March 11, 2009
3:30pm
Directly following Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

CRACK!

A frantic-looking woman with wild, dreadlocked hair just appeared into a quiet little alley in a quiet London neighborhood.  She was wearing a long coat and tunic - a style of dress that couldn't be linked to any modern styles.  She hurried down the street, looking over her shoulder.  She ran up to an apartment building and disappeared inside.

It was Niobe Thursby, a witch, and a reporter for the Daily Prophet.  And she had no idea what day it was or how she got home, or what she was running from.  All she could remember was panic and fear and lots and lots of shouting.

She got into her apartment, slammed the door and locked it seven times.  She leaned against the door and panted, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her heart being rapidly.  She put her hands to her head and cried out.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaugh!"  It was a call of frustration and anxiety - what was going on?  She was trying to get her bearings; not physically because she knew she was home, but temporally.  She rushed to her desk and began rooting through papers and scraps, searching for some clue. 

What time was it?  The Wild Beings clock on her wall said half past three.  It was the afternoon...? Where had she been? Why was she afraid? What day was it?!

A recent newspaper.  March 10.  It was March 10? Or was it later? The panic was only growing as her mental tally continued to turn up blanks. 


What?  Niobe furrowed her eyebrows as a thought came into her head.


Yes... 


Yes! Yes!


No!  Niobe's jaw dropped as she remembered a day in her sixth year of school, when they'd been instructed in identifying the signs of Oblivation in their Defense Against the Dark Arts class. 

"Maggie!"  she shouted a name.  Whose name was it, though? Maggie Groust! Her friend! She lived across the street.

As fast as Niobe'd come into the apartment, she was dashing back out, across the street and up to Maggie's door.

Bam! Bambambam!

"Maggie!  Maggie! Alohomora, Maggie!"

Maggie Groust was blissfully unaware of the werewolf attacks taking over Diagon Alley and other areas. Her day had begun with a series of minor misfortunes: she'd woken up late, fallen in the shower, and spent the morning clearing up an argument with her Dad via owl. This led her to stopping by the Prophet later than usual, and then swinging by Reducto Records on a whim. Now, she was rummaging around in the cabinets at her flat, chatting with Jacoba over tea, and discussing plans to head out to dinner with a group of friends in the evening.

So when a flurry of banging sounded and Maggie dropped her cup of tea on the kitchen tiles, it was good luck and coincidence that led to her being home at this exact moment.

Of course, she didn't see it that way.

"Oh, feck my life," she muttered, waving her wand at the shards of glass and levitating the broken cup over to the sink.

"I'll be right there!" Maggie hollered, widening her eyes at Jacoba to try and communicate that whoever was knocking really needed to learn some patience.

She hurried towards the entrance, nearly tripping over the pet pig, and cursing as she fumbled with the locks and finally threw the door open to reveal her neighbor from across the way, Niobe.

Maggie frowned and stepped back to let her in. "What's wrong with you?"

Her hair looked wilder than normal, her coat dustier, and now Maggie remembered a frantic voice in the middle of the knocking.

When she had a story to share, Niobe had an enthusiastic, boundless energy about her. But this was the look that told Maggie she'd gotten in over her head and had possibly lost a second finger.

Yes, tea.  They were having tea.  Or, as in Jacoba's case, coffee.  Jacoba didn't have tea and her small though growing collection of British magically-capable friends were slowly growing accustomed to that fact.  Despite their primary residence being a stone's throw from London, having tea had simply been far too British for the Schlagenweit household.  It was a habit none of them had really ever developed.  Except, perhaps, Anna. 

So, while Maggie rummaged through cabinets, chatting over tea, Jacoba lay sprawled out on Maggie's sofa, chatting over a double cappuccino.  She'd done enough crashing on strangers' couches; it didn't take much for her to feel comfortable enough to sprawl on friends' couches. 

Luckily, Jacoba's own heated beverage had been resting safely on the coffee table when whoever it was came pounding on the door.  She bolted upright, cast an alarmed glance between the door and Maggie.  To be honest, though, she wasn't quite sure what was more captivating: the sudden (and demanding) visitor or the levitating broken cup. 

"Someone's impatient," she offered to Maggie in exchange for the wide-eyed glance as the cup landed in the sink, ending the show. 

