Ceasefire! on Elective Hall

A Memory

November 21, 2020 7:38 PM

Ceasefire! by A Memory

OOC: Quotes in italics are spoken in German. BIC:

Mist swirled in the hallway near the elective classrooms and coalesced into two silvery semi-transparent figures: man and a woman. They had their wands drawn and pointed at something that the person who triggered their appearance could not see. The two silvery figures were in profile, and looked concerned, but determined. All of a sudden, they started shooting off spells, moving around, and ducking down as if taking cover from barriers unseen. The incantations were not ones taught in Sonora, but it was clearly a battle, and they were outnumbered.

The woman seemed to take a hit. She stumbled back and her wand fell from her abruptly limp arm. Both the man and the woman turned their heads toward the viewer so fast, it was like they were responding to a stimulus that couldn't be heard any more than their attackers could be seen. Looks of horror and alarm crossed both faces and they made gestures of surrender.

"Ceasefire!" the man yelled, something close to panic in his tone. "There are children present! There are children! Ceasefire!"

The woman's arms - well, the one that was working - wrapped around open air, and she bent her head down, as if nuzzling a smaller person. She murmured softly, but it could be heard readily. "I'm all right, sweetheart, it's just a numbing hex. It'll be better in an hour or so. What are you doing here? We told you to stay upstairs with your brothers." She raised her head to meet the eyes of the man and a short conversation seemed to go on between them entirely without words by just a few changes in facial muscles.

"Put down your wands right now!" an offscreen voice demanded, in equal parts authoritative and shaken.

The man hesitated, but the woman who had already involuntarily dropped hers, reached over to where it had fallen and rolled it out of her own reach. "Put it down!" the offstage voice ordered again, with greater parts of authority this time. The man slowly lowered his to the ground, too, and stepped away.

Aurors swarmed into the scene, grabbing both the man and woman and their wands. The woman reached for something unseen. "Don't hurt her. She is innocent."

"You are both under arrest for murder and dark magic use." Both the man and the woman had their arms pulled behind their backs and their wrists enclosed in manacles.

One of the aurors looked directly at the spot where the view had stood when it all started, and said, "Come along, little lady, you need to come with us, too." His tone was gentler than the one arresting the man and the woman.

Another auror spoke to the arrested man. "You said there were children. Where are the others? We only see the one."

Then all of the silvery figures faded back into mist and dispersed.

OOC: New rule: instead of having two sub-threads, this post is set up in a class-style format. There should be a max of two responses, either separate (two people posting directly to the memory) or interactive (one thread with two characters in it).

1 A Memory Ceasefire! 0 A Memory 1 5

Giselle Duell

November 22, 2020 5:35 PM

I agree! by Giselle Duell

Giselle's stomach rumbled. She sighed and signaled for her dictation quill to stop. One of these days she would learn to stock some snacks in her desk for these longer grading sessions. Now she was going to have to make a journey down to the Hall. Arguably, she could ask one of the elves to bring her something, but she really hated doing that. There were times at Delphi where Lia had pretty much reduced her to the role of a house elf, and she had been pleased to follow Lia's instructions. She did not want to follow in that path at all if she could help it. So, she stood and stretched, how long had she been at this anyway?

She picked up her wand, put on her hat and walked out into the hallway. She emerged in the middle of a battle. At least is sounded that way, reflexively she dropped to the ground and waved her wand to get an idea of what was going on around here. She could clearly hear the spells flying around, the shouted incantations.. it reminded her of... the raid. She'd just been sent to pick something up for Lia, then the air around her had exploded into flying hexes. Just like now... except... there was no one here.

Despite what her ears told her, the hall was empty. Nothing was out of the ordinary. There was a gasping and stumbling of feet. More shouting, she didn't understand the language, but it was a panicked voice. Giselle cowered lower to the ground, holding her head. What was going on? Was she going crazy? A voice sounded nearer to her, a woman's voice, trying to be soft? Still she didn't understand the words. Her wand swung about frantically, but found nothing... there was nothing happening! A shouted order came from somewhere farther away and she could hear the sounds of wands rolling across the floor. She tossed hers as well.

The spells had stopped, more unintelligible words. The authorities were here! The shop was being taken. She could hear the manacles, the sounds of people being restrained. There was a voice closer to her, not the same one... addressing her? No, no, no... She curled up in a ball against the wall on the floor, covering her ears. She remembered what had come next. "No, no... not again." she murmured to herself in Greek.

2 Giselle Duell I agree! 1517 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 23, 2020 3:43 AM

That sounds like a plan by Ellie Alperton

Ellie was regretting her choice to take divination. A lot of people had said it was very unscientific and did not make sense, but she had been too stubborn to listen and too curious to see for herself. Now she was stuck with a homework assignment that... well, she wasn't going to say she didn't understand it. The instructions to come up with multiple interpretations of three tarot cards with reference to how they influenced each other made sense. But she just didn't know how she was supposed to know whether she was getting it right or just making up stories, or whether those were one and the same thing in this subject. Hence she was on her way to Professor Duell's office to check over what she had so far.

She rounded the corner, and suddenly found herself surrounded by... well, she ducked out of the way, as the first thing she noticed was hexes being fired, but as she had time to process, the words 'angry german ghosts having a duel' sprung to mind as a description. None of them had reacted to her presence and she was pretty sure a ghost duel couldn't hurt her, though she did take shelter back around the corner - not far enough that her presence stopped the memory playing out, but so that she was safe (just in case). This also meant she didn't immediately see Professor Duell as she came out.

