The early hours, as Knockturn wakes up (or just downs another cuppa after staying up all night, it is Knockturn Alley for a reason).

Scrabbling over the rooftops was a squirrel with three working paws. Dotty had spent most of the night climbing and gliding the rooftops of London. Not a sight, not a single chimney sweep.  It had been a real pain. Not being able to stretch her one paw to extend the flaps of skin was making her veer to the side when gliding. She was attacked only a short distance from the hidden wizard street, but coming at it from above was altogether different than knowing to go to the Leaky Cauldron.

She was getting anxious, skittish squirrel behavior combined with the tinges of pain as the liquefaction curse returned to attack her squirrel physiology. The going was getting slippery although Dotty thought this was from the morning dew condensing on the rooftops.

But finally, after smacking into walls and outrunning an attacking murder of crows, Dotty found the street bellow to be full of kinks and pedestrian only traffic. Diagon. She started one way but turned around, heading for the split off to Knockturn.

Another off kilter glide landed her on Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, on the mannequin head outside that blinked and kept doffing its top hat. She couldn't escape the lowering hat as was trapped there for a moment. Something felt horribly wrong and it wasn't the curse that chick from earlier had left her. Something materialized next to her and when the top hat lifted the flying squirrel was face to face with an animatronic rabbit that wiggled its nose and ears at her.

"SQUEAK!!" squeaked Dotty, running as fast as three working paws could take her (we won't bother translating, it'll have to be censored anyways).

Another half block and she caught a glimpse of the Inkwell up ahead. Oh to be back in the roost she had made in the upper floor, with her pillow and the damn wand she forgot. Unfortunately, she wasn't high enough to reach an upper window, veering downwards at near terminal velocity through an open window to crash land on a table stacked with a vase, candles and potpourri. Would have been a strike if this was bowling.

Once the flying squirrel got upright (a grey smudge left where she had landed) she saw Lana's face, Dietrich's receptionist/girlfriend, looking down at her. She made a high pitched noise very similar to one of Dotty's squeaks and swatted the appointment book at the squishy vermin.

Dietrich knew, when he first came to take over The Inkwell, that life in Knockturn Alley was not going to resemble normality in any remote sense of the word. He underwent a similar understanding when he decided to let the homeless miscreant he had found in Wonderland make a kind of nest in the then-unlivable attics of his establishment. Altogether their building was three floors high-- Dietrich and Lana of course lived just above the parlour. Anadottie Squiggs made herself comfortable just above them. Not the most convenient of guests but she made it up by running errands that employees of his shop were better off not caught doing.

Reliability was an issue, though. Dietrich had expected his hand-crafted needles to have been delivered last evening but Squiggs had not appeared at all. It wasn't that he didn't trust her (well... he didn't truly trust anyone in the Alley), it's just that one couldn't possess overwhelming faith in a witch whose daily habits at one point must have included drinking her own body weight in liquor. Not necessarily good liquor, either.

Nobody saw the point in losing sleep over it. The Inkwell had closed down for the night, the tables cleared and their logs reviewed. Dietrich had joined Lana in bed upstairs. It came as a surprise to him then, at sunrise, to hear his girlfriend's shriek coming from downstairs-- Gods, that woman woke early. They didn't even open until noon.

"Jesus Lana, what the hell are you screaming at?" The wizard came lumbering down the stairwell by the reception desk in his jeans and, rather incongruously, a jacket over his bare shoulders. His beard was especially scraggly and strands of messy blonde hair stuck out at odd angles. The parlour entrance was dimly lit by blue light coming through their main window, though Dietrich could clearly see the minuscule Lana Gaddam wielding her appointments book over what might have been a very large rat. A broken vase lay cracked open on the floor, its shards littered alongside rolling candles and handfuls of potpourri.

Lana's eyes did not leave the rat. Hell, no, squirrel. Squirrel? The witch had a murderous look in those brown eyes: "Wand! Get it Dietrich!"

