Monday, December 19
17:12 PM
Camden Market, London

The Muggle streets of Camden were all lit up tonight for the holiday crowd.  Twinkling holiday lights illuminated the trees like glowing flecks of snow, and outlined most of the buildings so that they looked like they were made of frosted gingerbread.  In most of the storefronts, one could make out the outline of a brightly lit Christmas tree, each one different from the next.  Some were elegantly decorated in bright white lights accentuated by silver ornaments, while others were more of a hodgepodge of colorful decorations, pulled together with strands of cheerful, bright-colored lights.

It was the third day that he'd spent away from the Ministry, and Kurby had decided to spend the evening out walking.  With all of the recent happenings near Camden, it had seemed like a good idea to spend some time meandering near there, exploring the narrow streets of the marketplaces and wandering near the Lock.  If something happened near here again, he wanted to have a better map of the streets and alleyways in his head, much as how the Capture Unit spent time learning the terrain when they prepared to hunt down werewolves in rural locations.

Either way, though, it gave him an excuse to explore.  Normally, Kurby felt slightly out-of-place wandering amongst Muggles, but here on the streets busy with holiday crowds, there were plenty of people dressed even more outlandishly than most wizards.  Even though it was a Monday, most of the stalls were open to try and hawk their wares to last-minute shoppers, and practically every block, he encountered a street performer, a musician playing music or someone preparing to juggle in hopes of earning a coin from someone passing by.

As he rounded a corner alongside Camden Lock Market, he saw that a small crowd had gathered on the side of the street, clapping along as a small figure with a pointed black hat threw herself into a song on an accordion.  Kurby stopped short, squinting through the crowd at the young musician.  Although she was young, there was something about her voice that hinted at a deeper complexity to her talent, as if someone else were singing alongside her.

It had been over a week since the night in Knockturn Alley.  He hadn't really been actively looking for the girl since then, but he also wasn't expecting to run into her here, plying her trade in the middle of Muggle London.  Silently, the werewolf hunter crossed his arms against his chest, tapping his finger impatiently against his elbow as he waited for the song to finish.

He didn't recognize the song, but clearly a few in the small crowd did, because they joined her and sang along to the chorus.  Nemo seemed entirely in her element, jamming along on her accordion.  Apparently the loss of her glowing magical flute hadn't slowed her down at all in the musical department.

After another minute, the song came to an end, resulting in a round of enthusiastic applause.  The small crowd of Muggles began to dissipate, a few dropping coins in the girl's collection, others chatting as they resumed their journeys to their destinations.  Kurby waited near the back of the crowd, arms still crossed against his chest.  He didn't step forward until they were nearly gone, and the young musician had ducked her head and begun to count her haul.

"Still on your holiday, then," he remarked, studying the girl with a cool, dark gaze.  "And here I was thinkin' that if I didn't spot you around Knockturn, maybe you'd gone back to America for Christmas."

It wasn't uncommon for audience members to come up and have a word with Nemo after a number. Her favorites were always the little girls who wanted to press a key on her accordion or try on her hat. Her least favorite visitors were creepy dudes who came with their unasked for advice or cringey compliments. But the man who'd approached her fell into a category all his own: surly wizards who minded others' business. Alternate title: fellow moth and total stranger Kurby Bagnold.

Nemo stood up and looked at him with tolerance despite his condescension. "Dude, are you stalking me?"

Then she paused. Wait, did he actually still think she was visiting? But more pressing in her mind wasn't Kuryb's confusion about her legal status in the UK; it was the dizzying jerk of remembering again the flute and the ledger and the hole and the ossuary under the tailor shop.[1] Distraction had been the only thing that worked. Distraction and gillyweed. If ever she left her mind or hands unattended, each sought the warmth of Grimshaw's or, indeed, the warmth of the bone flute she'd left behind.

"What do you need, Kurby? You look like shit." Nemo didn't want to lose her spot. She needed ears and eyeballs and some Christmas cash.

1.	Dec 9 - Wisp and Bone, Haunt and Home

The werewolf hunter flicked his eyes upwards in a show of annoyance.  It was good to know that the American kid musician hadn’t lost any of her charm and wit just because they weren’t mired in some creepy, intrusive web woven with dark magic.

Her question, though, was enough to make him hesitate.  What did he need?  Or even, what did he want from this encounter?  For the past week, the eerie events in Knockturn Alley on Friday night had largely been overshadowed by what had happened on Saturday.  Aside from ambushing Briggs and getting a few scant details from Zelda Sellaphix, he hadn’t talked to anyone about what had happened at Grimshaw Tailoring.  All things considered, he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he wanted to. 