Ellie watched the ghosts tentatively, trying to understand the strange theatre playing out before her. When they finished, however, she continued with her plan to go and find the divinations professor. Only to find her cowered on the floor, he wand discarded. Ellie had seen some of the ghosts drop their wands. Why had- Oh. She tried to imagine the scene without having been able to see it. It must have been terrifying.

"Professor?" Ellie said softly, "It's Ellie. They were just ghosts, professor. And they're gone now. Here, you dropped your wand," she added, feeling that that was silly as she said it because Professor Duell presumably knew she had done that (and she actually suspected 'misguidedly surrendered' was more accurate), but she couldn't think what else to say as she pressed it back into her hand.

13 Ellie Alperton That sounds like a plan 1456 0 5

Giselle Duell

November 25, 2020 11:46 AM

A very excellent plan at that. by Giselle Duell

Everything had gone quiet. Were they coming for her? Should she run? That hadn't worked out before, Lia had... No! No.. there was no more Lia.. Was there? A chill shot down Giselle's spine as she tried to pull herself back to the present. Lia was locked up, tight. She couldn't hurt anyone any more, ever. But... did she have friends? Were there others from that organization that were coming after her on Lia's behalf? Had that been a vision of things to come? No... that wasn't how the Sight worked. Should she..? Her thought process was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching. Another chill followed the previous one down her spine. She waved her hand and whispered a quiet "Mentis Imago".

Wandlessly, the image that formed in her mind was indistinct. There was a person approaching, based on the size, she guessed/hoped a student. Ellie. Giselle breathed a sigh of relief, and moved to at least sit up. "Thank-you Ellie," she smiled gratefully as she accepted her wand back. Ellie had seen something as well. That was the best news Giselle could have gotten. She might not be going crazy after all. Still, that didn't discount other options.

Pulling herself finally to her feet, she shook her head sadly at her student. "They weren't ghosts though." She whirled her wand around the hallway, reorienting herself. Nothing, just hallway and Ellie. "Ethereal as they are, I can still pick up wisps of ghosts in the area." That had been an experiment Lia had wanted to do once. Testing out the extents of the spell, she had claimed. Well, that was probably true, but now Giselle had realized Lia had just wanted to know if she would know if there was a ghost spying on her for Lia. "This... this was nothing but sound." There was just a brief pause, "What did you see?"

2 Giselle Duell A very excellent plan at that. 1517 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 28, 2020 6:48 PM

But what next? by Ellie Alperton

"They looked similar to ghosts," Ellie stated, "I know they behaved differently," she added, to make it clear that she wasn't disagreeing with the professor, just trying to describe what she had seen. "They were sort of silvery and translucent," she added, wondering how much any of these visual reference points were helpful. She knew Professor Duell could 'see' with her wand, but she also knew she could (perhaps and allegedly) See with her inner eye or whatever - both her kinds of seeing were different than what Ellie experienced and she didn't know how exactly they compared.

"They were fighting," she added, deciding that the behaviour of the... not-ghosts was just as important as their appearance. Much of that, of course, Professor Duell would have been able to hear. "They didn't react to us being here. Also, they were sometimes talking to someone that I couldn't see. Like there was an extra person, maybe a child, that they could see but I couldn't."

She thought that, given they were outside the divination classroom, she might have guessed at them being some kind of premonition (though she certainly hoped nothing like that was about to happen in anyone here's life!) but the fact that Professor Duell seemed totally thrown by them rather ruled that out. It seemed likely that she would have a special spell to detect Future Stuff if she needed one - it would be more useful for her than being able to detect ghosts, and she had that.

"What do you think they were?" she asked.

13 Ellie Alperton But what next? 1456 0 5

Giselle Duell

November 30, 2020 6:43 PM

Traditionally, terms of surrender. by Giselle Duell

Ellie seemed to be taking this well, Giselle thought. A lot better than she had. What would she have done if Selina had found her curled up on the floor whimpering like a broken child? The Deputy-Headmistress certainly seemed nice enough, but she was responsible for ensuring all of the students got a proper education. If she knew... wait. Was this another of those 'strange manifestations' that Selina had posted the notice about in the staff lounge?

Giselle nodded while Ellie described what she had seen. "How many people did you see? I heard..." She paused for a moment to try and replay the scene without the added bits her brain had insisted upon. "Three or four?" She was going to need as much information as she could get to take to Selina. The notice that had been posted hadn't really specified what to do with regards to sharing such information about the phenomenon with the students. Were they trying to keep things under wraps? At least not that it wasn't just an isolated thing anymore.

"I'm going to let the Deputy-Headmistress know about this." She stated a bit slowly. Did that make this sound like a big major thing? Was she supposed to downplay it until they had more information? "It was probably just someone experimenting with some illusions, but it can't hurt to see if she knows anything about it." That sounded fine, right? She was doing the right thing. Still... "If you see anything else like this again, let one of the professors know. If someone is experimenting, that could lead to trouble." She gave Ellie what she hoped was a friendly smile.

2 Giselle Duell Traditionally, terms of surrender. 1517 0 5