It was just after noon on a Sunday, and Fauna had been awake since 6:00; a side effect of the irregular sleep schedule she'd developed working on Level Two. Did Aurors ever sleep? They seemed to subsist entirely on caffeine, bad language, and office pranks.
 
Fig was stopping by today, and if she were honest, she'd done the minimum amount of cleaning, remembering that this was the kid who left his card games scattered across the common room and muddy boots by the fireplace. She hadn't seen him since the SAWS meeting, which hardly counted as a summer party. Fauna realized that this was likely the last time they'd get together before the school year began, and after September 1st, it would only become harder to keep in touch with school-age friends. She wanted to try, though!
 
"RAAAAAWWWR!"
 
Fauna swore at the sound of the magical doorbell filling the house, loud enough to shake the portraits on the wall, who muttered at her darkly as if she'd been the one who had set the doorbell on 'Gryffindor pride'. No, that was definitely Brett's fault. Or Dax's.
 
She clamored down the stairs in her yellow sneakers, jeans swishing, and swung open the door with a smile, then looked up. Cloves of garlic hung over the doorway like rejected Christmas ornaments. Fauna would have to sneakily remove them when the house elf wasn't looking, but for now, she brushed them away and coughed.
 
"Welcome to the wacky house of nightmares. Er..." she glanced back guiltily at the large portrait of Madam Radford on the wall, who sniffed snootily at Fauna. "I mean, the house of... the fantastic house! Really. We got a great deal on it," she urged him forward and shut the door behind him.
 
"How have you been? Do you want a tour? Tea or something?" Fauna was excited to have a visitor. Her mum had stopped by last weekend and had found it difficult to overlook the whispering portraits' comments about her 'mugglishness' and lack of proper robes.

The last strings of sunny summer were slipping away and it was hard to tell.  The only inkling that reminded Figaro of the impending school term, his sixth at Hogwarts, was that ticking clock in his gut that reminded him freedom (or the sham of freedom this summer had been) was short-lived, and that too much of it had passed already, and that very little remained.

As the door opened and Fauna was there, Figaro greeted her with a wry grin, shaking his head.  "I hate you people..."  he said, with a hint of jealous marvel in his voice.  He could never quite fathom how many of the people he knew from school lived in giant, fancy-arse houses as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

He walked past her into the lush entry hall, and patted her on the shoulder as he did.  "Big bloody house, all grown-up, eat and drink all you damn well please..."

Figaro's words were envious, but his posture belied how happy he was to be visiting.  "Two more years..." he mumbled to himself, as he poked a head down one hallway and then into another door. 

At last, he turned back around to Fauna.  "Good to see you, Faun.  You look fit."  He handed her a tin he'd been carrying.  "It's biscuits.  Frank and mum made them and he got to use his wand, so watch out."

Fauna grinned at his good natured grumbling, took the biscuits with a thank you, and headed to the kitchen where she set them down on the counter.

"Got to be better than what I make," Fauna opened the tin, bravely popped one in her mouth, and looked startled at the loud crunch and dry, crumbly bits sticking to her tongue like sawdust.
 
"It's great," Fauna coughed, then managed to swallow the food. "We'd better leave some for my housemates," she added, closing the tin with a solemn finality.
 
A second later she laughed. She loved hanging out with Figaro. He made it easy for her to act like a goofball and not feel as awkward.
 
"So this is the kitchen," she gestured, glad to show off the place to someone who was still in school and would have appreciated living in the Shrieking Shack if it meant independence. "It's got a table, chairs, a temperamental stove."
 
Fauna paused. "What other rooms do you want to see? We have a bathtub in the basement!" She opened the basement door, acting as if it were the most marvelous thing since self-stirring cauldrons.

The kitchen was messy, much messier than his family kept theirs.  He idly slid open a drawer or two while Fauna bravely tried Frank's offering.  He nodded with a sympathetic wrinkle of his nose when her face gave away the cookie's very questionable texture.  "Mmhmm..." he said and then cracked up when she did.

