Fic: Sonorus [Due South, PG]
Title: Sonorus
Co-Author:: sl_walker
Fandom: Due South; Wizard!Verse
Rating: PG
Characters: Renfield Turnbull, Guy Laurent, Mike Chase, Myra Turnbull
Words: 4085
Summary: Turnbull gets unexpected backup on a particularly explosive call.
I apparate into the quiet street. Snow falls around me. What light there is is soft, warm, faint.
This is the Wizarding village of Upper Wingate, tiny and hidden by Tobin Lake. It is early in the morning. Most residents are long since asleep. My wand-tip adds to the faint light of the street; it would be unwise, perhaps, but stealth is not part of tonight's call.
The silence is deceptive.
I prop my broom against the street light. She is charmed to fly away, should someone attempt to steal her; it would make for a long walk home, but it is better than someone else's hands about her handle.
Outside a patchwork building of bricks and wooden planks, with schizophrenic windows that do not quite know whether they should be round or rectangular, snow falls on three or four bodies sprawled on the lawn. My footsteps are muffled as I approach them; no one has bothered to clear this walk. I crouch by one of the figures, checking him over. Battered. Split lip. Reeking of firewhiskey and God knows what else.
Three sets of stinking breath fogs faintly on the air, making this a much simpler matter.
Magic or not, people are so much the same, in my line of work. I sigh, rubbing the heel of my wand hand against my forehead a moment, annoyed that I have been called in this capacity only to find the participants sleeping like babies.
My eyes slam open again when the front door of the tavern is blown off its hinges with an unnatural shriek of magic.
The snow cushions the landing of the body that came flinging from that door, but the thud still sounds sharply painful. A female form in a long dress makes an impromptu snow angel she she scrabbles to stand, less hindered by her injuries than she should be. Laughter. She's laughing, even as she fails the first time to get up, and the sound halts as she realizes she's at the point of a uniformed officer's wand.
"Fuck," she mutters, and I would agree, if not for propriety.
She curls up in the fetal position as I shake my head, wand raised between her and the door before I turn it back on her and mutter a soft incarcerous. She is not the subject of my search; I have no doubt she is involved on the side of chaos, a rather large male...
Yes, well. The flash of red and purple rends the night again, a sizeable portion of it making its way out through the chimney, and that would explain the public spectacle. God only knows what magic this is, but as I march up the path, I find I do not have to.
The battle spills out into the street, and instantly, it is chaos. Spells fly, drunkenly flung, and bodies fly as well. I am countering as well as I can, but it is now clear why the other officer on-scene -- regular magical law enforcement, not an auror -- has called me. As it so turns out, most residents are not asleep, they are brawling in the streets. Even as I stop one screaming male from smacking into the well in the village center, I hear another screaming about the Puckula game they were going to win, had it not been for the referees.
Wonderful. A sports brawl.
I feel the door has been blown off of Pandora's Box for all that's come streaming out. I restrain one man whose wand is raised, and as he flops to the ground, the fire that he tried to summon peters out in a pathetic puff of smoke. One woman is so drunk that her spell strikes a lamppost, knocks it caddy-cornered, rebounds and lights her hair aflame. I am a millisecond from putting the fire out when she runs headlong - literally - into the snow with a terrible hiss. I grit my teeth, and swing around to the door, where a man falls by the threshold, vomiting what appear to be slugs.
And, like any Pandora's Box must have somewhere within his depths, Guy Laurent steps out to breeze primly past the vomiting man and stroll in my direction as though taking an early morning jaunt.
"Guy!" It comes out gritted and lost under the din of scattered spells, angry shouts, and the heaving of slugs.
I intervene on a stupefy cast by a rather large man at a stick-thin gentleman who looks like it might break him in half, tossing a block in between, and as I body-swerve out from between them I catch Guy saluting in response. The large man stumbles and lands in the snow under my incarcerous, and I realize...
The stick thin man I had chosen to defend is the officer who has called me here.
He is young, somewhat gaunt, and clearly exhausted; I feel momentary guilt for misjudging him, before I'm hit by someone's - clearly weak - spell. It is still enough to knock me back and leave me feeling utterly stupid for not hearing it coming at me from behind, compounded by the fact that it could only have been drunkenly cast.