Kurby regarded the kid silently for a moment, his jaw set, but with the faintest hint of uncertainty to his expression.  Nemo — whatever the hell kind of name that was supposed to be — had been ready to run headfirst into the tailor shop that night, but she’d also been quick to apparate away once things had gotten beyond the point of weird.  She wasn’t a grown witch or wizard who dealt with dark magic as even a tangential part of her job.  She was just some street kid, a teenager who made a living by camping out on corners playing Muggle music.  It wasn’t fair to keep her mired in this just because he didn’t know what to do.

He kicked at the ground, scuffing the toe of his boot. 

“Nothin’,” he said, starting to turn away.  “It’s grand to know you can find places to play that aren’t the middle of Diagon durin’ a full moon.”

Nemo regarded him with a kind of amused, confused, standoffishness. The happy holiday crowds kept flowing around them, Nemo aware of their passing attention. She and Kurby, they hadn't exactly become fast friends that night, so Kurby finding her here happenstance or not was unexpected. Had he come looking, or had he just seen her and decided to say hello. Kurby Bagnold didn't seem the type to say hello.

She narrowed her eyes. He'd just come over for 'nothing'. He waited until she was done played, said something rude, didn't need anything, and now he was just going to go. Was this him checking on her? Was that last comment supposed to be some kind of, 'good that you're okay'?

Then it struck her. It was still with him, too. Nemo hadn't been able to stop thinking about that night, not for a minute. It was suddenly clear - Kurby was as spooked still as she was. On an impulse, Nemo began to quickly pack up her things.

"Hey, you wanna buy me a coffee?"

Kurby stopped short, giving a short huff of breath that spiraled like smoke through the cold air.  With his back to the girl, he silently considered his options. 

“Do I want to buy you a coffee?” he echoed sardonically, arching one eyebrow as he glanced back at her.  Rolling his eyes, he huffed out another sigh before she could respond, kicking at an invisible rock on the ground.

“C’mon, then,” he said shortly, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets.  “You pick the place.”

---

The girl had chosen a Muggle chai and coffee house not too far from where they’d started.  It was located in an old warehouse-like building made out of gray stone bricks.  Inside, the coffee shop was mostly unadorned, with a high, uninsulated ceiling and simple wooden chairs and tables, each decorated with a green succulent plant in an orange pot as a centerpiece.

Kurby had let the girl order whatever she wanted.  He had to fumble through his money pouch for the Muggle bills that he’d tucked away there a couple of years ago; luckily, once he’d puzzled through how much each one was worth, he had enough to cover the purchase.

It was much warmer inside the coffee shop than it had been outside.  Kurby pressed his fingers against the hot mug, raising it to take a sip of the plain black coffee that he’d ordered.  It tasted strong and warm and bitter as he swallowed, with a rich undertone like chocolate and cherries.

“What was the song you were playin’ when I walked up?” he asked after a beat, glancing over cautiously at the American teen.  “It was from a Muggle musician?”

Nemo quite enjoyed quietly watching Kurby shuffle through his muggle money, she stood at his flank with a grin but saved him the ordeal of teasing him about it. London wix were so helpless.

Back at the table, she picked the good parts off her pistachio muffin and sipped her giant coffee from the silly giant mug, which reminded her of Friends.

"Johnny Cash," she said, supplying the name of the artist. "American country singer. Folk. Gospel. Cocaine."

She might have talked more about it, but it was strange sitting with someone who very clearly didn't want to be here. Or at the least, was very uncomfortable with it. Nemo didn't know him well enough to guess if this was just how he always was or if something else was going on. It was a mystery to her why he agreed to hang out for a while if he didn't want to. Nemo was perplexed but her self-worth didn't hinge on this guy liking her.

"Why so sullen, sunshine?" she asked, changing the subject. She didn't want to talk about Johnny Cash. She was holding back asking him about Grimshaw's and the flute and the dreams and the bones. She hadn't been back to Diagon Alley because she didn't know what's she'd do if she was down there again.

"Why'd you come find me? Or are you going to pretend you weren't looking for me?"

He'd been so jittery about everything else a week ago that he hadn't paid much attention to the young musician who'd been drawn into Grimshaw's alongside him, but now he was starting to build a profile for her.  Young, American, seemingly Muggleborn -- or at least extremely comfortable around Muggles.  Kurby mentally filed the information away, alongside the note that she'd gotten annoyed when he'd called her a tourist.  He'd have to ask his sister if she knew anything about the singer Johnny Cash, assuming he managed to remember the name.

The girl's questions made him blink.

"I wasn't lookin' for you," Kurby replied, his brows furrowing.  He wasn't exactly about to explain why he'd been wandering around the neighborhood; Nemo didn't need to know about the direwolves, or his suspicions involving recent patterns.  "The hat and the music together are a bit of a giveaway."

