Deal Done Wrong: Deus gets sent on what should have been a simple payment exchange with one of the Lazy Kelpie's seedier smuggling clients, but the gang gets double-crossed with disastrous results.

Being a Teenager: On the night of Sophie Flickwick's bonfire, Deus is stuck working as a waiter at the Lazy Kelpie. Luckily (or not) a barfight breaks out, and Deus reflects on some of the changes in his relationship with his pseudo foster family.

Family Business: The criminals at the Lazy Kelpie have a chest they want open--but they like the handy protection on it, so Deus is tasked with finding a way around it.

...Good Merlin I sound like a bad tv episode recapper. Sorry, folks.

Deal Done Wrong
Early July, 2009
Northern Scotland
4:30 PM

Creevie looked like he was having some kind of episode. Deus eyed him suspiciously, a faint frown on his features as the man once again cycled through looking like a shifty, nervous wreck to looking like a cat with canary feathers about to burst from his lips. Deus sighed. Something was up, and that something wasn't good.

The pair of them were standing on the edge of nowhere. The air, even in July, had a bite to it, enough that Deus was glad for the robes that wrapped his arms in warmth. He was fairly certain they were still in Scotland—not too far from Kearvaig, if he was guessing right about the cliffs. He scanned the mists anxiously. Karrow should have sent a signal already.  It was Kelpie policy: whenever a deal went down, you had a witch on watch. Or wizard, in the case of Karrow. The people the Lazy Kelpie crew tended to deal with weren't usually the most reputable or respectable sorts, and having someone to hex from a distance had saved their skins—and deals—more than once. And they always—always sent an 'all-clear' signal spell.

Nothing.

"Ah donnae like this, Creevie.  Karrow ain't given us th' clear an' we only got a few minutes 'till the Belvies get 'ere." Deus observed, curling his fingers around the comforting warmth of his wand as he watched the distant brooms get closer and closer. Sure, he'd never actually been a major player in one of these deals—he was too lazy to be of any good, according to Pa, and was better put to use cursebreaking or hanging out with the watcher and see how things went down from a distance, and this was the first time he was on this end of it, but he was fairly certain it wasn't just first time jitters that had his hackles up. His frown deepened. There were seven brooms coming up—there should have only been two.  "Creevie, Ah think sommat's up…maybe we should jes…" He saw Creevie visibly wince, and realization hit Deus like a sack of bricks. His behavior, Karrow's silence, the whole sense that something sure as heck wasn't right. Creevie saw the boy's sharp eyes widen and raised his hands in almost panicked defense.

"Look, kid, I didn't know, okay? I didn't think Pa'd send you—you're a, you're a fucking kid. I'm sorry, okay? The money was too good, and I—"

"Ye…ye fecking moron, ye—shit" Deus, now aware that Creevie'd double-crossed Pa Quigley and the Lazy Kelpie—and that Karrow was probably dead at worst and disabled at best, didn't even hesitate, he turned heel, fully intending to sprint as far the hell away from here as possible. He straddled his broom mid-run and hit sky. License or not, he'd have disapparated in a heartbeat, but the whole deal ground was spelled with an Anti-Apparation Jinx to prevent either side from taking the goods and getting gone. Protection. F--- that.  Creevie may have been stupid enough to try and make a deal with the Belvie brothers, but Deus knew what those seven brooms meant, and knew damn well there was no way they'd hold to their end of it, and he wanted no part of it.

He wasn't quite fast enough. The first hex whizzed past his ear and he dove into a tumbling roll over the rocky, slippery surface of the cliffs, a shower of gravel and splinters spraying inches from his head as his broom was dusted. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Creevie, grinning like a used cars salesman and offering a hand to a man on a broomstick, and getting hit squarely in the chest with what Deus figured was an Imperius curse. Too busy to pay more attention, Deus stayed crouched and fired a revulsion jinx first, sending his attacker tumbling off his broom. He hit the ground top-half first, and was slow enough getting up that Deus hit him with a stunning spell before he could retaliate. He heard Creevie stuttering, rattling off the location and code to the lock on the safe where the box containing the object of the deal was being kept. Deus hissed in furious frustration. Stupid, STUPID Creevie—how the man hadn't seen this coming was beyond Deus.