He wanted to laugh but the lethargy of having just woken up kept him relatively passive. Dietrich blinked sleepily and then looked at his girlfriend: "Put the book down. And not on the squirrel. It ain't here to hurt anyone, least I don't think so..." he moved over to the table, watching Lana very slowly take a step away from the creature that he could only assume was responsible for breaking their stupid vase. "Y'can just stay there. I'll shoo him away," Dietrich's gaze shifted to the squirrel and he mechanically correct himself: "Her, I mean."

Why did he say that? He stared sharply at the animal, suddenly serious. Rodents were a lot jumpier than this. They'd be off in a heartbeat the moment they knew they could make it. And those beady little eyes...

Dotty dodged a blow as Lana kept coming after her with the book. She was only comprehending pieces of the conversation of the full-humans, half her mind was focused on not getting squished.

"Y'can just stay there. I'll shoo him away. Her, I mean."

The wild if accurate guess was lost on Dotty although she was trying to morph back into human form. Not the easiest thing to do when you where under attack and had lingering curses leaving pain throughout her rodent body. If only she could get upstairs, being by hr wand might give her more of a boost when switching back.

After gauging the distance and angles of Dietrich and Lana, Dotty leapt from the table. She landed awkwardly, rolling, then scampered for the back stairs for the upper floors, chittering all the while. She'd switch out of her squirrel body, although she had a craving for peanut butter and she might still have a granola bar in the mound of junk food she'd hidden by her pillow. Then she'd figure out right kind of spell that witch had hit her with. Somewhere lower on this list of priorities was telling Dietrich what had happened. But then, squirrels can't talk anyways.

Lana's screeching reached whole new levels of blood-curdling when the squirrel made a dash for the staircase, as though it were running for its life (which, if the receptionist had any say in it, seemed about right).

"DIETRICH"

The wizard winced at this as he pulled out his wand from the back pocket of his jeans, reminding himself that his girlfriend was great in bed-- and probably worth the fuss she kicked up over rodents and potpourri. There were times when he wasn't so sure. "I'll get it, I'll get. Ain't going anywhere but up now. Go light a candle or something." Odds were, she'd make him pay for that last comment. Dietrich grimaced.

With slightly less lethargy than before, he climbed the stairs two steps at a time, stopping at the landing of the first floor to see if the door to his quarters was tightly shut. It was, so he turned and ascended the second stairway-- he wondered if Squiggs would mind an uninvited guest in her attic space. Probably wouldn't give a damn.

"C'mon over here, you overgrown rat..." the artist muttered as he reached the top floor. The trap door that led up to the attic was already open and he treaded quietly now, not wanting to alarm the critter.

If Dotty had respected some kind of higher authority, she would have thanked it for the fortunate circumstances of letting the stairs to the attic be open. She lopped up as well as she could on three paws, then scampered to a spot where a blanket and pillow were hunched together with a mound of stuff Dotty had been nicking: trinkets, candy bars, sunglasses, etc. She wormed under the pillow and emerged triumphant pushing her wand out with her nose. She clutched the working paw over the wand and tired to transform.

Mouse Poop! Nothing. On second thought just how was the wand supposed to help when animagus transfigurations didn't require it? How was a squirrel supposed to use it? Stand on its hind legs and go 'wavy wavy' with the wand in the front paws?

Dotty gnawed on the wand in frustration. Not strong enough to break through to the core but added more scratches to the well beaten rod. As she chewed on the stick there were sounds of someone coming upstairs, barely perceptible creaks. She twitched until her head was pointed at the square opening

Dietrich emerged from the trap door into Squiggs' little nest in the attic, his tall frame caused him to duck his head before it knocked against the sloping ceiling. Now he could remember why he didn't come up here more often.

"Hello?" he felt a li'l stupid calling out like that but there was nobody here besides the squirrel, and nobody to think him stupid for it. The faint morning light streaming in through the attic window was not very helpful-- the wizard squinted as he looked around the dusty space, wand in hand.

As his eyes adjusted, they settled on his guest's little sleeping area. A mental note was made to get the girl a real mattress... Lana and Olive could go to town helping her clean this place up, probably. Just as this thought occurred to him, Dietrich saw it.

