for sport.

“Explain.”

It was late afternoon, early evening, and the Professor would have headed straight back to the cottage in Hogsmeade but for one small detail.

Auror Trevelyan had secured any evidence[1] from the scene in the woods, through it was frustratingly lacking any great substance, other than the child’s coffin.

His conjured rain clouds had dissipated and the smouldering limbs of the trees lay quiet[2] other than the drips onto the sodden ground below.

He returned to Hogwarts, not to the Saturday evening meal, where students gossiped about why they had been summoned back from the village before time, but to the hospital wing. His boots were muddy and his the end of his cloak was sodden, but he did not attempt to clean them. Fatigue was firmly settling in, and his old limp caused him to catch the toe of the scuffed boot on the last step of the stairs. He cursed and vowed he would take the floo home once he was done.[3]

The hospital wing was quiet, gossips and onlookers kept at bay by Healer Prince.[4] The Deputy Headmaster closed the door behind him, not announcing his arrival to any of the occupants. Temple and Grant had enough barbs earlier,[5] and he had no wish to linger and chat.

He walked slowly but purposefully down the ward, which he sent students to with far more regularity than he ever visited.

“Grant,” he addressed gruffly, and extended a wand from his robes, holding it by the tip. It still bore smears of mud, but he had wiped the worst of it off when he had recovered it from the gouged earth at the scene. “Yours?”

1.	17th March, 2012 - Whose Woods These Are
2.	17th March, 2012 - And Miles to Go Before I Sleep
3.	17th March, 2012 - I Mark, in Vision of Delight, the Sage
4.	17th March, 2012 - Promises to Keep
5.	17th March, 2012 - The Only Other Sound

It had been a week since she’d interrupted[1] his late evening work. His cousin had remained uncharacteristically frosty towards him since the unscheduled meeting. Ordinarily this would not bother the stoic, resilient wizard, but in all the years he had known his cousin by marriage, she had never exhibited this behaviour. It had been an edge her late husband readily wore instead.

And it wasn’t as if Ignan thought the conversation was pointless. It was genuinely necessary, but he loathed such tasks. His style to address problems with students was to issue them a detention hanging upside-down from the classroom rafters, or conducting manual labour without a wand, or if it wasn’t to address misbehaviour, to take out adolescent frustration with curses and duels. Conversation, reasoning and concern was Greyfriar’s job, as far as his Deputy was concerned. Ignan’s strengths lay in discipline, organisation and order. Emotions were the opposite, especially when it came to teenagers.

So when Ignan had a task to do, which he was loathe to do, he kept himself busy with everything else he might have put off. For despite being a bit of a grumpy arsehole, he was still human, and he too could procrastinate, albeit productively.

Miranda had been most concerned for his health after the duel[2], but had too voiced her disgust that someone would adopt the face of a first year to terrorise werewolves. She had the objective view, of a healer, that every life had value, even werewolves. Before he had resorted to teaching for income, he had been far more preoccupied with what value a werewolf’s death had from the buyer. He had used the sort of twines he’d encased from the scene, albeit cruder version, and knew its potential strength.

Fate, as ever, had a way of delivering him to situations he was doing his best to ignore.

Ordinarily a late Tuesday evening would not have him prowling the corridors, but he knew his wife was working overnight at the hospital on a particularly difficult case. He would likely wake alone in the cottage, even at dawn. So he had busied himself with marking, but found himself oddly restless. Peeves, the school’s resident poltergeist, had been particularly active of late. While the spirit had given him an escape from the intense conversation with Camille, he had decided to compose some new ditties, including one about Professor Honeysuckle being left at the altar at her wedding to a muggle. Every teacher knew never to mention weddings in front of Lillian, to prevent her blubbering, but Peeves had taken great delight in her tears. She’d fled the castle that afternoon, citing she would not be coming back to teach Muggle Studies until the tirade stopped.

Walking the corridors this late would increase the chance he’d encounter either the poltergeist or the Slytherin ghost, who was the only other one Peeves would heed. However, ghosts didn’t have footsteps, and here, ascending the stairs, were a pair. They rounded the corner into a passage, and quickened. A student was out of bed!

There was a muffled, but telling, sigh of a door hinge, and the movement of air only a seasoned Hogwarts patroller might perceive. Three, almost four years of these night patrols, paid off. The scurry appealed to his old joy of hunting prey. Only not werewolves, but restless students. He’d find this one and send them packing to bed with a sore foot, so they were disinclined to walk further than necessary.

The tall Professor walked slowly but surely, not seeking to muffle his boots, wand in hand, ears keenly listening. He paused by the first door, leaned his left ear towards it, and held his breath. He could charm to reveal their presence, but where was the fun in that?

It was all quiet, so he focused his senses ahead to the empty passageway. No, his quarry was most certainly in one of these rooms, laying low. There were few routes away, so he took his time, boots stepping slowly, slowly, closer to the next door, where he lit his wand with pale blue light, sweeping it across the floor, as if to look for footprints, but instead delighting in the potential dread induced in whoever might be hiding behind the wood…

1.	20th March, 2012 While I Wond’ring Pause - Camille interrupts Ignan over worries about someone attacking the two Gryffindor werewolves, using the first year’s face
2.	17th March, 2012 - I Mark, in Vision of Delight, the Sage

Very clever

I was covertly paging through this on my phone trying not to grin too hard while I should have been paying full attention to my folks, as I was over there visiting! 

Thank you so much guys for putting this together - I am going to explore it again soon!

All the love for AO family

“They what?”
“Mm.”

“You’ve informed the Ministry?” He nodded. “And Balfort?” Not the time to correct her.
“Greyfriar’s taken care of that.” He rubbed his lined forehead and sat back in the armchair. The wine sat in his empty stomach and would hopefully bring a gentle numbness to his aches.