There's a rush of nothing but black, and as I shake off the stunner, I watch Guy Laurent walk through another weak stunner from the man's wand and slam him hard to the ground.
I huff a breath. Another, as I process that he has attacked that man in my defense.
The DMLE officer gapes at the realization that a vampire is among us, before I rally us both with a sharply ordered, "Move!" There are still knots of fighters; one flies through the air, and I can hear the sound of footsteps running. I spin, ready to apprehend the escapee, when I see...
...
My command to move goes unanswered, even by myself.
Corporal Chase leaps on my escaping suspect, coming out of the trees and slamming them both bodily into the ground.
The young officer I have come to back up recovers first, likely thinking that the corporal is an auror, and turns back into the fray. Guy raises an eyebrow. I stare gaping.
Oh. Oh, no. No.
Chase quickly cuffs the suspect, dragging the man to his feet, who is staring at him in drunken bemusement. Then I hear a thud and Guy is clutching his own crotch; the man he slammed to the ground had apparently rallied. I stare at him, and I hear Chase snort once in amusement, before I force myself to turn back to the battle. It is not the weak stunning spell that has me feeling as though I am sleep-walking.
I cannot force myself to cannonball Corporal Chase back into the woods, so I toss a defensive charm in Chase's direction and hope to heaven it lands. Ending this altercation and... and... ending this altercation is the best way to protect him.
I whirl, blocking someone's hex - by the color of it, I suspect the woman never made it out of high school, if it is what I think it is - and pulling her to the ground with flung ropes. A sharp expelliarmus disarms the man coming barreling at me apparently in the woman's defense, and I send him flying back, wincing as the man twice her size lands on her.
I toss far away the wand I have won. Guy is apparently not getting back up. The DMLE officer is shouting a carpe retractum to gather together three bruised up men in one lasso. Chase is at the outskirts of the battle. I am far too aware of him watching, gauging, God only knows for what. Perhaps he is as flabbergasted with this as I am with his presence.
Another man falls under one of my stunners when he shouts a war cry distinctive to reckless drunkards.
Something from within the bar lets off a low, frightening note. Another sounds, as I am edging backwards, wand raised to cast... something, and before I can utter any manner of protective spell, another spray of sparks in a shift of green and gold color emits from the bar's chimney.
Something seems to gather at the top of the chimney, building at the exit before pressure gives way with a hollow pop. What I rapidly realize is a man is ejected like a cannonball into the sky, unfurling into a screaming mass of limbs, flailing all the way down. My aresto momentum is the only thing absent snow that prevents the fall from breaking the man into bits, and as the old man comes to rest on the snow, I see nothing but cinder, singed facial hair, and a really, really bad night.
"...my bar."
And now all is quiet, save panting.
And Guy's groans, interspersed with his entirely inappropriate laughter.
I cannot make myself turn around. Instead, I levitate some of the scattered drunks into the center of the village square, my hand trembling slightly. It is certainly not for the battle. But eventually, I cannot hold it off any longer and look back.
Chase looks wary. Ready for attack, though the attack is already over. He raises an eyebrow at me, then clears his throat and speaks up, breaking the silence and likely quite unaware that his words send a trickle of cold sweat down my back: "I think we're going to have a talk, Turnbull."
"Sir," I answer, and I am somewhat ashamed that my voice cracks from nerves.
Drunken wizards must be read the caution like any other Canadian under arrest, and I quite frankly pawn that duty off on Officer Nelson, who was kind enough to introduce himself once the metaphorical dust settled.
The bar owner had apparently attempted to transfigure a safe space within his own fireplace. Whilst it was still on fire. The resulting incendiary reaction from his own spell, thrown alcohol, and the spells of others had caused him to be shot out of his own premises like a lawn dart. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the man is innocent of the fight that has left his bar in colorful tatters.
There is, however, a larger problem.
Guy lurks on the bar's front step, standing in the door, watching the cleanup (and Corporal Chase, apparently, as well) until dawn will call him inside and away. Snowfall has turned to drizzle; the day to come will be wet and unpleasant, it seems, and the indecision of the weather matches my mood.
I have obliviated people before, but it has been rare.