Deus dove again, dodging another hex from a second attacker, but the third one, fired from the fourth member of the gang caught him square in the shoulder of his non-wand arm.  Deus responded with a nasty hex that left the witch screaming and trying to put her burning hair out. "Brings out th' light in yer eyes, lassi—Feck! Protego!" The shield went up just in time, but the force of the three spells headed his direction t once cracked it, and Deus threw his injured arm up as two of the weakened spells exploded past him, the third wrapping around his hand like a thorny vine, tightening, ripping and tearing.

He heard Creevie screaming bloody murder about going back on the deal and getting double crossed and Deus, too busy to roll his eyes, grit his teeth and kept firing jinxes. Smart, Creevie was not, but stubborn-minded as hell, yes. "Expelliarmus!" He disarmed the witch with the burning hair, chucking her captured wand over the edge of the cliffs, but the first stunned wizard was finally getting up. Deus tossed another spell at him, and the fabric of the man's robe began to strangle him as Deus turned to disarm another large, beefy wizard. The flashes of light from Creevie's direction told him the idiot was holding his own, and Deus began to think there was a chance they'd get out of this.  Deus's next hex missed its target, but the rock behind his attacker exploded in a shower of sparks, forcing the attacker to duck, and the "Affligo!" Deus followed it with hit him, slamming his head into the remains of the boulder and knocking the fellow out.

His shoulder ached, and it smelled faintly like burning steak, and the edges of the tears made by the vine hex were turning black. Dimly, Deus realized he needed to get his back against wall for when the panic-induced adrenaline wore off. He threw another hex and hit something solid with his back. Unfortunately, it was a person. The beefy wizard he'd disarmed got the boy in a full nelson and the skinny witch—now missing a large chunk of hair—dove for one of her unconscious peers' wands while Deus wriggled and swung to escape the grip he was in, knowing if he could just lift his arm a bit, he'd slip out of his robes and get out of the grip. Unfortunately, the arm in question was the injured one, and it was desperately hard to think through the hazy agony. Clearly pissed, the witch hurled a snarled "Sectumsempra" in Deus's direction. Deus dropped from his robes, and the curse caught him in the upper chest, but it was the beefy wizard who caught the brunt of it. He bellowed in pain and the witch shrieked. The wizard slipped and tumbled over the side of the cliff, but a broom went diving after him.

In the same moment, Deus saw a brilliant flash of green from one of the Belvie brothers' wands hit Creevie in the throat, and he fell soundlessly backwards, crumpling with eyes still open as slid silently over the edge of the cliff, wand tumbling before him as it slid from slack fingers. Survival the only thing processing in the moment, Deus fired a curse at the traitor's waist, where he knew the man kept decent amount of Peruvian Darkness Powder. The spell hit true, and a lightless, black cloud of engulfed the area. "Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur" Deus chanted desperately, the shaky spells slowing the damage from the witch's spell, but his inability to fully focus from the pain hindering their effectiveness. The bleeding slowed to a sluggish crawl, but the wounds wouldn't close. Hearing the yells around him, the call to get together and hex in all directions, Deus closed his brilliant eyes, thinking fast.

Life was a gamble, and Deus was an addict, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be able to fight out the rest of this. He rapidly cast a duplicating charm on the blood over his robes, shaking violently from the injuries, and raised his wand tip square even with his own chest. "Petrificus Totalus."

Time to play possum.


Did you get him?
Of course I got him, he ain't moving, is he?
Don't mean he's dead.
Ain't no one can lay possum still with them kinda injuries, they'd be twitchin' like a fish onna line.
Aye ya, and lookit—bleedin' like a dead man. No gushin' or nothin'— means 'is 'eart ain't beatin'. 
Well 'e could still—
Jacoby, enough. Get Mackers and Loren. Where's Kelchers?
Creevie got 'er. Deader'n'a'doornail.
Son of a bitch!
F---!
Well, bring what's left of her along and move out.


Deus drifted. Hazy and sick, disoriented.