Jacoba pushed herself to her feet and followed a few steps behind Maggie.  She made a quick grab for the pig as it tried to waddle past the commotion into the hallway and drew it back out of Niobe's way.  With her hands still on the pig, she reached out to nudge to door shut with her foot after the woman. 

The door opened and Niobe wasted no time bustling in and commandeering control of Maggie's (and Kianna's and Colette's) door.  She slammed it shut, locked it all up, and put her back to it just as she'd done at her own flat.

Seeing Maggie standing there looking grouchy was blessedly familiar - and Niobe was grasping and gripping at anything that set her firmly back in a proper state of mind.  From what she had been able to piece together in her panic, she couldn't have lost very much time because she could remember going to bed last night, and she even remembered getting up.  She thought...  But just the idea that she might have been Oblivated at all, at any time, seemed to put all her memories on a shaky ground. 

Still not able to remember why she was afraid, she whirled on an unfamiliar person in the flat, holding the pig.  "Who -!?" she barked.  But the face realized in her brain and she was happy she remembered before she raised her want.  It was Jacoba Schlagenwiet, the muggle woman Maggie and the others had befriended; Niobe'd met her at Halloween at the St. James's. 

Content that she was safe for now, she got up off the door and started pacing the room.

"I've been Oblivated!" she stated dramatically, with a broad gesture. Then with  a slight slump, "I think?  What's today? Have you seen me already today? Where've I been? And why am I scared shitless? Hmm? 

In an unusually calm aside to Jacoba, Niobe remembered her manners and briefly explained - "Memory-wiping charm."

Maggie shot a grateful glance at Jacoba for stopping the pig from bolting outside like the escape artist it was. She glanced out the door's upper window the moment it slammed shut, somewhat worried by Niobe's dramatics that an ax murderer was after her. But no one was out there, and all was peaceful on the block. No Jack Nicholson look-alike, or angry Runespoor momma. You just never knew with Niobe.

Obliviated? That was... different. Maggie let out a skeptical snort and led the way back down the hall. Obliviation was one of those things that everybody feared, but few witches and wizards actually experienced. So it got a lot of hype and warning signs and rumors that spiraled into tall tales, when in actuality, the spell was often reserved for muggles. Like Jacoba. 

Maggie glanced at Jacoba, then at Niobe. "Alright, I'll bite," she shrugged, fetching two new cups from the kitchen and pouring the rest of the tea. She slid one of the cups towards Niobe and took the other for herself.

"It's March eleventh. About 3:30," Maggie checked her watch. "No, I didn't see you earlier today. What's the last thing you remember?"

She raised her eyebrows and sipped her tea nonchalantly, believing that Niobe would either stop joking around soon enough, or realize that forgetting where her keys were didn't mean she'd been obliviated.

The bewildered Niobe seemed to be casting around for something and, in the process, suddenly noticed Jacoba standing there, an annoyed pig corralled between her hands.  She loosened her grip on the porker as the door closed, straightening up to offer a placating gesture with her hands. 

"I can go," she offered, Maggie, quietly, gesturing to the door in a you look like you've got your hands full manner. 

But, recognition seemed to dawn on Niobe and Jacoba hesitated when the woman declared she'd been obliviated.  "What?  How?  By whom?  I thought they just did that to us."  Jacoba looked between the two women, fully aware they didn't seem to know, either.  There was still plenty about the wizarding world Jacoba was getting familiar with but her understanding of memory charms was, definitely, not lacking.  The Ministry hadn't wasted any time in mapping out what to expect if Jacoba ... overstayed her welcome.  She simply nodded at Niobe's definition.

Jacoba shrugged slightly as Maggie glanced at her.  "Wednesday," Jacoba tagged on after Maggie declared what day it was.  She didn't have a clue as to whether or not that was even useful.

Niobe paused, stock-still.  "Maggie, you don't believe me!" she accused with her index finger. 

Waggled finger!  "You're not nearly as upset as you should be, Maggie.  I need you to freak out, please! That's what friends do. Right, Jacoba?"  Niobe rounded on the other witch woman, almost daring her to defy her by being calm.