A sinking feeling in my stomach wars with irritated defiance. And a wall I never realized was there.
I realize, then, that pawning the matter off isn't merely a convenience taken by an auror at the expense of DMLE. That I have been preparing to do this since it sunk in that my FTO happened upon a wizarding scene of undeniably explosive proportions.
I meet Guy's eye. His eyebrows raise at me.
I flash a silent warning in return, even if I think I'm about to do precisely what I think he's asking me incredulously if I will.
Some wizards can be so precise with an obliviation that they can pick out scant seconds to excise from a memory, leaving a finely tuned hole in a mind. Ministry Obliviators can do such precision work as to make a space where a muggle will make up his or her own memory to pull up the slack where exposure of our world had been. I am still learning. Memory charms are not my strong suit, and I am exhausted.
All the more reason...
As Nelson makes his rounds, I appear to survey the only partially conscious mass of brawlers, muttering quietly as I go.
A lot of these people will have been so drunk they don't remember committing a crime. Guy is watching me. I know not what Corporal Chase would think of my actions. He stands back, still watchful and wary, but does not hazard to speak. I am more than grateful for his quiet, and for the fact that he looks more a benevolent, ranking observer at the moment, than a muggle Mountie who is where he should not be.
Nelson checks over the wizard who impacted Guy Laurent's testicles, nudging the man with magic to wake up. I take my opportunity, then, most of my guilt centering around the fact that Nelson has done nothing to deserve what I am doing. I whisper my cast, wincing internally as I do so.
He stiffens in his crouch. I pat his shoulder, after a moment, and he stands, looking at me with utter bafflement. "A fine job you've done, Officer Nelson. Do you know what spell struck you?" I ask, praying his disorientation lasts long enough to allow me to get Corporal Chase out of the area. He looks dazed, no doubt helped along by his tiredness before this call.
"...what?" he asks.
I pat his shoulder another time, far more uncomfortable with being in contact with this man than my face shows.
"He couldn't have been very experienced. Still standing, hm?" It isn't a lie. I'm not very experienced beyond training with memory spells. "I trust you'll carry on from here. Thank you, Officer."
"You're welcome?" He looks like he's trying to remember my name. I never gave it to begin with, so I don't feel quite so bad about that. "Sir."
I give him a smart nod. Meeting Guy's eyes again afterward is a dark affair, and I do not know how I feel about the smirk of approval. He apparates with a quiet pop, and I am left with my actions.
I apparate us back to where Chase had left his cruiser; any more proximity to the village and Nelson is asking for more trouble than I care to consider. Chase spends nearly five minutes after that throwing up. I am still trying to convince myself to obliviate him; he could well seamlessly think he has taken mildly ill, and then I would take him home to recuperate. He would be none the wiser about my other life, and I would not have to worry about him being in danger for knowledge he should not have.
My wand remains down. I give him space, until he manages to overcome the unpleasantness that is inexperienced apparation.
Chase groans, and I turn, wincing internally in sympathy. I had much the same reaction the first time I apparated, and I cannot imagine it is easier for a muggle.
"Let's not do that again," he says, and it is flat, as he leans against B414 and mops the sweat off of his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. "Turnbull, what was that?"
It would be easy. A flick of my wand, and perhaps a light stunning spell alongside the obliviation; something to add to the impression of illness.
Chase raises an eyebrow at me, waiting for an answer.
"I am a wizard. Sir." So much for that.
Somehow his eyebrow has precisely the same effect whether Corporal Chase is green or not. I get the tardy impression perhaps he was asking in the more localized sense, and Corporal Chase looks just a little too pale, and I gape for a moment, trying - honestly having to try - to remember what it was I was meant to be explaining just moments ago.
"We... it was-- I am... we apparated." Right. Yes. Apparating in was not ideal, given a limited idea of what I would find there when I arrived, but back out could have been nothing else. Better apparition-sick than-- than clutching to my back as we straddle cleaning equipment and get a look at the clouds from the opposite side he's used to. "--I left my broom."
Damn.
"You're a wizard," he says eventually. "And you forgot your broom."