"They ya are, you little critter..." smiling vindictively at the rodent, he took a step towards it and then stopped to stare. Three legs, what a ratty looking thing. He almost felt bad for it. But why was it holding Squiggs' wand? Did Squiggs get home while they were asleep? Distracted by that idea, Dietrich suddenly turned around to inspect the attic, as though he'd missed seeing the witch when he first entered.

"Squiggs? You here?"

Even though many people towered over her in life, that mammoth-ness was all the worse from the worm's eye view as a dinky little squirrel. Dotty was frozen, prey in the hawk-eyes, when Dietrich noticed her. "They ya are, you little critter..."

She inched back as he stepped forward, then stopped. She hadn't faced many predators that toyed with her this way before. 'Cept maybe that condor. She still didn't believe the the concord couldn't hypnotize its prey into submission. Dietrich glanced about. "Squiggs? You here?"

"*Sqeuakedy Squeak squeak squeaketh*" were the sounds to the effect of a squirrel's vocal cords trying to form human words. Dotty was furious. If she couldn't transform right now her landlord was going to tire of looking at this rejected rodent and squish her under a boot or something and she'll never be able to tell him--

With more effort than what chickens use when laying a large egg, there was a mild explosions of rippling flesh and clothing until the flying squirrel expanded into Anadotti Squiggs sprawled out on the floor. Her rapid consciousness flew out of her mouth. "Dietrich! Needles! Last Night! Flippin' witch jumped me! Ther--OOOooowwww!!"

Returning for round two was a fully unleashed Organ Liquefaction Curse. Dotty squirmed in anguish, screaming, mobile hand clutching at her stomach. The hand sank in all too easily.

"Dietrich! Needles! Last Night! Flippin' witch jumped me! Ther--OOOooowwww!!"

In spite of the number of serious concerns that jumped into his mind the moment Squiggs popped up seemingly from nowhere, Dietrich could only barely wrap his mind around the fact that her animagus form was a squirrel.

"Gods," he muttered and for a second, only stared at the witch with his brow furrowed: "What the hell happened?"

Lana's voice came calling from downstairs but he paid no attention to that, perturbed enough by the sight of his tenant's hand nearly submerged in her own abdomen, "Jesus." Dietrich finally moved.

He kneeled down even further as he grabbed the witch by her shoulders and attempted to haul her into a sitting up position: "Hey. Hey, stop moaning," his voice lowered into a low growl: "You lucid, Squiggs? Forget the fucking needles, we'll talk needles later. What happened to you?"

Her words were hissed out between shrieks, a long chain of exposition and pain. "I have the needles and I'm heading back and this witch jumps me and stuff wants my stuff she got the needles and the inks but not my wand I left it here but so she numbs my arm and says I could enjoy life without kidneys and stomach and there's this spell Interabeveticuous or whatever and it's like I'm melting and-AAHHHhhhhhh!!"

If this was supposedly what it felt like to give birth Dotty was going to swear off having any kids. An unborn kicking around your guts had to be just as excruciating.

With no strength except to flop over Dotty groveled at Dietrich's feet in what would have been a childish tantrum not fitting a girl of 23 if the situation wasn't so serious. She was crying. "It hurts!! Make it stop!!"

Dietrich nearly let go of his tenant in surprise when she'd spat out the word Interabeveticuous. He kept his hold steady, however, and only released her the moment she fell over in a fit of pain, all tears and screams.

"Intabeviscus?" He muttered more to himself than to her. Footsteps came from below and he knew that Lana's head would pop up from the trap door soon, demanding to know what was going on.

No time for that. The wizard pulled his jacket off his shoulders and draped it over the writhing girl before grabbing her by the shoulders: "I'm gonna drop ya off for healing, so stop your damn squirmi--"

Lana finally emerged from downstairs, clearly bewildered as she climbed up into the attic. Her confused eyes darted from him straight to the wailing creature in his arms: "Dotty? What's goi--"

Dietrich shook his head as he tightened the hold around Squiggs, which wasn't too hard. Even with all her thrashing about she was still tiny compared to him and his arms encircled her easily: "St.Mungo's. Be back."

Then, with a pop, they were gone.