Absit Omen RPG

"No!" Zora caught on to Iona's implication, that she couldn't put an outfit together. She used the false indignation as an opportunity to begin to move down the street again, back towards the train station.

"Well. A bit, yes, but I did the hair. And the sunglasses." Of course she had. The sunglasses she wore now, hanging from the collar of her shirt, were not the dark mirrors she usually wore, but had white frames and rosy lenses.

Zora liked walking with Iona. They exuded a fuck-off vibe that repelled anyone who might bother then or impede their progress. That, and the wands up their sleeves, gave them no worries being out in a strange city on their own after sundown.

They were not far from a little avenue where lights were on at some open air eateries. They could walk up, order something, and continue on their way. "Churros," Zora said, nodding to a little stand.

Zora did want to stay. She never forgot that her love was a werewolf, and she was never not angry when she was mistreated over it. But being Korean, being a woman, being a lesbian - all of these things were not the same as being a werewolf. Zora would never know truly what that felt like.

She bowed her head a little then extended a rare hand to lace her fingers with Iona. "No need for hysterics," she said again dry and cool.

"Let's do Scotland. Get a suite in Edinburgh, something too expensive."

They didn't know anybody in that city. They could shop and eat and drink wine for a couple of days, lounge about in the hotel spa. At least at home, business weren't allowed to turn werewolves away as customers.

Zora stopped and let her arms drop to her side. She was dressed for sunny Spain, toned arms bare, cuffe bracelets stacked on the wrists like armor more than jewelry. She'd even pulled her hair up into a big fluffy black pile.

"You want to go home? Is that really what you want?" She didn't ask it angrily or with a nasty snap, but she did sound disappointed.

She looked off down the street and shook her head. "There's that place in Slandermouth that Sawbones told us about."

In the North. Cold sea spray salting everything.

Zora was bad for suggestions. She'd never travelled much, only Korea a few times as a child. her parents were homebodies and with her work, she'd never had reason or time. The last vacation she and Iona had taken was to the woods to smoke their daughter's gillyweed.

"Disney World?" She cracked a smile. The United States, there werewolf laws there were more open. Crossing the sea, though, it was an endeavor that they didn't have time to sort.

"If Waverly saw us like this…" Zora shook her head. They were the dorkiest parents, unable to have a crack of fun before … cracking.

It was a tax on Zora's patience not only to fumble with a translation spell but to keep her wife from dismembering any concierges. She was nearly as angry as Iona was, but one of them had to keep her head. They'd not fully understood the privilage werewolves enjoyed in England, as meager as they often seemed, but compared to Spain? They had signs here. It might as well have been the 1980s.

"I'd pay to see that," Zora said dryly - attempting to stopper Iona's righteous temper never worked. That and Zora loved that about her.

 Zora pulled out their little guide book which was broken at the spine on the lodgings section, already dog-eared. She scratched out this latest hotel. Pickings were getting slim. They had to find somewhere. It would feel absolutely shit to head back to the train station and take the international floo network back before they'd had a chance to relax.

"We just have to get clever," Zora said. "Maybe a muggle place. Find somewhere that doesn't need a - damn what are they called - tarjeta." In the magical world, gold worked everywhere. Muggles preferred the imaginary.

Everything about Iona was colorful. Not sparkling or dazzling, but vibrant and vibrating. Age hadn't dulled it at all. Zora smiled, feeling suddenly content though the retrod topic of discussion was not itself all that comfortable.

"No, I want to go," Zora said, forcing herself to admit it. "Honestly, it could be nice. Everything that's been going on - Kingstreet, Carter, Wav - go to a party that's actually a party. Not a wake in a bar or a mandatory office do."

She paused, then doubled back. "Did Balfour actually say that, 'lord of the manor', about himself? Blind me."

"Right, right, right," Zora muttered as Iona berated her for having not kept in active memory the romances of boys in other departments. She leaned forward onto the countertop, shifting her stance to let some pressure off her back. The granite was cool on her forearms.

This wasn't the first time Zora's wife had lately commented on their lack of public displays. They had always been career witches in male-dominated professions in a world that wasn't always accepting of women who loved women. An Auror and a werewolf hunter - vulnerability wasn't an asset, sadly. It was a difference between them, Zora still carrying around some shame and resentment about her sexuality. Iona always seemed so much freer in it.