He couldn't feel anything below his shoulder, which he supposed he should be grateful for, from the look of it, but he suspected the numbness wasn't a good sign. He wiggled his toes in exhaustion as the self-inflicted curse began to wear off. And sure enough, he was twitching, violently, as each small movement disrupted something that hurt.

All this. All this over a stupid rock no bigger than a sickle.

Deus groaned as sitting up hurt, and went to work casting the healing spells he knew. You didn't grow up around his foster family without learning some serious first aid, and fast. He fished in his pockets—charmed to hold more than they should—for some of the basic necessities to hold himself together (literally, he reflected with some humor) until he could get back.

The pain-induced haze over his eyes and mind cleared somewhat and Deus tried very hard not to think about the still-blackening hand on the end of his arm. He could feel the fingers—he was just going to hope he could fix the rest.  But that was going to require some help. Deus stumbled over to his smoking robes, fishing around in them for a small round glass. He left the robes there, shivering in his t-shirt but not trusting the greenish hue they were turning. He flicked his wrist, and his wand expanded into a large stick that he used to pick up the robes and toss them over the cliff. The Bevlie gang had turned their brooms into splinters, and as Deus muttered the password and necessary code over the glass, he began trudging in the direction of the reserve brooms.

In few seconds, Pa Quigley's whiskery face loomed in the glass. He looked faintly surprised, which wasn't lost on Deus. "Deus. My boy, what's the holdup?"

"No deal," it was hard to say—an admission of failure. "Creevie turned, Karrow was compromised. Bevlies sent an ambush." Deus, who had a sinking suspicion, watched Pa's face carefully. It didn't change, except for the faintest glint of light in his eyes. Deus had grown up with this man always around, watched him closer than a caseworker in the way only a kid could. And that glint was all he needed.

"Ye knew, ye…ye filthy, feckin' piece a' shite, ye knew ye were sendin' me intae a deat' trap." Deus spluttered. It took a lot to shatter his calm. Deus was a ordinarily a pretty mellow sort of fellow, and he took things more or less in stride—including backstabbing, which was something of a way of life in his pseudo family. But not to this extent. He felt cold in the pit of his stomach, hot fury warring with something unfamiliarly icy as he glared in rage at the calm face of the man who had more or less raised him for the last thirteen years, and had tossed him to the wolves as surely as Deus had just tossed his robes over a cliff.

Pa remained silent.

Deus spat, "They sent seven, SEVEN, Pa. What th' fehckin kinda chance did Ah 'ave? If ye knew Creevie turned, ye knew Karrow'd be more 'n useless, ahn," Deus trailed off, swallowing hard as he remembered Karrow, footsteps pausing for only a minute before resuming. "Did, ah…did Karrow check in?"

"Apparently a decent one." Pa responded, massive, bushy eyebrows raising imperturbably in response to Deus's rhetorical question. "And nae, 'e didnae. You know yer responsibilities on cleanup."

Deus turned a little green but he kept his expression hard. Pa was referring to the general disposal of bodies employed by the Kelpie crew when things went south. He'd never done it himself, and he didn't want to start now. He felt the unfamiliar feeling of desperate panic spiraling up from his gut, feeling young and overwhelmed and sick all at once. Anger lost out, and something very like disgusted sadness kicked in. "All this over a feckin' rock, Pa? Over a stupid rock no bigger'n a sickle?"

"Serenity stone, lad. Have you ever seen one?"

Deus scowled. "Ye wouldnae let meh see it when ye got it in." It was the absolute truth, but Deus carefully avoided answering the actual question. What Pa forbid and what Deus actually did were drastically different things.

"Inside that sickle-sized rock is a storm, lad. The most beautiful light show ye've ever seen—chaos in a crystal. The calm ahn th'warmth's only a side effect. Ye cannae make 'em, they're a devil tae find, and if ye crack 'em, they'll set off an anarchy spell that'll cover miles. They're rarer'n a pheonix's tears and worth just as much. That little rock, lad, is worth thousands."