"I can't remember the last thing I remember," she said with frustration.  "I remember breakfast.  I remember...the bank!  I was at the bank! In Diagon! I went to Gringotts! I was at Gringotts!" 

Angry Niobe was suddenly becoming her old self again as she finally remembered some part of her day.  She looked back and forth from Jacoba to Maggie to Jacoba.  "This afternoon, I was at Gringotts.  I was there to change some muggle money as I'd run out of cash for Indian Restaurant.  And then, I...  And that's it.  Next thing I'm running up to my building feeling like a dragon was after me."

She slipped off her shoulder back and collapsed into a chair.  "I have no idea what one does when Oblivated," she admitted.  "I need to find out what I was meant to forget - It's probably very thrilling," she lamented with drooping dreadlocks.

Niobe's wagging finger caused the briefest of guilty expressions to flicker across Maggie's face, but she didn't respond, letting her talk out what she remembered from earlier. Maggie hopped up on the counter and sat there with her tea in her hands, understanding Jacoba's confusion and trying to work out the next logical step.

Maybe Niobe had been obliviated. It was a possibility Maggie was reluctant to think about, because that was serious. Messing with someone's head was a big wizarding no-no. Still, if anyone was going to get randomly obliviated, a reporter like Niobe (or Maggie) must be at the top of the list.

She frowned, tapping her fingers against the side of the cup.

"You're probably right," Maggie admitted. "At least about the thrilling part."

Setting the tea down beside her, she gave her friend a thoughtful look. "Were you supposed to interview someone today? Were you planning on going somewhere after the bank?"

Maggie suspected that the most sensible course of action would be to head to St. Mungo's immediately and try to reverse the damage. She couldn't resist asking a few questions first, though.

Jacoba glanced between the two friends as Niobe cast an accusation across at Maggie and then looked to Jacoba for backup.  She quickly nodded her head as the finger turned towards her. 

"Yeah.  Friends freak out."  Right now didn't seem to be the time to be disagreeing.  And, while she was avoiding an actual, official freak out, it was only just barely.  She, probably more so than the others in the room, spent a good deal of time worrying about this exact scenario. 

She nodded as Niobe recounted what of her day she remembered.  "Well, you have to have been zapped by someone," Jacoba asked as much as said as she glanced between the two women.  She was far from being the expert here but she'd assumed one didn't just .... spontaneously loose their minds.  Not without chemical assistance and Niobe just didn't seem the type.  "Do you remember anyone there?  At the bank?" 

"You can reverse getting obliviated?"  Jacoba asked, as much for her own benefit as Niobe's.  "Is it those Obliviators?  Or is there someone else?" 

Niobe pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead and grunted out an obscenity under her breath.  This was so bloody bizarre!  She thought hard about Maggie's question but the answer was a simple, "No! Nothing - was just going to get back to the Prophet and get some copy down.  Shit! Cuffe's going to murder me," Niobe said when she realized she was probably expected at work.

"Screw, Cuffe - I'll take a sick day...." she managed with some humor. 

"There are treatments," Niobe answered Jacoba vaguely, "I don't know exactly what they do, or if you even get everything back.  You don't really hear about any- my notes!"

Niobe nearly dove for her bag which was next to her on the floor, having interrupted herself.  As she rooted in her bag for the small notebook, she explained. 

"I always take notes if anything remotely interesting is going on, and if anyone had reason to Obliviate me it was damn sure interesting! Let's see, let's see, let's see...Ah! Here it is! Here it is!!"

Niobe fumbled with it a moment, her hands shaking with anticipation as she rapidly read the tight scrawl of her Verbatis quill.

"Three pm, March 11, Diagon Alley.  Four, no five, witches and wizards are engaged with what appears to be a wolf-like creature.  Uncanny resemblance to a werewolf.  Check facts.  At this point, no injuries, I see no bodies.  The werewolf -Stupefy!"  Niobe looked up at the other two witches her eyes aghast. 

"Aw, shit, it's all muddled here - I must have dropped it or something."  The markings that filled the rest of the page were scribbled nonsense, as if the quill was trying but unable to mark steadily.  She flipped the page.

