Absit Omen RPG

She nodded studiously as Moira quickly went through some care instructions for Léonie's new pet. D'Artagnan was purring in her hands, pressed against her chest, already at home with his chosen keeper. The squib felt more confident about her decision now: this kitten was exactly what she wanted.

          "...and they can be more loyal than an average cat."

Léo laughed in agreement. "Thanks for your help. I appreciate it," she smiled at Moira as the other menagerie staff finally made an appearance. "I'll see you around maybe."

Maybe. Léonie wasn't often around Diagon Alley after all... but between Dido and Nemo and Fig, maybe she had more reason to check on the wizarding world nowadays. She headed towards the counter with D'Artagnan purring away and a mental list of things to ask for.

She turned the page, on to the third sketch. Léonie was quickly forming an idea for the portrait as her charcoal strokes grew in confidence and speed. Nemo: Wayfarer at Rest. Aware of her existence in nature, of being contained by it and of containing it within herself. Girl who overflows her own cup wherever she goes.

The artist was only peripherally aware of their exchange just then - her thoughts occupied by placing Nemo in a different setting, something more bucolic or Arcadian.

           "What else do you like to do... just hang here and art?"

Léo flipped the page on to the fourth sketch, now working out the vague outlines of a rock pool. "I'm a barista at Blackwood," she answered on automatic and paused in her work to look at Nemo thoughtfully.

A smile crept across her countenance, acknowledging the dramatic pose. Playful, too. It needed some playfulness.

"Otherwise I just do whatever interests me, I guess?" she gave the question some actual deliberation, a furrow in her smooth brow. "Like, I wanted to put together a collection of portraits that explored light. Thematically. So I went to exhibits and photography museums. Talked to a uni professor about what they - muggles, I mean - what they believe light to be, scientifically. Went to a few light shows..."

Awkwardly, the squib trailed off and shot Nemo an apologetic look. "Sorry, I ramble if I get started. I just move on from one thing to another, really. What about you?" Léo turned back to her sketchbook, completing the fourth sketch with firm strokes.

Her mouth loosened into a smile while Nemo spoke about music. That helped - with her posture, her manner. It opened her up when she was talking music. And Léo was sure that she opened up beautifully when she was performing music. Musicians were like that. There were loads in east London coffee shops or pubs, and when they sang you saw them as somehow more human.

She finished the first sketch and flipped over a fresh page, starting on the second quick sketch. Her method was to speed sketch her subjects until she felt she could sketch on canvas.

           "Do you sell it? Your paintings?"

"Every now and then," she used soft grazes to form Nemo's brow in charcoal. "My mother negotiates a price if someone expresses interest. It's good money, you know, to keep aside for a very rainy day."

The kind of day you had to drop everything and disappear. Léonie didn't anticipate anything like that happening but it was a precaution she took out of the vague fear that someday she might have to leave her life behind, be it the result of disasters in either the wizarding or muggle world.

"I don't sell any of these, though." Léo added with a quick, shy smile. "Not without asking my subjects."

Léo dragged a stool over while Nemo was getting settled by the window. She carefully positioned herself on it, checking the angle at which she eventually wanted the portrait to be. Not a direct aspect... Nemo wasn't like Dido, she wasn't in-your-face or at least not in the same way. Dido threw everything to the forefront like a walking explosion. Nemo (as her clothes indicated) had conscious layers.

So you had to get at her from an indirect angle. Léonie took out one of the medium sized charcoal sticks and drew one leg up on to the stool so she could rest the sketchbook against her thigh.

            "How long have you been doing this?"

She started sketching out the general form of her muse, head downwards. Light and quick strokes. "Since I was a little girl," Léo answered easily - her mouth ran on automatic when she started drawing. "I always liked drawing. And then my family realised I was a squib so I went into it full time."

An easy introduction to herself. She was used to giving it, especially to wizarding people and anyone outside of the muggle art scene. Léonie smiled to herself as she loosely delineated Nemo's jawline.

"It's my magic. What about you?" she glanced up momentarily, hands still moving. "What's your magic, outside of wand waving?"

As Nemo continued to observe the painting, Léonie observed her. There was definitely something distinctly witchy about the other girl... like she could pop up in a Terry Prachett novel and be totally at ease. Didn't even need a hat to look it, either. But then again neither did the witches of old. All they really had was their craft. All any of them had, magic or not, was their craft.

            "So where should I be? This okay?"

"Just by the window is fine," she nodded her head at the sill, where there was plenty of room to sit in the morning light. "Maybe lose the jacket?" Léo rifled through a few drawers to get out her charcoals for sketching.

As a rule, she sketched her subjects to begin with. It was a good way to get a sense for how someone posed and it was much more lowkey for first time muses. She finally found her set of charcoal sticks in a cardboard cylinder, all of them of various thickness and length. Lovingly used.