"Shit. Ahn now the Bevlie brothers 'ave one? " A predatory smile pulled the corners of Pa's whiskery walrus beard upwards, and he said nothing. Deus gave a tired laugh, reading the expression perfectly. "Ye gave 'em a fake. Ye knew they'd off Creevie ahn then assume 'e double-crossed them once they got to th' vault."

"There's a smart lad."
 
Something caught his attention and he turned. It was Karrow—spread-eagled and staring blankly into space. His face was untouched, but the body was in ribbons that Deus recognized as the full impact of a sectumsempra hitting its mark. His hands began to shake. "Ye—ye feckin crazy son of a feckin bitch, ye—" Deus was yelling now, but Pa merely snorted and cut him off, and the glass went dark. Deus hit his knees, hands catching himself at the last minute. He didn't retch. God he wanted to. His body wanted to, it shuddered in convulsions, but Deus swallowed and swallowed, forcing the contents back into his stomach, and felt every inch the sixteen year old that he was.

Deus chucked the glass against a rock, feeling somewhat vindicated as it shattered with a sad hiss of sparks.

Creevie was dead because he was a traitor and too stupid to figure out that double-crossers get double-crossed. Karrow was dead because by setting up the drop and letting the Bevlie brothers do the deed, Pa didn't have to deal with a traitor himself. Deus was almost dead for the same reason. Life as usual at the Lazy Kelpie. F--- that. F---. That.

Deus wiped his mouth, spitting out the last of the bile. He knew he was supposed to transfigure the body, turn it into a rock or a plant, it was his duty as the survivor of a south deal but…

He reached in his pocket again and pulled out two knuts. He closed the man's eyes, and laid the coins over them, and then turned on his heel and started trudging to the edge of the unplottable spell. The reserve broom hadn't been where it was supposed to be. F--- Creevie.

As he walked, footstep in front of footstep, Deus began to snicker, just a little a bit. The sad, desperate chuckle turned into a full blown roar of laughter as he slipped his hand into the back pocket of his jeans, wrapping his fingers around the small, smooth stone there. Instantly, warmth roared through his bones and sunk into them, serenity from chaos, settling deeper than bone and finally, finally allowing his shoulders to relax. The Bevlie brothers would blame their fake stone on the double-crossing Creevie. Pa, if Deus had done his work right, would do the same. And Creevie was dead and dealt with, unable to defend himself from the accusations or divulge where the real stone was--it was lost to all of them.

And Deus, well, he rather thought he'd finally found a good birthday present for Livi.

Being a Teenager
August 28^th, 2009
The Lazy Kelpie - Northern Scotland
Early Evening


As Deus dove behind a turned over table at the Lazy Kelpie, barely avoiding a wayward hex, he took a second to reflect on what the normal almost-seventeen-year-olds were doing tonight. No doubt at the point where summer was so boring they were actually ready for class to begin, they were asking their parents, with pretty pleases and solid reasons, to go to Sophie Flickwick's for the bonfire tonight. Or, possibly, stuffing pillows under their covers and sneaking out through the fireplace.

They were not—and this struck Deus as a rather important point of distinction—not in the middle of a magical barfight. A half-banshee came flying over the toppled table and immediately opened his mouth to screech. Deus promptly brought an end to that by perfunctorily brunging his serving tray down on the halfbreed's head with a resounding thwack and tried to decide if it was worth trying to make a dash for the safety of the bar.

The table set on fire.

Right, then. Bar it is.

Things had been…tense, lately, between Deus and the man who was his grandfather/father-figure in every way but blood. Deus had slipped up once too many—not in the way one would normally expect, but by being too good. Caught up in the challenge of manipulating spells and keeping himself alive, Deus had tipped his cards just enough for Pa Quigley to begin realizing just how clever—and by extension, dangerous to the Lazy Kelpie  and Pa's way of life—his perennial boarder and pseudo foster child really was. Add to that the fact Deus had been recovering from injuries when his OWL scores had came, and hadn't been able to intercept them before Pa got a look at just how many E's and even O's were on the report of the supposed slack off's prowess.

He'd gone up to Deus's room.