"Here here here, there's more - Cináed Tawse, Ministry's Most Wanted, spotted in Diagon Ally.  In possession of a wand.  Known murderer! He stands bold as brass in broad daylight moments before law enforcement are expected to arrive! Are you fecking kidding me? Obliviate! Obliviate, obliviate, obliviateobliviateOBLIVIATE!" Niobe read on as rapidly as she could, her voice getting more and more agitated as she went on.  Someone had been casting spells, but the quill didn't annotate the names of the speaker.  She assumed the narration was her own, but the spells cast? It must have been Tawse, that fecking skunk!

"Thursby! Still got your daft head? What time is it?  What happ- And that's it..."

The notebook dangled in her hand as she looked slack-faced at Jacoba and Maggie.  She swallowed a lump in her throat, and her nostrils flared.

"I'll kill him," she whispered, all traces of fear gone.  "I don't know what the hell - I'll.... I'll kill him."

Jacoba and Maggie's questions, though well-intentioned, didn't seem to be doing much good. Maggie soon perked up when Niobe dug out her notes, looking over her shoulder as her friend read them out loud.

"Werewolf?!" Maggie interjected at some point, brow furrowing.

What could be more shocking than 'werewolf in broad daylight'? Cinaed Tawse, that's who. The very name caused Maggie's expression to darken as Niobe arrived at the same conclusion she did: his fault. All of it. Must be!

Her calm and sensible approach flew out the window to make way for some serious stomping about.

"Uh-uh, no." Maggie shook her head fiercely. "I'll kill him. Bloody bastard!"

She threw her hands up in the air and paced the kitchen for a few moments. "Ok. Alright. We need to get you to St. Mungo's," she pointed at Niobe. "Try to get your memory back, so we know exactly what happened. And then!" She pointed her index finger in the air. "He is going to pay!"

Mags didn't know what she'd do, what any of them could do, but the principal of the matter was that Tawse was to blame, because his very presence spelled bad tidings, and he must have been the one who had erased Niobe's memory, because he was a jackass and clearly up. to no. good!

She stormed out into the hallway, grabbed her coat from the closet, and stormed back, looking ready to wage war. Then she glanced at Jacoba, remembering she was a muggle and might find the murder conspiracies a bit unsettling.

"Did you want to stay here or come with? To Mungo's," Maggie asked her bluntly, impatient to take some sort of action. Jacoba could be there at the hospital, at least. Killing Tawse might best be left to the witches. Or actually, the professionals, which definitely did not include Maggie.

A flicker of doubtful incredulity flashed across Jacoba's face amidst the concern and alarm.  There, of course, were lame excuses out there for missing work.  Perhaps she was biased but getting obliviated seemed like it'd fall under the classification of 'valid excuse.' 

"Can you ask those Oliviator blokes?"  As a general rule, Jacoba preferred to avoid anyone associated with that part of the Ministry but it seemed that if anyone should know about reversing the spell it was them.  On a few occasions, Jacoba had considered trying to find out how it was reversed, just in case.  That usually lasted about as long as it took to remind herself learning that wouldn't do much good if she actually found herself needing it. 

Werewolves.  Three PM  Jacoba's jaw grew slack and she looked, dumbly, between the two women.  Maggie supplied the repetition of the name of the creature for the sake of dramatics.  Jacoba supplied the obvious question.  "But, they are supposed to come out at night, right?"  Are you sure you're aren't just drunk, would have been her next question but the story pushed on. 

"Tawse.  That's that ..."  Jacoba glanced between the two.  The name was familiar in the same way that the name Hannibal Lector was familiar.  "- murderous purist?"  Again, Jacoba looked between the two.  Either reporters made it a habit of promising to kill criminals in the wizarding world or there was something more behind their reactions.  That, however, was a question for another time. 

"If I can," Jacoba offered in reply.  Slowly she glanced out the window.  Somewhere out there was a werewolf.  Sticking closer to magically capable individuals seemed a better alternative to staying alone.  And, while she didn't know Niobe that well, she felt involved.  "How do we get there?  Is there-"  She searched in her memories for back in the beginning of her experience with the wizarding world when Dreogan's crazy brother had summoned the Healer from the floor above.  "Are you going to make those sparks?"

Further queries from Jacoba and Maggie were met with flustered shrugs and hand waves as Niobe got up to gather her things. 

