Diagon Alley
9pm, Friday the 9th of December
The last night before the Cold Moon

On the corner of Diagon and Knockturn played a fae floutist. Face almost covered by shaggy blonde hair, her pale fingers danced over a long pale flute. She'd enchanted a violin to gently accompany her, sweetly stroking a foundation for a macabre little melody.  She kept time with her shoulders. In her up-turned hat, golden galleons juggled themselves.

They were both hers - it was a quiet night for a Friday. But she was almost too entranced with her own performance that she didn't seem to notice. It was an unusual lapse in awareness for the street-savvy Nemo, an American teenage runaway (although she'd never use that word).

A pair of wizards hurried by her hand-in-hand with their collars drawn up. They nearly paused with concern for what looked like too young a person to be out on this moonlit night.

It was a cold night, and the glow of the nearly-full moon cut through the cut through the ghostly clouds to send moonlight dancing down the empty streets in Diagon.  It might have been the chill in the air or something about the time of the month, but the alleyway was largely abandoned tonight.  A few windows gleamed with bright, cheery light in the flats and homes that rose above the storefronts, as the residents of Diagon Alley went about their business and began to settle in for a quiet Friday evening.  The walkways below were nearly empty, with just a few lone souls hurrying on to their destinations.

Kurby had been cooped up in the Ministry for most of the day.  With heightened concern about another direwolf attack, the Capture Unit had partnered with Level Two to set up enhanced patrols in all of the regular locations. The reinforcements to their usually small numbers had left Kurby without much to do once the plan had been set in motion. 

So far, all had been quiet.  That was good, but by the time night had fallen, he'd snapped four quills accidentally while fidgeting and was ready to get out.  He'd come up with a half-arsed excuse about checking in with the various patrols, and everyone had grown tired enough of him pacing that no one argued with him when he left.

Diagon Alley had been his third stop.  It was probably also doomed to be his shortest visit:  Harris hadn't shut up since he'd arrived, and Gervais Bellingham, who had had the misfortune of drawing the night shift with the kid, looked like he was ready to murder both him and Kurby. 

"-- supposed to be dragons soon too, but the wolves themselves are really believable," Harris said cheerfully, apparently oblivious to the fact that everyone around him wanted to shove a wand in his eye.  "They're not like our werewolves, but they're still pretty big.  I read somewhere that they got real wolves to play them, so there's not even much in the way of special effects."

Kurby directed his gaze upwards.  It probably wasn't humane to consider setting up one of his teammates to get bitten by a direwolf, but in other ways, neither was this.

Harris continued to chatter as they passed by a couple walking in the opposite direction, fingers intertwined.  Kurby glanced after them, silently assessing, but the pair of passerby seemed intent on getting to their next destination.  Then, in the rare silence as Harris paused to take a breath, something else registered: the sound of music playing.

The ethereal duet was coming from up ahead where Diagon intersected with Knockturn Alley.  A young girl looked to be sitting there, weaving back and forth, as she played some sort of haunting tune on a woodwind.  Next to her, a ghostly violin added its harmony. 

Kurby frowned, pausing to exchange a look with Bellingham behind Harris's back.  That was the last thing they needed: some dreamy street musician dancing in the moonlight of the empty streets, and then getting bifurcated when a hungry direwolf appeared out of nowhere.

At the very least, dealing with the street musician was an excuse not to have to listen to Harris anymore.  Relieved to have found a reason to bolt, Kurby slowed down, motioning for the other two to keep walking.

"I'll run her off, and then head back to the Ministry," he instructed them.   "Send a patronus if you see anything before morning."

The withering look that Bellingham gave him could have made a werewolf cower, but Kurby ignored it.  Hands shoved deep in the pockets of his dark cloak, the silver of his chainmail glinting in the moonlight underneath, he veered off in the direction of the street performer.

"Oi!" he called to the fey-like musician.  "It's curfew!  Time to clear out."

A voice was incongruous to the quiet night, discordant to Nemo's descant. She kept playing, too experienced at street performing to allow interruptions even from, ahem, cops. She did lift her chin a bit to offer in-urgent acknowledgement and to see him better. Thin and dark. Might be sweet-of-face if he didn't wear so much fascism on his face.

Shortly she ended her number. Not too long as to be brazenly dismissive, but not to quickly to be sheepishly compliant. The violin kept playing. A smile crept across her face, crooked with a tiny scar on her lip.

"What curfew," she asked, unworried. "What year is it, nineteen-forty? You're not even a cop."