That wasn't entirely a straight answer, though.  Nor had he given her a real response earlier.  The werewolf hunter hedged for a moment, considering, and then decided to hell with it.

"Have you been back to Knockturn?" he asked bluntly, watching her carefully.

It was still doubtful that this thirty-something glorified hall monitor hadn't sought her out, but Nemo opted to let the claim stand. He clearly saw her as a child, and okay okay she was sorta, and she'd wanted to pop him in the throat for correcting her grammar earlier same as when he invented a curfew for her. She was actually surprised she was here hanging out with an older dude who was essentially a stranger. Normally she'd never in a million years; it was deeply unsafe. But he'd rescued her from the hungry ossuary. Sort of. And even as they sat here, it seemed like he still somehow wanted nothing to do with her.

"Hang on." Even if he didn't intend to mess with her, she figured she should text someone. Abby. She took out her old-ass flip phone and shot a quick text to their apparent mutual acquaintance.

19 Dec @5:44pm - Guess who I'm with.

She flipped the phone shut and set it next to her coffee. The text had given her a quick moment to think of her response.

"Hell no, dude. Are you kidding?" She bit her lip and leaned forward. "But I want to. I just ... have you been having dreams?"

Dear God, had she just asked Kurby Bagnold if he's been having dreams? Prick response in three, two, one ...

”Hang on.”

Kurby blinked, brows knitting as the kid paused the conversation to pull out...some sort of Muggle handheld telephone?...and began tapping away at it.  Perplexed, he sat back in his chair.  He wasn’t sure if this was a Muggleborn thing, a teenaged thing, or an American thing, but it seemed a little strangely rude to interrupt the discussion so that one could tap furiously at the buttons on the device.

It occurred to him suddenly that here he was, out alone in a Muggle area of London where he knew enemies had been active, with a strange teenager that he didn’t know well at all.  The werewolf hunter shifted, giving a surreptitious glance at their surroundings, and adjusted his position so that he was sitting sideways on his chair, with one elbow on the table and his back to the wall behind him.  Rosheen had a Muggle phone that she used to send written messages back and forth with her Muggle boyfriend.  He doubted that Tawse would ever resort to communicating with that sort of thing, but Kurby would much rather be careful than dead.

Nemo finished her...whatever she was doing....and resumed the conversation like nothing had happened. 

She hadn’t been back.  If she was here now, he wouldn’t have guessed that she had been; something told him that whatever the shop wanted, it probably didn’t involve the two of them resuming their normal routine without harm.  Nemo bit her lip and leaned towards him.  “I just...have you been having dreams?”

Wait, did she actually just ask him that?  He paused, trying to decide how much of an arsehole to be in his response — he had, but really — when the weird Muggle device sitting on the table next to Nemo suddenly erupted into a furious, frantic buzzing.

Kurby started as if a spell had backfired.

“What the hell is that?”  He jerked back away from the table as if the Muggle device was going to leap across the succulent centerpiece to personally attack him.

Abby's flurry of texts interrupted them and Kurby about lost his skin. Nemo quickly picked up the phone where it wouldn't buzz too loudly against the table and looked around the shop to see if anyone had noticed a grown-ass man have a good startle over a vibration setting.

"Oh my god, you are hopeless!" she giggled. "It's a phone, dude."

She quickly skimmed them and smirked at all of Abby's absurd guesses.

an elf! (w pointy ears)
an LOTR elf (taller and cute w pointy ears)
Gimli the dwarf!
a goblin?
a pack of hip.grffs!
a pack of traveling troubadours!
your delightfully weird self!
The Doctor! (who) xmas special!

"I just texted my friend in case you kidnapped me." She then flipped open the phone and took a grainy picture to send back to Abby. Nemo figured she recognize Kurby Bagnold's scruffy, long-suffering, uncomfortable face. She was still grinning to herself. Dude was way jumpier than his gruff facade let on, than his dangerous profession might indicate.

Kurby stared back at her, his brows furrowed.  He knew what a phone was, but that didn’t explain the sudden, startling eruption of noise, or what Nemo was doing with it now, holding it out in front of her.  Uncomfortably, he edged his chair an inch further away from the table, crossing his arms against his chest so that he could avoid resting an elbow on the same surface that the Muggle phone had been sharing.

“Texting is...sendin’ written messages?” he asked, a bit uncertainly.

Muggles seemed to have far more options when it came to communications.  In the magical world, they generally had to choose between sending letters via owl, sending a Patronus — assuming the wizard could cast it, and that they didn’t need their wand for something else in the meanwhile — and sending up a spray of Red Sparks, in case of an emergency.  Even if they made unnecessarily startling noise, he could somewhat see the advantage of the Muggle method, if this kid could use it to send a written letter to her friend while sitting unassumingly at the table with him.