"I gushed," Zora insisted, not helping a little smile. She tiptoed her fingers through the flower petals towards Iona. "I do gush. Just ... not at work."

It didn't need the exception at the end, probably. "There's nothing dirty about us. I just don't need to bring everything about me to the job. It's the job. It doesn't need to meet every need."

Zora didn't often speak so introspectively, but behind Iona's joking tone, Zora knew there was real concern.

Oh, Merlin, they had called her ginger-pale lesbian wife a 'potato'. Zora shriveled up a little at the memory, of her parents tittering at Iona's expense and pretending they weren't. If Iona was bothered herself by the recollection, she didn't show it. For all her tempers, Iona chose some battles for a laugh, utterly disarming them. Disarming Zora, too.

But Zora wasn't prepared for what was hiding among the envelopes. There were flower petals in the kitchen. Fresh, velvety, fragrant white rose petals. If it was a prank, it was a very gentle one. Zora reached for the card. It was not a prank - it was a wedding invitation for Balfour Spectre and Johann Storm.

"Johann Storm? Did I know this?" Zora asked, doubting herself. She really ought to know.

"I'll find white ones," she said of the sunglasses. She read card again and flipped it over to check the back, as if there might be more. Then she set it back on the worktop. "I want an estate. Buy me an estate, will you? Damn, April in Edinburgh. It's going to be lovely."

Zora seemed almost disappointed to say so. Jealous a bit, maybe, but not exactly that. She and Iona didn't do a proper wedding. They'd both claimed they didn't want one, neither of them the kind to enjoy planning that sort of thing, no money to hire anyone to do it, none mentioning the tense family dynamic.

Well, thank Merlin, Moore knew the Basic Rule of Paperwork, even if he didn't seem confident about it. But trainee Hericho wasn't as smart with her answer. Zora crossed her arms and shrugged.

"Congratulations, Hericho. That's double shifts for a week," Zora said. "In the file room."

A smartass Trainee was about as useful as a candyfloss paperweight. Junior Aurors needed to be able to follow orders at the drop of a wand without question, without second guessing. Being mouthy in the bullpen was not a stop on that journey.

"And when reports don't get filed," she continued, "evidence gets lost, cases get botched, leads go cold, and shite rolls uphill around here. It's my ass when the Wizengamot dismisses a case due to lost paperwork. Do you understand?"

And the two miscreants appeared:  Moore (trying to play innocent), and Hericho (trying to suck up). Neither strategy would do much to calm Zora's vexation.

"That's Auror Roh to you," Zora said, stabbing a finger at Moore. She was well aware her name was a tongue-twister but she'd worked too hard for people to still be fouling it up, especially brand new baby Aurors.

"This report is a week old!" she snapped waving the paper-clipped stack of papers in Hericho's face first then flinging it towards Moore. Of course, the pages just erupted into a gently and wholly unsatisfying flutter, like guilty leaves, none of Zora's wrath satisfied by the gesture.

"What happens when reports don't get filed?" she demanded of either of them. Or both of them. Whichever one was crazy enough to try to answer.

30 March 2012
9am, Friday
Auror Headquarters
Level Two, Ministry of Magic

Senior Auror Zora Roh had spent relatively little time in the Aurors' bullpen in the last few weeks. She'd been endlessly in the field and what felt like longer in the Wizengamot's corridors and offices. That was the trouble with closing cases - the true paperwork began. There were depositions, hearings, interviews, and endless reports refiled with multiple lawyers. And all the time Zora was meant to be supervision the greener Aurors in same.

On such a morning that she was actually in the honeycomb of desks and cubicles for more than a breath, Zora came upon something so rage-making that she had to remove her sunglasses to massage the sudden migraine out from between her eyes. It was the desks of Moore and Hericho. It looked like a Theodora Kingstreet crime scene there was so much paperwork spread about. In addition, there were spare Auror robes with holes burnt in and used dishes. Zora knew that the young Aurors and Trainees thought it admirable to practically live at work, but this?

She chanced shuffling through it only to find in the second layer of neglected strata a priority report that had been missing for a week and was eventually redone.

"Moore! Hericho! What the bloody hell is wrong with you!" she barked into the room. They'd better be present, for their sakes.