“It’s a pretty sick statement, no? Use the face of Almasy’s son when terrorising werewolves?” Miranda asked. Ignan hummed agreement. None of it sat well with him.

“What was their aim? This, imposter. What exactly did you foil?”

“That, as yet, isn’t entirely clear.” He raised a finger, pale blue eyes staring off to the other side of the room. “Though nothing good would have become without my interruption,” he assured his wife, turning his intense gaze back on her a moment. “No good Samaritan lures lycanthrope children from safety, disarms, hexes their mouths shut and surrounds them in tenacious twine.” This was beyond anything he’d been accused of in the past towards recalcitrant Hogwarts students, even beyond the corporal punishments Durmstrang had permitted when he was a boy. Then again, werewolf children would not have been there.

“It was without doubt related to their status as werewolves,” he vocalised his thoughts, “but if one wanted to abduct them, one would have disarmed and knocked them out. If one wanted to kill them, then there were simpler and more efficient ways.” Many more. “No, the intention was to torture.”

“They’re lucky you happened to be on patrol.”
“It’s become a necessity since last year,” the Deputy Head responded grimly. The kidnapping of students from Hogsmeade had been near impossible to prevent owing to the skill of creating sweet samples into portkeys, but it didn’t mean a greater staff presence in Hogsmeade was futile. It was precisely incidents like today’s that he had hoped to prevent.

“How long was he or she alone with them?” The Professor’s pale gaze was cast upwards as he considered an answer.
“Between five and ten minutes conversation out of earshot at my reckoning.”

“What happened when you reached them?”

“I approached, same direction, but under disillusionment.” He traced a path less direct than the girls had been led. “And engaged with Spectre, or whoever was posing as him. They redirected their attention to me, and we exchanged spells. Their retreat was quick, I don’t believe they were prepared to see their plan through if interrupted. If they wanted to take the girls then they had opportunity, they were willingly following.” Idiots, the two of them.

“They retreated back into the tree line,” he gestured over to his right as they faced the coffin, beyond the pile of tree branches. “They set fire to that side,” he gestured to the opposite side of the clearing where the boughs and branches of the trees were blackened, and the ground was sodden from the rain. “And when I tried to drag them out they brought these branches down as one and must have disapparated in the next instance. There was no presence there when I sought it.” 

The thickness of the branches alone, and the way they had splintered in unison was a stark indication that this had been no first year in the clearing, but someone with talent.

“As for the mess over there,” he indicated the gouge in the ground between coffin and pile of branches, “the girls got loose of the twine, their attacker tried to summon it back. Temple, the idiot, made a run at them, and they near buried her in it.”

He could feel weariness edging in as he recounted the story again. His mind’s eye replaying Lucinda tearing across the clearing, enraged, and his own spell seeking to slow her down, only for the ground to open and her to fall headlong into the earth. Had the attacker been keen to take them, it might have ended in a much less favourable way.

“Have you seen anything like it?” He asked, aware that The Prophet had reported more than one werewolf-related incident under investigation.

“Auror Trevelyan.” The Hogwarts Professor gave a respectful nod to the wizard after his remark. He glanced beyond the auror’s shoulders to see if anyone followed. Greyfriar must have been successful in selecting his werewolf sympathiser.

“What happened? Is everyone alright?”

“No wounds worse than Healer Prince can salve.” He shook his head slightly as he said it, but otherwise wasted no time in getting to the practicalities. Old habits died very hard.

“Two of our students were attacked here, by someone who took the face of another student.” He summarised, extending his wand and right to where the coffin was hidden in the gloom.

Lumos Orbis - a steady ball of light grew from the tip of his wand and ascended gently into the evening air like a helium balloon. He lifted his wand up until it reached ten or so feet above them and grew in size enough to drench the scene in a pale blue light. It lacked warmth of yellow light, much like the caster. Despite this magical light, shadows still hung like sleeping bats to everything beneath.

“Hogsmeade weekend,” he continued to explain. “Temple and Grier, students and werewolves, were in the village. They were approached by what appeared to be Feliks Spectre, another student, who led them here from that direction.” He gestured in the direction Jonas had arrived, from the village. “I was on patrol so pursued at a distance.” He glanced back to see that the auror was approaching.

“When I reached them, the girls were over here, ensnared in tenacious twine.” He gestured for Jonas to follow him into the scene. “Their mouths were cursed closed, and he had them here, beside this.” The rudimentary coffin[1] looked none the friendlier in the hue.

1.

Quote from: Jebediah Layton on January 12, 2021, 02:37:48 PM The wizard tapped the the bush with his wand. And then, abruptly, it was no longer a bush but a large tangle of Tenacious Twine draped over an oddly shaped pinewood box on the ground. A coffin. A child-sized coffin. …. It had been built to fit Greer but Lucinda might be able to squeeze in instead. It has a lid, which has been unseated, and it is empty.

Both witches seemed keen to take on the challenge, but simultaneously pretended that the implication wasn’t there at all. This slightly strange friendship was perhaps about to see some proper strain, not just from running a competition as they proposed, but because the Professor had thrown in the unspoken suggestion that he sought a new Captain for the club, and this was an excellent way of proving their worth.

“I am sure you can run it successfully together,” he added, once Abbott had stopped uncomfortably invading his personal space, “but as you know there can only be one Club Captain when I look for replacement.” He gave the hint of a shrug, absolutely sure of what he was doing.

“You have a week. Propose a structure, secure your rule set. I am convinced at the concept, but no commitment until I see it on parchment.” He waved their refolded parchment, pinched between two fingers, and made to turn away. The conversation was over, and he still had much to do.