He didn't have the red robes that the Aurors had, or the badge that their competent Magical Law Patrol wore.

Nemo rested her arms around her knees and looked around. She wasn't alone on the street.

"Or is this curfew just for me?"

The kid took her time responding, and Kurby nearly rolled his eyes.  It was impossible to judge exactly how old she was with only the moonlight to see by, but she didn't strike him as much older than Figaro Sellaphix.  Certainly too young to be hanging out on the corner near Knockturn Alley on any night, let alone one lit by a nearly-full moon.

When she finally did deign to respond, her words did nothing to convince him that she was any older than she looked.  The kid's American accent stuck out like a sore thumb.  What the hell was with him running into so many Americans these days?  First Old Laz the vampire, than Harper Graves, and now this girl. 

 Not even a cop, she'd countered.  He didn't feel like picking a fight and arguing over jurisdiction, or dealing with the paperwork that would result if he decided to retaliate against her mouthiness by accuse-and-detaining her.[1]  He just wanted the bleeding kid off the street so that she wouldn't be a sitting puffskein if a direwolf attacked tonight.

"Just you," Kurby said curtly.  He'd stopped to face her now, no-nonsense and grim in the silver and dark leather typical of the Werewolf Capture Unit.  "It's a full moon.  Come back and play tourist another night."

1.	One of the Werewolf Capture Unit's only legal powers is the ability to accuse-and-detain an individual suspected of being a werewolf for 72 hours.

Tourist? Nemo's opened her mouth is demonstrative offense. How dare!

"I'm not a tourist and it's not a full moon," she said and stood up, resolving that whoever this dude was she wasn't going to let him get a rise out of her. But she had stood up; the likelihood that he'd leave her alone was, um, nil.  She could find another place to play, get cozy in a pub, or maybe just go home - but because she felt like it, not because some hall monitor says she ought to.

She turned to her floating violin and took it out of the air and tucked it back into its case, keeping an eye on him while she did it.

"So, who are you with? You don't read as a concerned citizen."

Nemo picked her her hat and pocketed her change. "Oh -" she held out the hat. "Owe me for the song."

The little musician seemed intent on arguing with everything he said to her.  But even as she protested, she began to pack up her instruments, apparently preparing to abandon her post.  Kurby watched her silently, waiting to make sure that she had fully moved on before he apparated back to the Ministry.

A cold wind blew out of Knockturn Alley, rustling his cloak and making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  Kurby glanced warily down the alley, and then back at the girl, silently wishing she'd hurry the hell up. 

But now the kid was talking at him again.  Not satisfied with merely challenging his authority, she held out her hat, as if he was supposed to pay her for the privilege of overhearing whatever the hell she'd been playing when he'd bothered to stop and run her off for her own safety.

Kurby stared stoically back at her.  His dark eyes flicked over to examine the proffered hat for an instant, apparently where he was supposed to deposit whatever the hell she thought he owed her, and then shifted back to stare at the kid again, his expression unmoved. 

She'd said she wasn't a tourist, but clearly...  If she wasn't from here, she likely didn't know about the direwolf situation in the United Kingdom.  Smart-mouthed kid or not, he'd rather make sure she was aware of the potential threat. 

"Werewolf Capture Unit," he said after a beat.  "We get werewolves around here sometimes for seventy-two hours around the full moon.  So be careful with your sightseein' until the sun sets on Sunday night, aye?"  After that, if she wanted to linger so close to Knockturn after dark, at least she wouldn't run into anything that was officially his problem.

Nemo tsk-tsk'd when the wizard kept his coins. She turned the hat up and onto her head and straightened the brim.

Then at last, he revealed his purpose: werewolf control. She gave him a hard look as he explained the dangers that inspired him to bug her. Nemo wasn't too proud to admit his warning was worthy of heeding and so bent to get her things: the violin, her rug, and the flute that she'd rested on it. Werewolves that roamed outside of their time? Questions came, but for some reason all she though of was Dale[1], the generous werewolf and healer who'd been ready to give away her teeth, who'd warned her away from unicorn blood.

"Woof, can't argue with that," she admitted. "It's dinner time, anyway."

Then, Nemo heard something. At first it didn't seem real, but then the wind carried the sound more clearly. Someone was crying.

"Do you hear that?" she asked, her whole aura instantly changed. Changed from troubadour to protector, head to toe. Nemo didn't hesitate: she put the violin case strap over her head and moved towards Knockturn Ally at a trot. Someone could be in trouble. Someone who sounded like her. Maybe it was nothing, but ignoring it wasn't a choice.