"Don't tell Dion they're from me," he laughed.  Dion still intimidated the crap out of him sometimes.  But then, the last time he'd seen Grace Eddy, his bare backside was showing.[1]  Thinking on that he looked out the door again.

"Basement bath sounds fantastic and wondrous - they're not home are they?  Last time I saw Grace I do believe my arse was out having finished putting out a fire with my urine," he said with no little remorse.  She'd taken Hufflepuff down a score of points for that.  It wasn't proper the ratio of Hogwarts girls who'd seen him uncovered verse those of them who'd willingly kissed him...

"Did you say a bathtub?" he asked, looking back at the older Hufflepuff.  She seemed like summer'd treated her well.  Something different about her hair, and not in uniform was a little strange for them both.  He was in the same green Falmouth Falcons jersey he'd been wearing all summer that said WIEDMAN on the back.  He wondered if she'd gotten taller and he hadn't.

"What do you people do in it?"

1.	"What...Even...?" on May 7

"Weirdo," she said affectionately when he mentioned the fire-extinguishing incident.
 
Fauna began rifling through the haphazard piles of papers and cereal boxes left on the counter, then tilted her head at him when Fig mentioned the bathtub as if he were ready to test it out right this second. That wouldn't be awkward at all.
 
"What?" She smiled and shook her head. "Oh, come on! I've only graduated; I'm not a different species." Fawn jokes aside.
 
Finally having found it, Fauna held up a color-coordinated chart marked in neat, precise handwriting. Over certain sections, like 'toilet cleaning duty', someone had drawn a brown smear with legs, running away from the brush's bristles, and landing on the squeaky clean dishes in the next panel, who squealed in horror (of course, the doodle was animated).
 
"Look at this," she pointed at Sunday, where it read 'groceries'. "Dion created the whole thing. I suspect Dax decorated, but we haven't been able to prove it yet." Fauna looked amused. To her, the Fayette twins were like giant teddybears, but she could understand why Figaro, quasi-troublemaker that he was, would be intimidated by them.
 
"What have you been up to since the SAWS thing? I hear you had a fun Quidditch party?" She glanced at his shirt and tried to look contrite. "Sorry I couldn't make it." Fauna wasn't quite sorry. The Hogwarts Hufflepuff-Slytherin match had only given her a renewed dose of apprehension about the sport and her ability not to maim people during it.

Today had been an adventure to reach the house bought and lived in by several recent graduates. Papa Argyle had an almost hobby level interest in real estate for the times when Hannah, Ligeia's mother, moved out of the house needing her own space. She came back within a couple months or the moment she saw Argyle flirting in public. So once Ligeia heard that the auror trainees had moved into the old Radford House she asked Papa for the address. And the house had a muggle neighborhood pop up around it!

Ligeia got as close to the house as she could magically, then walked the rest of the way avoiding a full analysis of the muggle neighborhood. Figuratively and literally, Ligeia was wearing rose colored glasses. Rose colored sunglasses to be in fact. During her travel Ligeia did notice the double take of heads. She didn't understand why they gazed for so long. For what little she knew about muggles, they did have their own history of albinistic individuals and a horrible fashion sense, when compared to Ligeia's antique black dress. Certainly unusual, but not worth the lingering fish eyed gaze. Perhaps they thought she had only just recently been dragged from the belly of the great whale.

What the muggles were looking at was the vulture riding the upper canopy of the open black parasol, the occasional wing flap to keep balance.

At last Ligeia spied the red brick house trimmed with cream, green and pink. She passed the flower beds and climbed the steps to the porch. In a basket draped over her free arm was a housewarming gift, lest she be an utter prude from calling in unannounced. It was a painted skull.[1] A human skull, covered with paintings of some of the most prickliest and poisonous plants in your Herbology garden, snarled around a great sword that went from the back of the neck to the top of the dome. Plus a name and date written unintelligibly on the forehead in script that would take an advanced Ancient Runes degree to decipher. All wrapped smartly in black ribbon, the bow tilted to the side.