"Yes." My hand settles over my wand to tick a thumb at its base, holstered at my belt now instead of slipped in a sleeve. There didn't seem to be any point. I shut my eyes, taking a breath to try and steady my flying thoughts. This has never been explained to a muggle who wasn't marrying a wizard or elected a world leader. This is not something we do as a matter of course.
"Who else?" Chase asks, still breathing off the sick. "Laurent? Your sister? Anybody I know?"
"Guy is a vampire." I say nothing of my sister. Guy is not especially secret about it, with those magically in the know. I cannot think after the display back there that he will be offended at my candor.
"You know, that explains so much," Chase says, mostly to himself, and I would think he's being facetious, but... no. Perhaps a little amused, though I am not sure of what, but it seems a genuine statement. Then he looks up at me again. "Anyone else?"
"Not... not that you know." I resist the urge to bundle him into the cruiser. The sudden surge of protectiveness is quite new; while I have always watched his back in the line of duty, as he has watched mine, I have never felt the urge to secret him away, hide him from danger, before. It is a strong urge, nearly overpowering. As though harm might whistle out of the sky to smite him as we stand here, merely because he knows the truth of what I am now. "I'm-- you were not--"
"Yeah, I gathered that." Chase leans back against the cruiser, closing his eyes and leaning his head forward. Still queasy, I am guessing. "So, there's a bunch of wizards fighting in the middle of the forest--"
"There is a village there."
Corporal Chase can say a great deal with his eyebrows. He does not even need to open his eyes to do it.
I rush on, "You cannot see it; it's charmed against muggles--"
"Muggles?"
"--seeing it, sir."
"And I'm a..."
"Muggle, yes."
"I'm not sure how I feel about that term." He opens his eyes, his face somewhat amused, slightly bemused, as though he is trying to figure out whether or not he should feel insulted. "Muggle."
"Yes, sir." My face is likely glowing more than any red sparks I might cast. I have never thought about the term, in defense or in indictment. It always simply was. "It was a bar fight. My reason for being there."
He eyes me, and the amusement takes precedent over the bemusement. "You were responding to a wizard bar fight?"
"Yes. Over our equivalent of hockey."
His laughter eases something in the air between us. After a moment, I finally cannot resist a chuckle of my own. When it fades, the air is more easy. As though, when we find our humor again, we remember that we do know one another. It should not change things between us, his new understanding. I would not want it to, except selfishly to be seen more completely for myself. It is a longing I do not understand, but now that it seems possible to have it, I find myself exceedingly reluctant to let it go again.
"Okay. Well, I got hauled out of bed to answer a call to weird lights in the sky." Chase rubs over his eyes, then pushes himself to stand straight. Looking, at least, less ill. "Now, I'm going to go back to it. Do you want a ride, Turnbull?"
Panic scatters through me at the idea of him leaving, but I shake my head, mouth gaping for a moment. "I... I can... I will go and get my broom."
"All right. I'll see you later," he says, as though he has not just discovered an entire world living parallel to his own. He opens the door to 414, sliding into the driver's seat.
"All... all right, sir."
"Be safe, Turnbull," he says; his standard, thoughtful goodbye.
I return it, and am left standing on the side of the road long after his taillights vanish.
I take my broom into the skies, passing through drizzle that bounces off my impervius. It's cold, but it feels good for a few minutes before it becomes too bitter to stand. I ground myself again, only to apparate home, where home is my sister and not my rented room.
She's still sleeping. Dawn came and went, but it's still dark in here. It still feels odd for us to live apart, but we have done now since Depot. Her home smells like her and only faintly of me. I light the fireplace with a flick of my wand, uncertain of why she has not kept it going herself. She should take better care of herself. I should come here more.
I take my belt off, lay it over the armrest to her sofa, and then I sit down and watch the flames.
I haven't really felt my own bruises until now. I've had worse; a stunner can do quite a bit of damage if it's strong enough, or layered through several wizards. I count myself lucky that I am not Guy. At least I know now that vampires have some weaknesses like the rest of us.
I think about how simple my conversation with Corporal Chase was. How much more complicated it rightfully should have been. He is remarkable; I cannot understand what he must be going through. What it would be, to find my other world alien and strange, and I certainly cannot imagine experiencing culture shock of that magnitude and taking it as well as he has.