"Hey! Hey, are you okay!" she shouted in her alto, barely shaking. She didn't notice that the little pale flute in her hand seemed to glow a little more than moonlight would inspire.

1.	The only name she knows Lexus Dale by. Oct 16 - Awaiting a Werewolf

A second gust of wind rushed out of Knockturn Alley, and he heard it too: the plaintive sound of a young woman crying.

Kurby went still, his face expressionless, as he stared into the darkness.  Knockturn Alley didn't frighten him; he'd spent plenty of time beating down doors and knocking heads throughout its ignominious streets, and he was friendly with a few of the regulars, like the Sellaphix family.  But rushing headlong into it after hearing someone cry was just about the textbook example of What Not To Do from his old Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.

With the increased patrol activity tonight, all he had to do was fire up a shower of Red Sparks! and backup from the Ministry would be there quickly.  But knowing that Tawse or some other malcontent was stirring up trouble again, even that didn't necessarily seem wise.  The smart assumption was that the crying woman was bait for some sort of trap, meant to lure them into the alleyway for something nefarious.

But before he could decide how to respond, the kid had taken off for Knockturn Alley like some sort of minstrel hero.  Kurby blinked after her, left flabbergasted in her wake.

"Hey!" he snarled after her, but it was too late.  Off she went, violin slung over her shoulder and pale flute glowing in her hand.

The werewolf hunter directed his gaze upwards for a moment, wondering if he had the patience.  But chances were good that he had a fighting chance against whatever the hell had decided to try and lure them down the dark alleyway.  The impetuous little American kid, with all the brashness that he might have expected from her, wasn't likely to be so lucky.

He silently freed his silver chain from where it hung on his belt, looping it loosely over his shoulder so that it would be more easily accessible.  Without a word, he stepped up behind the kid, who had stopped just shy of the entrance to Knockturn Alley.

"That's how idiots end up dead," he informed her in a low voice, as he tilted his head and listened.

Everything was silent inside the shadowy alleyway.  A few buildings in, he thought he could see a light on upstairs at the Sellaphix Apothecary: probably Rafe and Zelda shutting down for the night.  But then, out of nowhere, a cool breeze blew towards them again, and he could hear someone crying once more.

"Help!  Someone!"  The distant voice let out a wrenching sob.  "Please!  Help me!"

At the command of the wizard, Nemo slowed and stopped. The unofficial line between Diagon and Knockturn was a sudden change in the maintenance of the cobbles. Diagon's smooth and worn, Knockturn's cracked and uneven and grey. The cold wind blew and Nemo's adrenaline flowed in rhythm. And although Nemo wasn't afraid, her hands were shaking. Maybe it was a code or something, maybe it was her youth, maybe it was learning too early to be sick and tired of just letting things happen, but Nemo wasn't afraid. Not for herself at least.

She looked up at the wizard, not sure what to do with him but he'd have to drag her away to stop her going in. She'd never be able to sleep if she walked away. Normally, she'd be ready with a poetic retort for being called an idiot, but another shattering wail made her voice catch in her throat.

"I don't just let things happen, dude. Not anymore. You can stay or you can go, but..."

As she said this, she found her wand and began backing into Knockturn. She looked at him, her expression subtly changing from steely defiance to worried request. Alright, maybe she was scared. Maybe it would be better if a fully-trained combat werewolf hunter came came along, even if he was kind of an asshole.

She made a pleading little gesture, one of impatience and resignation.

"C'mon. Don't be a dick. Something's wrong."

If someone was trying to lure him into Knockturn Alley for some nefarious purpose, they knew exactly how to get under his skin.  Kurby squinted into the darkness, fingers dancing against his chain.  This was, he knew, exactly how people ended up dead.  The problem was that sometimes they died because they rushed headfirst into trouble without thinking, and sometimes because they called and called for help and no one came after them in the darkness.

The kid musician had apparently already made up her mind.  Kurby blinked, tearing his gaze away from the alleyway to give her a disbelieving look.  I don't just let things happen.  What the hell was that supposed to mean?  Was that some kind of personal manifesto?

He regarded her for a moment, his jaw set.  "All right," he forced out at last, his voice sour.  "I'll bleedin' well go and check this damned thing out.  You go back to your hotel, kid."

Nemo mimicked the wizard's disbelieving look with the scathing deftness only a teenager would be capable of. Then he tried to send her to bed. Who was this guy? Not any different than any of the Omaha cops trying to keep the Old Market tidy, not any different from the grandpas in Hollow Hill treating Nemo and her friends like nuisances.