Thirteen years, Deus had lived at the Lazy Kelpie, and not once had Pa Quigley come upstairs while Deus had been in the room. But he'd come up, sat by the cot in silence while Deus drifted in and out of potion-induced sleep. And then he'd started talking, and Deus had understood what he didn't say. About the differences between Pa Quigley, his landlord and boss, and Pa Quigley, the man who'd come to care about the Slytherin freeloader housed upstairs. The former didn't—couldn't—trust him, but wanted to use the skills he had, hem him irrevocably in using any means fair or foul or get rid of him before he turned to the Ministry or branched out on his own. The latter wanted him to get out before he could.

Well, Deus had grown up here. He understood how things worked.

Waiting for the opportune moment, Deus took advantage of the table exploding to make a diving leap over the bar, rolling and abruptly dead-ending with his back on the ground and legs at a ninety degree angle slamming into the liquor-filled shelves.

Pa Quigley, standing cross-armed and unamused, watched the chaos from behind the heavily protection-spell-fortified bar, making no move to help him up. Deus sighed. "Ye…ye donnae pay me enough fer this shit, Pa." A grumpy huff was all he got in response, and Deus rolled over and climbed onto his feet, whistling as he surveyed the carnage currently taking place from the spell-protected vantage point. Pa swung a bottle off the shelf, soundly knocking out a seedy fellow trying to take advantage of the riot to snatch some free liquor. Deus kept his grip on his wand tight and continued casually. "So, ye…Ah'm…gonna take th' rest o'th'night off, I think. Donnae imagine Ah'd get many tips after this." His neck felt cold and years of practice kept his face calm even though a skittery panic crept up his spine at what the intimidating master smuggler would say--or do about--Deus skipping half his shift. Thirteen years, and he still had trouble with Pa's moods, sometimes.

Pa didn't even bat an eyelash. "Hn. Naw, don't look like it. Take yer ruttin' sheep wit' ya."

Deus pulled a face and ignored the watery warmth of easy relief. "Aww, pa, she's hap—"

"Take the damn beastie or it'll wind up on tomorra's menu."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll take her." Before Pa could change his mind, Deus began to make tracks for the back kitchen. He didn't quite make it, as a beefy hand grabbed his collar and yanked him abruptly back.

"Ye'll take th' mornin' shift. Clean up."

It was Pa's way of giving him permission to take the rest of the night for himself—but of course, nothing was free in this distorted family, and Deus didn't expect it to be. Fair enou', he grinned to himself, ain't one of 'em gonna be up before noon, so Ah can make th' brooms do it.

And then he got the hell out.

Family Business
Mid July, 2009
Northern Scotland
8:30 PM

"Well, where'd ye get it from?"

The small motley crew sitting in the cramped, cliffside room went abruptly dead silent. Deus swallowed a wince--right. You didn't ask questions like that. He kept his face cool and blank and focused only on the small chest in the middle of the group. "Ah donnae mean from who, and Ah donnae need specifics. Country. It matters, okay?"

There were a few shifty exchanges, but distinct sound from Pa Quigley settled the matter. 

'It's local.' Came the response.

Verbose bunch, the crew of the Lazy Kelpie. Deus resisted the urge to rub his throbbing temples. Okay, local meant the stick-like drawings to make things work. "Okay, and what's th' problem?"A scowling, rabbity-looking man held his hand. Or what was left of it. Great. Lovely. Deus bit back a sigh and tried not think about how his luck with curses had been lately. "Okay. Ahn that happened when ye tried tae Alohomora it?" The man nodded and Deus mentally rolled his eyes. Dumbass--like anyone would leave a chest full of treasures unprotected from the most basic unlocking spell out there.

'Happened when we tried t' pick it, too.'

And you didn't take that as a sign? The teenager closed his eyes in mild exasperation and mentally counted the days until he was going to be back in school. Merlin, he must be desperate. "Okay. Ahn what d'ye want. Just fer it tae open?"He doubted it, much as that would have been nice. No, no, he'd been hauled out of his sickbed, curse scars half-healed and practically blinding him with pain, for something more complicated, no doubt.

Silence.

'We wanna open it. We don't want no one else tae be able open it. Keep the curse, just make it so we can open it, like the...former owner could.'