"You can strip down to whatever's comfortable, to be honest." Léonie plucked one of the larger sketchbooks from her shelf before turning back to Nemo with a shrug. "It's pretty warm in here. I have the heating on full blast."

             "This is yours?"

"Yes." Léonie crouched in front of a small cupboard and dug out a few bags of crisps and chocolate pretzel sticks. "Somewhere to stick the squib daughter, right?" she flashed Nemo a dry smile as she tossed the bags on to a small table by the window.

Her parents had bought her the flat. It was hard to tell exactly why - maybe they knew she couldn't always stay with them or in the wizarding worlds, the way she was. Maybe they blamed themselves for her lack of magic. Either way, she didn't question it. This studio was her haven.

"You like that?" she glanced at the other girl, who was staring at Dido's latest portrait. "I wanted to bring out her insolence, you know, without emphasising on anything sharp...." Léo joined Nemo, looking up the depiction of their mutual friend. "Just softness, growth. I don't know yet if I like it."

She was going to give it another week and if she still didn't like it, Dido would have to pose again. But for now she had a different muse.

"So." Léonie turned to her visitor, taking another drag and handing the joint over. "Welcome to my studio. You have all morning?"

1045 hours. Shoreditch, East London.


Léonie breathed in her first drag of gillyweed smoke, coughing on the exhale as the rush swarmed her thoughts almost immediately. That was the problem with being a squib. Muggle contraband was okay but it wasn't gillyweed. Parts of her were undeniably magical and submitted best to magical substances.

She was sitting at the window in her studio, grateful for the brief reprieve from cloud cover that allowed winter sunlight to flood the busy space. A wooden board of mixed paints, half-finished, lay in her lap. The heating was on and Léo had stripped down to gym shorts and an oversized tank top; Robyn was playing loudly on her record player, D'Artagnan was napping amongst the canvases above.

A large portrait, eight foot tall, leaned against the wall by the window. It was a surreal depiction of Dido^§, dead centre, wearing nothing but a pair of high wasted paperbag shorts against the background of lush greenhouse. She was delicately holding a paper airplane with both hands and staring straight ahead.

Loud creaks sounded over Robyn's voice, and Léo shook some ash off her joint as she quickly hopped off the sill. Footsteps on the stairwell meant someone was visiting her - the studio was the only flat on the top floor of the three story building.

"Nemo!" she threw open the door, smiling openly at the witch she had met in Diagon - Dido's friend. "Come in," Léonie stepped aside and gestured at her general surroundings. "I have gillyweed and snacks, just in case this takes a while."

             "There are supplies on the shelves if you need some..."

"Oh, it's okay." Léonie's smile turned down at the corners just the slightest, "I still have all the stuff from my last cat, Puteh. He was a regular shorthair and he passed last month. Old, you know, but I was always worried he would get into my more toxic paints and poison himself."

She'd learned very quickly that cats were not like infant children, and did not put just about anything into their mouths. Puteh had tried to drink her coffee, though.

"Do Kneazle mixed breeds need any special supplies?" The squib glanced at the shelves Moira had pointed out. "We never had one growing up so I might need a crash course, if you don't mind." Léonie smiled, glancing down at the kitten held close to her chest - purring now. "I want to do this right."

            "You have to be sure to get my scar."

Léo took this as permission to more openly stare at the other girl's face, dark eyes taking in the elf-like nose, its silver piercing, the aforementioned scar. Yeah. She could do something interesting with this.... get it out of her system, something in traditional oils in actual daylight.

While Dido hummed and hawed over the records, Léo dug into her bag and took out a plain white card. It had her name, number, insta, and a studio address printed in strong black courier. Mum had a bunch printed for her last birthday, in an attempt to make her present herself more professionally.

"Here," she handed it over to Nemo. "Come see me one of these mornings, I work east." Even if she didn't like the cards Léo had to admit they were kind of useful. "I'm busy tomorrow but anytime before or after Christmas."

Dido handed back Three Owl Standard and Regina Spectre, setting aside the third record. "I remember when you wooed me like that," she sighed and struck a pose, back of her hand to her forehead. "Immortalised on canvas!"

Léonie giggled, shaking her head as she picked up her bag. "You get the biggest canvas, prima donna." The squib leaned in to kiss her friend's cheek and shoot Nemo another smile. "Catch you soon, yeah? I'll paint you all day."

"Oh, I like Stardust!" Léo looked up from the kitten, eyes bright. "I couldn't get tickets to that. You know Virgil Carstairs? I saw him as Rapunzel last year, it was wicked."

There were some things about magical theatre that just couldn't be replicated by muggles in the same way. People could fly and casts spells for real, and Rapunzel had actually had a long rope of hair that she used to do perform feats. Maybe she would go see their version of A Christmas Carol this year, just to find out how they were going to pull it off.