"Save your paternalism. I don't need it," she said with a shake of her head and a shrug. Nemo turned back to the alley; Knockturn seemed immune to the light of a nearly full moon (full enough, so they said) and its street lights looked to operate on the honor system. Ominous. She raised her wand and then noticed it wasn't lit. She could have sworn... then where was that light coming from...?

The flute in her other hand, she'd forgotten it existed let alone that she was carrying it. Hadn't she put it in the case with the violin...? Just when she was turning it over to wonder at it, the voice keened again from the alley still in deep distress, increased in desperation but fading.

With one more look at the wizard, she hurried down into Knockturn.

It had probably been too much to hope that the kid would listen to him and leave.  Kurby didn’t know what the hell paternalism was supposed to mean, but it sounded like something that his sister Rosheen would throw into a lecture when she was complaining about the privilege of white male pureblood magical-kin.  Either way, he eyed the young musician unhappily.  He’d already agreed to go along with this idiotic quest; now he was going to have to go along with it and worry about keeping her safe through it all, too.

The kid took a moment to fumble with her glowing magical flute, which gave him time to take a deep breath and return his attention to Knockturn Alley.  Whatever it was that was trying to get their attention — assuming something or someone was trying to get their attention and lure them in — was being stubbornly and intrudingly persistent.  That made him think that it was something not human, like a hag or a vampire.  At least those were threats that he’d be more than capable of dealing with.

The girl cast a look back at him, and then hurried into the dark street of Knockturn Alley.  Kurby directed his gaze upwards again, gathering his patience, and then followed steadily behind her.

He’d heard once that Knockturn was just as old as Diagon, but in many ways, the streets here seemed older.  The edges were rougher; the cobblestones more sharp.  Most nights, one could find one or two cloaked figures hurrying down the street here, either making their way on an errand or going to or from one of the less reputable establishments for fare or rest.  He knew that a lot of the shops did their best business late at night.

Tonight, though, everything was quiet.  Most of the shops seemed to have shut down for the evening already, and even with the nearly-full moon, it was eerily still in the dark street.  Kurby glanced up at the upper floor of the Sellaphix Apothecary as they passed it by.  The light that he’d seen on a moment ago switched off, leaving the windows dark.  Zelda and Rafe must have finished whatever last errands they have and prepared to head home for the night.

Another breeze danced through the alleyway, tugging at his cloak and rustling his hair.  But this wind seemed warmer and more fragrant than the cold gusts that had rushed at them a few moments ago. It carried the hint of something sweet, like honeysuckle flowers, and a quiet, echoing sound that he couldn’t quite make out, as if someone was whispering from far away.

Up ahead, even the Shodding Arms Hotel looked to be darker than usual; there were lights glowing in a few of the windows, but most of the residents seemed to have gone to bed.  He could hear faint, tinny music coming through the grandiose doors of the Demon’s Head pub, where he occasionally went drinking when he was itching for a fight, but even the unseen crowd there seemed more subdued than was typical.

And then, he saw it:  up ahead across the street, about halfway down the alley between Sellaphix Apothecary and the ruins where the Black Chimaera once stood, there was one storefront that was very clearly open.

Lights burned brightly in the windows of Grimshaw Tailor and Alterations.  Outside the door, the barely-legible sign swung in the warm breeze, creaking a steady cadence.  Someone had made an effort to pull the sheets off of all of the mannequins that stood in the front windows, proudly displaying antediluvian, lacy-looking fashions that appeared to be at least a century out of date.  On the front door, they had even placed an ornate metal sign that read, in twisted, fanciful script, Open fore Busineff.

Kurby stopped short, his eyebrows raised.  In all his years of coming to Knockturn Alley, he couldn’t ever remember seeing Grimshaw’s lit up like this.  It had, as far as he knew, been a running joke since sometime in the ‘80s when his mother had first started bringing them there: several decades before, the owners at the time had closed up shop one day and disappeared, leaving the storefront darkened ever since.

He attempted to swallow, but his throat felt suddenly dry.  Uncomfortably, he glanced at the kid.

“I dunno if this is such a good idea —“ he started uncertainly.

"D-d'you ever feel like a moth?" Nemo asked quietly (almost a non sequitur), standing before the windows bright and warm.