Nemo gave him a solid slow blink. How had Kurby survived this long in the world? Didn't know what texting was.

"I am not explaining phones to you," she said. What even was her life. Her phone buzzed again.

Good ol Baggynold! :pouting_cat:
where are you?? A cafe?

Nemo quickly responded with an affirmative and the name of the cafe and then pocketed the phone. It was clearly too much for Kurby to deal with. Again, she wondered, how? She might have happily showed him how it all worked, but not today. Maybe he'd be more sedate in his own element; in this muggle cafe he seemed like a fish out of water. His posture was nothing but on guard. Noting that gave Nemo paused. Should she be worried? Was this just Kurby being Super Basic Kurby or was this about Grimshaw's? Hell if she could figure that out. He'd been plenty moody when they'd met, but he'd been at least confident telling her off.

She returned to her dinner and decided moving forward she wasn't going to be such an ass to him. He clearly had some problems and she didn't need to be one of them.

"I'm serious though. You spooked as I am about the tailor shop? I keep thinking I hear that voice on the air." She really did believe that's why they'd found each other, even if he didn't really know. She wasn't aware of his other reasons for lurking in Camden.

Days were already ticking down until January’s full moon, and one of the things that concerned him the most about it was Tawse’s ability to block their communications.  Firing off Red Sparks and apparating from place to place had worked well for them for years, until suddenly they hadn’t.  He’d been trying to think about what kind of plan they might put into place instead — had even considered seeing if Pratt would go with him to approach Level Nine, to see if there was some kind of new spell they might be able to develop — but now a much simpler solution was right in front of him.

Kurby had been about to ask to see Nemo’s phone — to see if the American could show him how it worked — when she abruptly put an end to that, typed out another message, and then slipped the device away.  The werewolf hunter frowned, but decided to let it go.  There were several Muggleborns that he knew well at the Ministry, including Trevelyan, Blake, and even Harris.  They might have better ideas about how such a device could be adapted or mimicked to suit their purposes, anyway.

Swallowing, Kurby refocused on what the kid was saying.

“I’m not...spooked,” he said slowly.  Frowning slightly, he considered how best to phrase this; the desire to be a smartarse had somewhat faded when he’d gotten distracted by the phone, so being direct seemed like the best option. 

“But yeah — I keep havin’ dreams about it, too.  The same thing, with the breeze and the skulls and somebody laughing.”  He rolled his shoulders in a shrug, gaze flicking over to her.  “I feel like I forget most of it when I wake up, though.”

Nemo lifted her eyebrows, a bit surprised at a straightforward response, and not really comforted by the answer. She'd almost preferred if it was just her, but this was confirmation they were both beset by something. She wrapped her hands around the warm coffee and took a deep breath.

"I keep feeling like I need to go back. A pull, like there'd be something wonderful waiting for me, but ..." she shook her head with a wrinkled nose and a cringe. She didn't like Knockturn Ally and she was deeply wary of anything that felt this good. The draw was haunted at the edges by something dreadful and sinister. She couldn't forget the pit of bones. The whole in the floor that had just gulped her down, swallowed her up.

"Have you been back?" Even now, something in her wanted to jump up from the chair, grab Kurby by the collar and haul him to Knockturn. Just to see, the voice said. Just to see.

The werewolf hunter shook his head.  “Naw,” he said, tapping absently on his arm.  It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered it, just to see if the shop was all boarded up like usual, but the past week hadn’t left him with much free time and he knew himself well enough to recognize that he needed the weekend away. 

Besides, walking into some sort of eerily enchanted shop without knowing what he was getting himself into sounded like a definitively bad idea.  It was probably nearly as stupid as springing a werewolf-baited trap in the middle of London at night during a full moon, and he’d learned his lesson with how that had turned out.  He wasn’t about to let someone or something else take another cheap shot at him until he had a better idea of what he was walking into.

He hesitated, glancing at Nemo.  He hadn’t decided if he wanted to share all of this information, but the kid made it sound as if she was feeling the same sort of pull that he had been.  As much as he liked to keep his cards to himself, he liked the idea of a mouthy teenager going up against some unseen force without any information whatsoever to protect herself even less.

“I’ve been doin’ a bit of diggin’, though,” he said, a beat more quietly.  “I tracked down Nathan Briggs last week, the arse whose name was on the last line of the ledger.[1]  He admitted that he was there on the eleventh of November makin’ a sale.  He called the place ‘neutral ground’ — said as far as he knows, there’s no shopkeeper, and the building is always deserted and empty, so the Knockturn crowd uses it sometimes for illegal tradin’.”

1.	14 December - Cracking Skulls