Leaning her parasol back, she extended a gloved pinky to press the doorbell. Ligeia did not flinch when a loud lion's roar from inside was followed with escaping air that tussled her silver locks. Something of a downgrade from the Canterbury's own doorbell which was Banshee Shriek. It used to be Mandrake Cry, but it didn't do having unconscious bell-ringers fall flat into the entryway when the door was opened.

1.	like one of these

Very sorry to hold you up!

Figaro leaned on the counter top and snickered two-fold: partly for the fact that the big grown-ups with their own fancy house had a chore chart, partly because it had been defaced by a Fayette. 

"Yeah, had people over.  Listened to the massacre that was the Cannon's demise to the Falcons.  Bruuuutal....". Figaro clearly was a Quidditch fan.  Perhaps another attendee to the party with more of a sense of social graces might have to add that there were a few abjectly awkward moments but either Figaro hadn't noticed or he just didn't care.  Everyone had been there, there'd been food and Quiddy.  Round success!

"Oh, also spent time with an Auror - you know-" he was interrupted by a lion's roar that shook the entire house.  In the ringing silence that followed the cacophony Fig raised an accusatory eyebrow at Fauna.

"Doorbell?"

---

EDIT: I am so embarrassed.  These typos were gnarly.  I typed it on my brother's ipad. I had no idea!

Fauna made a sympathetic, non-commital sound about the outcome of the Quidditch game, then perked up when Figaro casually mentioned he was hanging out with an Auror.

"I don't know," Fauna raised her voice to be heard over the cacophony of that blasted doorbell, set the chore chart down, and headed for the house's impressive foyer.

"Maybe it's your Auror fr-" she joked as she peeked through one of the narrow side windows built around the door, jumping back with a start when two beady eyes and a long beak stared at her through the glass. Fauna glanced at Figaro.

She cautiously opened the door a crack. "Ligeia?"

Ligeia Canterbury stood on her porch like a Victorian doll turned grim reaper, vulture atop her parasol, holding a basket. Fauna didn't chance looking inside it. She suspected the basket held nothing like Figaro's overdone biscuits.

Blinking at her, a half-smile flickering on her face, Fauna opened the door wider.

"Er... is everything okay?" Fauna eyed the bird, then Ligeia with confusion. The Ravenclaw often confused Fauna, but she did so in such an eccentric, inoffensive manner that Fauna welcomed the surprise visit. She moved aside to let her in, realizing that the girl might be more comfortable out of the sun and away from nosy muggles.

"Dear Fauna," Ligeia said, entering. She collapsed her parasol, causing Buzzard to flap over to the banister with a hiss. "And Figaro! Anyone else here?"

"Oooh, you did rent the Radford Estate. You're all very fortunate. Papa Argyle remembers when Mneme Radford had some of her last house parties, though he was an ankle biter at the time. I'm not sure how much he's claiming to remember. He almost considered buying the house as a city apartment for work." As she talked she removed her gloves and dark spectacles, getting settled.

"But, a house is not a home until you have a skull, I always say." She presented the gift. "The cranial capacity opens up for a bowl you can store something in. We keep dozens of them around our house as ashtrays. But don't worry, yours is fresh. Plus they come pre-loaded with hundreds of jokes." She pushed the nostril for demonstration and a disembodied voice cackled.

"Shake me up and you can hear the rattling in my head! Yo-ho-ho!"

The extra tidbit about the space for the eyes glowing in the dark they could discover for themselves.

This was the second time Fig had run into Ligeia unexpectedly this summer.  He greeted her latest appearance with raised eyebrows, but perhaps a little less hesitancy than Fauna.  She came in then, parasol, buzzard, skull and all - some sort of macabre fancy dress kit for some, but regular weekday wear for Ligeia.

"Hiya, Lig," Figaro greeted.  He was leaned against a door frame into the corridor.  And then, when the skull was proffered as a housewarming gift, he reached out to see it.

Figaro took the skull in his hands and turned it over, wondering how it was charmed.  "This real?" he asked with a smile.  "Or did you make it?"  From what he'd found out, Ligeia was handy with magic at home.  He'd half wondered how her home brewing had turned out.