The pull down the alley had been wrenching and panicked and cold. It was as much running from as running toward, somehow. But then Nemo's pace had slowed. The voice had faded away and there was nothing left to follow but a growing warmth and light. The uncanny sweetness of - she strained to read the sign - Grimshaw's. On the way down, the wizard's footfalls behind her brought with them a steady relief. It didn't feel like he was chasing her to drag her back to curfew; instead he'd given in to helping and hopefully given up treating her like a fourth-grader.

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Something wasn't right, not right at all. But it was clear now - the frightened voice that led them here came from no mouth. She glanced back up at him and gave him a gentle bump with her elbow.

"Don't be scared. My name's Nemo. What's yours?"

They were going to do this. This was happening and it was freakin' weird and a pair of names would do the tale better than 'kid' and 'some random guy'.

This was decidedly not what he had signed up for tonight.  It occurred to Kurby, too, that if a direwolf attack happened somewhere else in Britain while he was lingering around here, the Capture Unit and Level Two would have no way to find him quickly.  His responsibilities were more important than assisting this American kid musician on her strange nighttime quest.  If he’d been smart about it, he should have just fired off the Red Sparks! and been done with this entire mess.

But now he was here, standing in front of a shop that shouldn’t be open, with a bold-as-brass girl mumbling something about moths.  Now that he thought about it, he could recall bits and pieces about Grimshaw’s, faint traces of memories collected over his past three decades.  Whispers of strange occurrences, uncomfortable glances cast in the dusty storefront’s direction.  Hadn’t he heard something about Trevelyan or one of the other Aurors finding the body of some dead runaway girl here, a couple of years back?  He could even remember as a kid, when Shay had dared him and Dervla to race up and touch the glass, until their mother had gotten wind of their boldness and banned them all from leaving her side as they ran errands in Knockturn Alley.

Out of nowhere, the girl bumped his arm, which nearly made him jump.  Kurby shot her a withering look.  He wasn’t afraid.  He was careful, because nearly twenty years at the Ministry had made him learn to trust his instincts.  Right now, he was also angry, because something here thought it had the bleeding right to lure people in like moths to a candle flame.

He jerked his arm out of the girl’s reach, drawing his wand with his left hand.  “Bagnold,” he said shortly, his attention still fixed on studying the storefront.  “Kurby Bagnold.”

Silently, he cast the spell — Hominum Revelio. He could feel the magic swoop out from his wand, dive into the shop, racing through rooms, up hallways, and down staircases as it searched for any sort of human presence.  But it didn’t find anyone there, at least as far as he could sense it.

“It seems empty,” he said after a beat.  Finally, he glanced at the kid — Nemo, she’d called herself.  A surname?  A nickname?  He couldn’t tell.

“What the bleedin’ hell kind of a name is Nemo?” he asked, cocking a brow.

Nemo pursed her lips to hold back a smile when Kurby jerked away and shared his name.

"What the bleedin’ hell kind of a name is Nemo?"

"Psh! Rude," she said, not at all offended. If she hadn't wanted the attention she wouldn't have chosen a bleedin' wicked name. But you didn't just make fun of people's names, didn't Kurby know that?

"That's about as culturally sensitive as a toilet seat, Kurby, but nice to meet you." Nemo took a few careful steps towards the door and looked through the window.

"Doesn't look empty to me. Come on. Someone could still need help."

She opened the door and went inside, her wand ready in her right hand, the flute forgotten again in her left.

A twinkling jingle of a bell announced her entrance. Nemo was dressed all in black (because of course) and her slight figure moving among the towering headless mannequins and dress-forms made her feel like she was in a forest of golems. There were racks of bolts of fabric and hats without heads or hat-stands. The corners of her eyes were filled with deceiving figures, as if any of them would move on their own at any time. She moved along left to the sales counter.

Everything else in the shop although fashionably well out-of-date seemed fresh and new, but a large ledger lay beside the giant brass till. It looked like it better belonged lost under floorboards and made the dinner of insects. The brittle leather binding was grayed with cobwebs and dust. Something was probably written on it. Nemo reached out with her wand and began to utter a simple opening spell. But before she could finish the last syllable the book burst open in a cloud of dust. The binding cracked and the pages thwipped apart in a sudden gust of wind that sounded like a death rattle.

Nemo, already in a state of high alert, leapt about three feet in the air. She gasped in the dust, and squeaked out a hoarse cough. Stepping back, she bumped into a display of cravats. She didn't notice that she'd dropped the flute or that it rolled under a wedding dress hanging on a form.

"That was me," she declared in a whisper, which was all she could manage for the moment.