Translation, Deus mentally provided, They want to rob it, replace everything with leprechaun gold and let the owner figure out the theft too late to catch them. Well, okay. It wasn't that easy. He could do that. The spell already had an exception tied to it--otherwise the former owner would never have been able to get in. Probably a flesh memory, like on a snitch. But without knowing the original spell, he couldn't just transfer it like signing over some sickles in a bank account. But...definitely a flesh memory, given that there was no place on the lock for a key. Which was handy, because Deus was good at flesh enchantments. The spell was nasty complicated but he'd done so many of them he could get a cat to turn to stone and back with just his touch triggering the transfiguration spell--another thing he was better at than people thought. The problem was you had to touch the thing for it to remember your flesh, and if he got the spell that went along with it--the one that allowed for the modification in the first place--well, kaboom hands, and they weren't exactly disposable (well, that was debatable). But could he modify a flesh enchantment to respond to...to something else? Like  gloves. They could risk blowing a few gloves to smithereens, and then anyone wear--

Something icy cold poured through Deus's spine at the expression that vanished from Pa's face even before it could fully register. Mistake--big mistake. He'd said all of that out loud without realizing it, because his damn brain was too damn fuzzy from hurting from the whole incident earlier in the month that had left him in ribbons. He wasn't supposed to know this kind of stuff. He wasn't supposed to pay attention or be able to problem solve and plot. As far as the patrons were concerned, Deus was supposed to be a layabout slacker without much in his head besides pretty girls and his next smoke. He was supposed to grumble and whine about having to muck with spells, and figure it out by sheer accident after lots of explosions and loud bangs. In other words, he was supposed to be safe.

Someone who knew what he was doing, and how and why it worked, because they thought for themselves, wasn't a good person to have around when you were a man like Pa Quigley. Once Deus had finally gotten the knack of modifying curses, he'd kept up the charade of bangs and explosions and looking rather disgruntled and worse for the wear after modifying enchantments because no one thought about it that way.

At least one of them was now.

Deus wondered if he should backpedal, try and make it sound like the knowledge was accidental, but he decided that would be worse--anything Pa didn't think he knew, including knowing that Pa knew, was an advantage in the duplicitous home life he led. Too late.

Fake it. Just fake it. You meant to say it out loud.

"Well? Clear out ahn get me some gloves!"

Wands flashed, and a pile of gloves appeared on the stone ground, and one by one, the criminals slipped out. Deus was already planning to botch the whole thing, to show he wasn't so smart after all--

'Boy, ye don't get this t'work, ahn I'll chop yer hand off meself. Yer good one, naw the one with th' rottin' fingers.'

This time, Deus did wince. It was a two pronged reminder of why you didn't keep things from or cross Pa Quigley, which is how Deus had wound up with his own wounds in the first place. And he'd just been collateral. 

The best place to start, Deus figured, was with the upside upside down broomstick. He didn't actually know what it meant, he'd figured out by accident that sometimes he could use it to slip 'exceptions' into spells that were protecting things, which was a heck of a lot easier than trying to break the damn things--which he already knew would result in an explosion, this time. And he wanted to keep his hands. Both of them. So with one hand holding the glove hesitantly, he drew the symbol and cast the flesh memory enchantment, modified to the fabric of the glove.

BANG

Deus leapt back, and things went black and starry for a minute. After a distinct moment of panic, he realized it was because he'd jarred his sectumsempra'd shoulder, and not because any fingers were missing. In fact, the glove was only smoking slightly, all fingers still attached.

Okay, so I'm close..

It took a couple more singed gloves, but Deus finally got it. The upside-down broomstick wasn't enough, he had to draw the crooked racing broom people sometimes put on their valuables right after it for the curse to recognize the glove.

Just like that, with the glove held against the lock, the chest popped open.

Deus reached over, pocketed a galleon for his troubles, and thought longingly of his bed. A quick trudge back up the winding cliffside staircases and trick doors, and he was back in the pub, where he tossed the glove to Pa without a word, and finished the last bit of the agonizing climb to his bed.

The next person that woke him up was going to learn just how much Deus had picked up about curses.