"Purist? Probably.  Arsehole? Definitely," Niobe grouched, getting up from her chair and taking up her bag.  She liked Maggie's thinking:  they'd go to St. Mungo's, and as soon as was magically possible, she'd speak with an Auror.  Loudly. 

"Come along then," she said, and it didn't seem Maggie needed any convincing.  It was again, more for Jacoba's benefit.  "It's not far. We can Apparate and well - you've been to the Leaky Cauldron before.  You've just got to know what you're looking at, right?"  Niobe'd only heard limited information on how muggles experience the magical world, what they can see what they can't, and all that.  Jacoba seemed friendly enough, but she was far more preoccupied with her BRAIN than with being a gracious host.

"Soon as we get there I want to owl the Aurors," she said as she charged towards the front door.  "Memory or not, my quill doesn't lie."

They were all baffled about the werewolves being out during daylight hours, and Maggie was too distracted by her murderous intent towards Tawse to give it further thought or try to answer questions. She forgot that Jacoba wasn't aware of the two reporters' history with him. They had to get moving! Maggie had been spurred to action and nothing, especially not logic, would stop her now.

"Arsehole of all arseholes," she grumbled in agreement with Niobe, fidgeting impatiently with her wand.

She nodded at the plan to owl the Aurors once they got to St. Mungo's, and followed Niobe down the hall.

"Hold on to my arm tight, okay?" Maggie told Jacoba. "You'll feel like your insides are being squished, and then you'll feel like you want to throw up, but it shouldn't last too long. And if it does, they'll have something for you at the hospital anyway."

With that blunt introduction, the three women apparated to a London alleyway, then stepped up to an abandoned store called Purge and Dowse. It took a moment to explain the memory loss ailment to the dummy posing in the window, and then another moment for them to walk through the window, Maggie glancing back anxiously to ensure Jacoba wouldn't hit solid glass on her way in.

Inside, the reception area was loud, packed, and full of panicked people. Healers rushed the injured away on stretchers, the air reeked of blood and sweat, and the Welcome Witch up front was trying to calm the throng.

Maggie swore under her breath, moving out of the way when someone who was missing a chunk of his arm shambled past her, held up by wizards.

Stunned and sickened and trying not to show it, she looked at Niobe and half-shouted to be heard over the din, "We can head straight to the fourth floor." She said it as a suggestion, but glanced her over for other injuries, fully believing the Verbatis quill note about werewolves now that she'd seen the carnage.

"Jacoba or I can send the Aurors an owl," Mags glanced at the muggle, wondering how she was handling the chaos.

Purist or not, Jacoba had gathered by now that this Tawse fellow wasn't anyone she had plans to cross paths with.  However, for the time being, who this fellow was seemed to be a secondary concern to Niobe's vanished memories. 

"Pretty much," Jacoba confirmed.  Once she knew to look for this hospital, she should be able to see something - only time would tell whether what she saw was what the other two saw.  Hopefully, as was the case with the Leaky Cauldron, they'd only bothered to conceal the exterior of the building and it'd all look normal once she was in. 

She took a firm hold of Maggie's arm and took a deep breath and closed her eyes like she was preparing to jump into cold water.  Luckily, this wasn't the first time she'd done this so she had some idea what to expect.  "It passed in about ten minutes the last time." Watching Maggie talk to the mannequin was, admittedly, amusing while walking towards the glass window was a slightly unnerving experience.  But, despite that nagging pessimistic voice in the back of her head's assumptions, Jacoba didn't face plant on the window so the nearest passing teenager could point and snicker.  Or, record the whole incident for youtube.  She passed straight through into a simultaneously strange and familiarly clinical waiting room. 

She stood near the other two women though her gaze kept affixing to any number of passing gruesome injuries.  It still baffled her how there could be things around that created this level of carnage and, yet, the majority of the citizens of London were oblivious to it. 

"Do they have owls here?" Maggie said Jacoba's name and caught her attention, drawing it away from a particularly bloody bite.  "If not, my brother's got one.  I can step outside and text him and have him send the message on.  Though-" she considered things a moment.  "-I think he's still in lab.  But, I suspect the Auror office is a little busy."  Surely, they must have caught wind of ... all of this.