"I see a lot more muggle stuff," she added as she scratched behind D'Artagnan's ears, inciting a low purr, "so it's cool that Stardust uses muggle stories you know? Keeps things interesting." Léo looked down at the cat in her hands and smiled to herself. "I think I'll take him. We've bonded, no choice now."

And when she got home she was going to try and paint him, if he could sit still for a bit.

Nemo didn't want to say where she was from - which was fair. People didn't sometimes. They were private or they had baggage they didn't want to take with them. Léo gave a lot of vague answers to her muggle friends when they asked about her family so she couldn't begrudge anyone else doing the same.

"Our mothers are friends," she answered while she put away the St. Vincent album, "but, really, Dido's my muse. I paint her and for her - but she's only been shown in muggle galleries so far."

Which was a shame because Dido was ab-so-lute-ly divine and Léonie wished more people knew that about her friend! That was always her favourite part of painting portraits. You got to bring out the part of your subject that others might not always see; a vulnerability or a strength or something unexpected.

Léo looked at Nemo searchingly. "Have you ever been painted?"

             "So hey, you still do trade-ins, right? I'm in need of strings. My violin's jacked."

The other witch was here for business and Léonie smiled as Dido did a little salute, coming around the counter again. "Yep yep yep!" she said as she made her way towards the stairs. "Lemme just pop upstairs and see if we got the right strings. Don't go anywhere!" Her head of wild curls disappeared around the banister. A real pixie, Dido.

St. Vincent was still playing, so Léo picked up her copy of Ceremonials and snuck around to the record player to switch songs. She glanced over her shoulder at the witch.

"I'm Léo," her eyes matched the smile on her face, one of friendly curiousity. "Nice to meet you. I like your hat."

She lifted the needle, the music coming to a halt across the store, and quickly replaced albums. Florence + The Machine fit into place, spinning itself round and round. Léonie lowered the needle again and Seven Devils started playing; a haunting echo to begin with.

"You're American also?" she turned around, looking at Nemo, trying to memorise her face. "What part?"

Léonie let the kitten claw at the sleeves of her parka as she looked up, trying to imagine the witch in front of her working on a ranch. There was a lot she didn't know about the world of creature handling - nobody in her immediate family went into that kind of thing and her knowledge was restricted to what she read in the Prophet, or in wizarding stories.

            "Are they easier to follow than...Summer… Midsummer Night’s Dream?"

She frowned a little, confused by Moira's phrasing. "Oh, um... it's not a play? So maybe? It's a book about a bloke in 1600s France who joins the King's guard and meets three legendary musketeers. Adventure story, really cute."

Of course Moira didn't know it; there weren't even wizards or witches in the book, probably not something normal magical folk would read. That always made Léo feel something like pity for wizarding society - they missed out on so much cool stuff - but then she remembered it wasn't a two way street. Wixes could choose to access muggle stuff, rarely the other way around.

"Where did you watch A Midsummer Night's Dream?" she asked, curious now. "That's like, a really bad one to watch if you haven't seen any Shakespeare before." D'Artagnan mewed and Léonie picked him up again to stroke his back.

Léo made a sound that might or might now have been an excited squeal as she reached over to take the kitten into her hands, wrinkling her nose at its face. He was a tortoiseshell, with just enough scruffiness that she could tell there was some kneazle-ness in there. She carefully held him for a second before putting him down on the closest surface.

"Aw, he's a fighter!" she scratched underneath his jaw and glanced at Moira. "You must really enjoy this job, getting to play with cats and creatures all day."

The kitten mewled and Léonie melted, letting him push his head against her fingers and bat at the wrists.

"I like him. I'll have to find a funny name. D'Artagnan, maybe. Or Don Quixote. Did you know that D'Artagnan is suppose to look like Don Quixote?" she directed this last question at the witch, forgetting for a moment that not all wixes were widely read in muggle stories.

There were considerably more felines available than she was expecting. Léonie followed Moira, pausing to look at the odd cage or tank on their way. Spiders seemed like fun pets. Could she get a spider? Would that freak out potential models? Maybe she could get a spider later.... a cat friendly spider.

            "...within the orange markers are half kneazles, and the more ordinary cats are on the other side of them."

Her attention immediately drifted to the half-kneazles. Léo liked anything with mixed blood because she came from a culturally mixed background; it made her feel like she would have camaraderie with her future familiar. Of two worlds, two facets. "Are any of them troublemakers?" she glanced at the witch with a smile.

"I have a lot of time on my hands to train a kitten," Léonie added while she watched the cats in their various states, staring out sullenly or rubbing affectionately against the grate of their cages. "But maybe one that doesn't mind strangers? I get a lot of visitors in my studio."