Zora found herself on guard and suddenly a little concerned when Iona made the sincere motions of someone about to deliver news of heartache or import. But it was a fraud! Zora had, been, for two solid humiliating seconds actually taken in! She barked out a big laugh and pulled her hands away.

"Oh, sod off!" Zora smacked at Iona, unable to hide a wide grin completely. It was falling for Iona's act that offended her more than the comment about her sunglasses.

"Stops people knowing what I'm thinking!" Zora insisted gesturing about her face and eyes. "Mysterious. Inscrutable. It's a thing!"

She'd read it in a book. Or heard it on the wireless. It didn't matter. It worked.

"Maddening woman," Zora huffed. Only Iona could ever fluster her. "Punching a wall is more like it.

Confident with Charlene at the other wand, Zora could focus on the magic. She couldn't disagree with Charlene's evaluation, either, although Zora would not have expected that - creating an enchantment from a curse normally cast as a spell was very difficult. One had to infuse the object with an intention, and without the aide of runes, it was even more complex.

"That's well posh, isn't it," was all Zora took time to say, her false admiration colored with sarcasm. The diligence of murderers, honestly.

"Here we go..." she warned and let the time advance a bit. She winced at the effort of easing up just enough.  The room rattled when, in slow motion, the enveloped did exactly what Charlene predicted. It stretched, strained, and exploded at a snail's pace. Zora felt a tremor in her arm, but the containment spell held.

Then, as they watched, the pieces of the envelope moved away revealing a slowly shattering folded piece of paper. Instead of tearing or burning, the paper appeared to be sliced into hundreds of razor sharp shards. They moved as one like a cyclone, the edges of the pieces glowing white-hot.

Zora had never seen anything like it before.

"The hell..." she muttered. Then, "I'm losing it. Let's get clear. It's going to blow. "

Indeed it was. The pieces of letter were moving slowly but they were moving. In a matter of moments they would reach the edge of the secure bubble and return to normal velocity, to whatever will. Zora bought them some time to get out of the kitchen by growing the bubble, but ultimately, what was started must finish.

Zora, wand still trained on the letter, began to back towards the door, waving Charlene through first.

The owl's arrival was enough to roust Zora from the couch to fetch her own portion of wine, taking the envelopes along with her to the worktop. She defended her choice of cauldron handles along the way.

"Can't be seen brewing in some bucket..." she said as she padded in her stocking feet to the kitchen.

"Are they in?" Zora questioned. "How can vampires be in? Not as if they're navel piercings, are they? I'm not half as old as that liaison and somehow he's cooler than me. I don't believe it for a second. I wear sunglasses indoors."

It was a rather horrible thing to think about, that their very fashionable, very cool daughter Waverly had ended up at a vampire's bite because it was trendy. Zora felt direly out of touch, if that were the case.

 

It hadn't been an unintentional slip. There were some that knew of Zora's suspicion about Theodora Kingstreet, but she'd been hesitant to fully commit to it. It was preposterous that the most secure prisoner in recent Azkaban history could possibly be able to do this. It implicated Azkaban itself. But she trusted Charlene not to dismiss it out of hand for this reason alone. They had to follow the evidence.

Zora answered Charline with a tight smile and shrug of the shoulder. "It's my best idea at the moment. How about this - I'll begin the Time Slowing Spell and at the last moment, you can release the containment. And then, I guess we wait and see what happens. See what we can identify. Are you ready?"

Zora moved into position and shook out her hands. She let out a long breath to steel herself then raised her wand. As soon as Charlene was ready, Zora began. From a safe distance, she spoke the incantation and with great focus, she began forming a shimmering bubble that would, once complete, slow the advancement of time to a near stop.

Now, Zora was fully closing the spell. Just a tiny hole remained. "Now!"

Boys' club was right. Spectre's reputation was better that Carstairs, but most men Zora had ever known showed the teeth when they were challenged by a forthright witch like Iona.

"So we're investigating a vampire murder on in the MLE," Zora gestured to herself, "and all the while that lot in Creatures," she waved her hand towards the front door, "want to provide a legal defense for it?"

Zora scoffed. Then she had a thought.

"What if it's that liaison?" The so-called vampire liaison, Tristan Vaillancourt that Zora and Iona had met with.[1] He'd been so smooth and unharried, it was easy to see how he could be convincing.

1.	5 Feb 2012 - Sins of the Child