15 September 2012
9pm, Saturday
Home of Alister and Vanessa Hollowred
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
A few weeks following 31 Aug 2012 - This is why he waited

The Hollowred apartment in the new and growing magical neighborhood in Newcastle was modern and ostentatiously appointed. Mr. Alister Hollowred was in business and Mrs. Vanessa Hollowred collected art. It hadn't been difficult to convince them to hold a little fundraising dinner for 50 or 60 of their closest friends. The cause was for the Unfortunate Urchin GrantOrphans were a no-lose cause. Utterly uncontroversial.

There were several notable figures in attendance. Among them, head of the Daily Prophet Barnabas Cuffe (and his wife WWN star Agatha Pendragon), wandmaker and niece of Garrick Ollivander (Tamzin Ollivander), former Minister for Magic Persepolis Zephyr, fashion designer Bruno Mwangi, Wizengamot Elder Amaravathy Kulkarni, and Douglas Prewett (Order of Merlin), to name a few.

The food was excellent. They got the chef and menu from Wolf & Lamb, a recently revamped and talk-of-the-town Salvador Falcón establishment.

In the sitting room, Barnabas Cuffe was in conversation with Douglas Prewett.

Outside, night fell and a vampire was on the roof leaning against the chimney and having a cigarette.

He was 'Cuffe' to almost everyone. He hated being called 'spry', but that's what he was. His aging bones were powered by ambition and ruthlessness. The Daily Prophet had been his for decades and he was a tyrant there. But in company more his peers, though, he was more tolerable. It was about who was worth his charm. An Order of Merlin, as eccentric as he was, was so worthy.

"Morwenna's out. They've brought in some American. MACUSA gent. Halloran or something."

Cuffe was talking about the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes switching out the Head Obliviator. Cuffe had it on good authority it was Glass's call. "Glass has a fondness for Americans if his new Mysteries pick is any indication. Odd fetish."

The head of the Department of Mysteries was Yavin Morgenthau also a transplant from MACUSA.

Doug was aware, on some level, that he was a man on a mission, but he was also so natural at dinner parties that he didn't seem at all burdened. A Legilimens might come out of the cheesemaker's mind more confused than anything else. Drink in hand, he was at ease conversing with Cuffe.

"We could stand for some more variety. Some Australians, Swedes, maybe a few Greeks - it'd be terrible for productivity but so much more interesting, don't you agree?"

He flipped back his cloak, a very pink number, in a nonchalant gesture only undercut by how casually he regarded the business of magical governance.

"Americans are so superficial anyway. They're all nice to your face in the same exact way."

Cuffe smiled, but it was more like a sneer, and sipped the brandy. Prewett was strange but had sufficient status and so he was in Cuffe's 'tolerable' column.

"They're bloody #@*ing annoying is what they are. Disloyal."

"You'd turn on Glass the moment it would sell you more papers," came the voice of former Minister of Magic and current International Confederation of Wizards Persepolis Zephyr. She had not benefited from Cuffe's pro-Ministry bias, at least not in the way her predecessor or successor had. But she offered the critique in charming good cheer.

"Hello, Douglas. Love the cape."

The plan was simple enough. All the enigmatic and sympathetic Doug Prewett had to do was open a window. That whole thing about being 'invited in' was a useful myth, but a vampire was flesh and bone and a locked door. Just a crack was needed. Laz was talented as a little brown bat.

Once inside, Lazarus would feel free to browse the place and find his stolen head, so long as Prewett provided sufficient cover and diversion. Nobody wanted a confrontation. Humiliation would suffice.

Doug accepted the gracious compliment with a little flip of his cape.

"Loyalty is in the eye of the beholder. A bit like smell," said he, who adored the scent of cheese.

"Or nose of the beholder, rather. The point is, loyalty is a tricky, complicated thing, but still so desirable. Quite like smell, isn't it?"

As he rambled on, he cracked open a window.

"Rather warm inside, isn't it?"

Cuffe had reached his limit on Prewett's weirdness. Cuffe couldn't imagine the task of finding something remotely intelligible to say about smell, and didn't think he should have to.

"Eloquent," was all Cuffe said before making some facial expression that hinted at an excuse to walk away, leaving Zephyr to endure the odd man.

Zephyr was much more of a sport, and smiled nicely.

"It takes a bold man to open the window of another man's mansion," she said, her voice a nice low alto. Then she peered down towards the entrance hall where a voice was echoing.

"I think I hear a bit of prose. Shall we go in?" She offered her arm.

Given who was right there, Cuffe might well have wished he had stayed put with Zephyr and Prewett discussing olfactory sensations. The American who passed through was hardly a favorite of his.

Judith Eastman was, by heritage, part of posh wizarding circles and was often invited to functions just like these. However, she didn't often grace them with her presence, finding the pomp and circumstance of the upper crust awkward.

Perhaps it was some understanding of the need to make nice as a professor at Hogwarts that brought her to the Hollowreds, perhaps a need for some gossip, or perhaps just the cause, but whatever it was, the witch was not alone.

With her was Max, a Scottish muggle journalist who had been her significant other for almost a decade now; a fiery presence when in his element, he could be rather awkward among magical folk, and so clung to his drink like a treasure.