Fauna shook her head in answer to Ligeia's question about other guests, and looked over Fig's shoulder at the skull, her expression caught between amusement and puzzlement.

A smile spread across her face as she recognized some of the plants painted on the bone, swirling around a sword. "Is that Devil's Snare?" Bombay would be proud. She was never too cool to geek out over Herbology.

"I love the paint. And the voice," she went on, the gift growing on her.

She glanced around the foyer, ignoring the sniffing coming from Madam Radford's large portrait. Fauna lifted up an antique vase from the small table underneath the painting and across from the front door, and pointed at the clean surface with a grin at Figaro. Perfect spot!

"Oh goodness, no!" The portrait lamented, her hand fluttering up to her forehead. "My dear girl, you will be the second death of me."[1]

1.	Feel free to NPC the portrait!

"Oh, the skulls are sourced from Knockturn, originally, but I spruced up the paint, changed the plant to Devil's Snare." That happened to be one of her favorite plants, it preferring low levels of sunlight. You didn't want to go into the Canterbury cellar without a flaming torch. "There's a sword here because this man was beheaded by one."

Fauna moved the skull to a pedestal, to the annoyance of a portrait of the previous owner.

"Your decorum is lovely, though dryly conservative," Ligeia told the painted Mneme Radford. "How would that compare to your first death?"

"Young lady I would rather reflect on my more tender, younger years."

"Oh please give us a hint! Ghosts are usually very up front on how they've departed."

"The only soul that knows that is my devoted elf."

"The elf hasn't died too, has it? Those leave horrible messes when they expire."

Very flustered, Mneme Radford fanned herself with an ornate fan, ruffling the plume of her hat.

Figaro watched in unsettled putted-offed-ness as Fauna and Ligeia enjoyed a moment together over the bizarre housewarming gift.  Figaro was more with the painting lady who found the whole thing weird.

"It's a painting not a ghost, Lig," Figaro said, hoping to stave off more Canturbury strange-itude.  Having seen the kitchen, he wanted to see more.

"C'mon.  Let's have a look around.  Show us your bedroom, Fauna."

Figaro was already climbing the stairs, hoping that the girls would follow.

Fauna tried hard not to laugh at the portrait's reaction. She gingerly set the vase down next to the skull, which only seemed to offend the portrait more. Fauna pretended that she didn't hear it had come from Knockturn.

"Fig!" She called after him, shooting a surprised glance at Ligeia before she rushed up the steps and elbowed past him. "I have to check - hold on," Fauna mumbled, climbing the second set of stairs two at a time. Her room was the small attic room at the very top of the house.

She opened her bedroom door and took a quick glance around. Clothes were strewn across the floor, and bottles of paint cluttered the dresser, but she hadn't left anything too embarrassing out. The room was arguably the most 'normal' bedroom in the house, with a white duvet on the sleigh bed, and a cute, pinstriped chair that looked like it had been gifted from Helga Hufflepuff herself. Fauna had kept the furnishings, and decorated in her own unique style, hanging up paintings and drawings on the walls, SAWS banners and pins, and draping one of her grandmother's colorful quilts on the chair. Hats were charmed to stick on the ceiling and along the intricate border of the mirror by the closet. Her rat, Bernie, napped in a cage that took up half of the room, where the aspen shavings gave off a faint odor.

"Ok! It's safe!" She announced half jokingly, opening the door and welcoming them in.

The other two were upstairs in an instant, so Ligeia tottered behind. What could possibly have driven Fauna so batty? Was it the old rules of not having gentlemen in a ladies bedroom, unless you were steady, engaged, or practicing knife throwing?

"Ok! It's safe!" Fauna said of her room, again dryly conservative. The googly eyed hats looked ready to suck brains out of the next head they were on.

"What would be unsafe about a bedroom?" Ligeia asked, as a thought struck her. "Unless you had a suspect placed in your custody and was about to tie him to the chair."