In the motion of flicking some stray piece of lint off her partner's sleeve, Judy spotted her erstwhile boss.

"Ah, Cuffe. So lovely to see you."

Out of the cauldron into the fire! &@#%!

"Not really," Cuffe replied to Eastman, but pausing all the same to deliver the rude greeting. "You've brought the no-maj, how progressive of you. Have you seen Alister's Death Eater collection? Intriguing bit of history."

Along the walls of one of Alister's drawing rooms were shadow boxes of Death Eater memorabilia. Cuffe found it horrible, but he hoped Eastman would find it worse, a hint that it was a very bad idea for her to cart that old man around with her.

"They're starting," Persepolis said, passing by, tapping Cuffe on the shoulder but making eye contact with the handsome witch. Whom was she rescuing?

"The thing about dinosaurs is, they go extinct," said Max, his discomfort in his environment not enough to dull a sharp tongue. It helped that he hadn't been aware of the magical world until years after Voldemort's final defeat.

Soon, the former minister rolled in to break up what could have been some amusing repartee - or something worse.

"Cuffe had a gift for zingers back in his day. I think too much time in one role robbed him of that dynamism," Judy opined to Zephyr, loud enough for Cuffe to hear but only just.

---

Near the window, Doug Prewett was being his usual self.

"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," he said loudly, seemingly to a nearby wix. Really, though, the words were meant to carry outside.

On the heels of the couplet came a common brown bat. An actual bat would be heard chirping and seen to be fluttering leatherly to avoid fixtures and figures, but this bat was silent and sure and in a flash, not a bat at all, but a man-like being, swaying and holding onto his black hat. It was, of course, Lazarus Blackburn, the vampire who'd been waiting outside for Douglas Prewett's signal that the way was open and the coast was clear.

He clasped the wizard's hand. The hall was empty, everyone else gone to heed the hosts' speeches.

"Thanks and thanks again," he said, shaking the hand vigorously, even taking a little bow. He was peering further down the hallway though. So many wizards made a vampire a little jumpy. Even Old Laz wasn't immune.

"But to see the look on Hollowred's face with my own eyes," said Doug. He was a simple man, with simple needs - food, drink, sex with beautiful people, and revenge.

"I should go, see and be seen, lest they suspect me of anything. I'll be near the back with a drink."

He was famously fun at parties. In this case, he was invited for appearances, for charity, but usually it was for fun.

Oh, to be a wizard who could find themselves suspected of stealing a vampire's head, thought Lazarus. On the other hand, the wizard Hollowred hadn't come by a vampire head at a flea market now had he? Lazarus wondered what sort of wizard he would have turned out to be if he'd lived long enough. Such that it was, it was time to go shoppin'. He tipped his hat to the wand-haver and turned on his heel to venture deeper into Hollowred's warren.

Down a hall he tilted and up some stairs he lifted until he came to the room where he'd learned from a house elf the bodyless head would be. He hinged at the waist to inspect the door lock and handle. The kind of wizard he'd be, he thought, would be the kind who could teleport twenty-four inches or who could breach a mechanism. Sadly, oh, Lazarus would just have to use the key.

Out from his pocket and into the hole it went. A turn and click and entry was gained. He said to himself, "après vous," and gestured himself in.

The room was a gallery and a study with loving shelves and boastful cabinets. Hands clasped behind him, Lazarus perused the unseemly keepsakes. He found the head and frowned. It wasn't even the most prominent piece! That honor was reserved for a sat of three silver Death Eater masks.

"No accounting for taste," he mumbled.

The head itself was beneath a glass cloche. He had been a handsome vampire once, but was now petrified. It was a sorry sight and Lazarus went still as stone to see it. It was an abominable thing. Then with a deft motion, he removed the cloche and transferred the head from a stand into his nice little bag.

And then the head began to scream.

The screams carried across the house, into the room where the collection of distinguished wixes stood.

Doug heard it too. He thought he knew what it was about, or at the very least he suspected it would do Laz no good.

Seeking to create a distraction from the distraction, the onetime Order of Merlin recipient executed a pratfall, landing flat on his back.

"God help me," groaned Doug, slowly struggling back to his feet.

Alister's remarks trailed off as the head-keeper himself heard his Death's Head sounding. His guests heads began to turn, wondering at the sound. And then the murmur began. Alister, neck red with wrath, moved from where he was at the grand windows and his wife Vanessa was issuing an order to their house elf who blinked away dutifully.

"It's nothing!" the wealthy wizard insisted. "Please, enjoy the champagne. This will only take a moment!"

He drew his wand, fully intending to handle this himself.

Upstairs, Lazarus had been startled out of his skin. The bag tossed this way and that, heaving from the cracking movement of the stiff jaw.

"Shhh!" Lazarus insisted, holding up the bag and hissing through his finger pressed to his lips. "Goodnight fucking moon, will you? Shhh!"

From a setee, Lazarus snatched a tassled pillow and shoved both head-sack and pillow under his jacket. The sound was muffled, but the damage ws done. A house elf, called Shrub by the Hollowreds, popped into view; caught! Lazarus froze, inhumanly still, and stared back. For too long a moment, neither made a move at all.