There are bigger concerns, of course. The crest of that anxiety is building for me when my sister wanders out of her bedroom, wild-haired and wrapped in a blanket. Yawning.
Myra is adorable, sometimes.
I cannot help smiling at her. She jumps, shrieking just once to the unexpected presence on her couch; I wince.
"I could have been nude," she says with a point, once she's breathed off the adrenaline. Thankfully she is duly dressed; I think topping a night off with that would have me obliviating myself and being done with it.
"My apologies, ma'am." I'm ribbing her. At a time like this. But it feels better. "Good morning, Myra."
Her pout twists into an unwilling grin, and she gives up playing offended to join me on her couch.
"Good morning, Renfield." She spots my bruising, now; one small hand finds its way out of the blanket to turn my head by the chin. "Bad night, dear?"
I don't quite know. I shrug faintly. She opens her blanket and leans back against the corner of the sofa and its armrest, and I am tugged to her shoulder and wrapped into the blanket slung across my back. She buries her fingers in my hair as she has done since I was a child. I think she means to let me decompress.
I am grateful for the place to face my anxiety, and I do so now. Corporal Chase knows I am a wizard. He knows we exist among them, he knows we conduct our own affairs in law enforcement, and he functioned as arresting officer to a wizard. He knows there are vampires, he knows I fly about on a broom, and he knows that he is a muggle.
He knows all of these things, and will continue to know them, because I know I am not just unable, but unwilling to obliviate him.
This puts us both in danger. If someone should look into my mind and find it there, I will have no career, and my FTO will be relieved of his memory no matter what I do. And Chase?
God help me, but I cannot think he would refrain from jumping into the magical fray just the same way he did this morning.
The anxiety spins out and is spaced with that strange relief, and an odd kind of desire to find the man and tell him more. Tell him everything. Apologize for some things. And perhaps show him a few more.
"You're thinking," Myra says, raking my hair into disarray.
I am silent for a few breaths, before I simply let it go.
"Corporal Chase knows what I am, and I won't modify his memory." It's almost defiant. It sounds as though it's against her, though I can't imagine why my own voice has decided to frame it that way.
Myra's hand stops.
I open my eyes to find her smiling.
Co-Author:: sl_walker
Fandom: Due South; Wizard!Verse
Rating: PG
Characters: Renfield Turnbull, Guy Laurent, Mike Chase, Myra Turnbull
Words: 4085
Summary: Turnbull gets unexpected backup on a particularly explosive call.
I apparate into the quiet street. Snow falls around me. What light there is is soft, warm, faint.
This is the Wizarding village of Upper Wingate, tiny and hidden by Tobin Lake. It is early in the morning. Most residents are long since asleep. My wand-tip adds to the faint light of the street; it would be unwise, perhaps, but stealth is not part of tonight's call.
The silence is deceptive.
I prop my broom against the street light. She is charmed to fly away, should someone attempt to steal her; it would make for a long walk home, but it is better than someone else's hands about her handle.
Outside a patchwork building of bricks and wooden planks, with schizophrenic windows that do not quite know whether they should be round or rectangular, snow falls on three or four bodies sprawled on the lawn. My footsteps are muffled as I approach them; no one has bothered to clear this walk. I crouch by one of the figures, checking him over. Battered. Split lip. Reeking of firewhiskey and God knows what else.
Three sets of stinking breath fogs faintly on the air, making this a much simpler matter.
Magic or not, people are so much the same, in my line of work. I sigh, rubbing the heel of my wand hand against my forehead a moment, annoyed that I have been called in this capacity only to find the participants sleeping like babies.
My eyes slam open again when the front door of the tavern is blown off its hinges with an unnatural shriek of magic.
The snow cushions the landing of the body that came flinging from that door, but the thud still sounds sharply painful. A female form in a long dress makes an impromptu snow angel she she scrabbles to stand, less hindered by her injuries than she should be. Laughter. She's laughing, even as she fails the first time to get up, and the sound halts as she realizes she's at the point of a uniformed officer's wand.
"Fuck," she mutters, and I would agree, if not for propriety.
She curls up in the fetal position as I shake my head, wand raised between her and the door before I turn it back on her and mutter a soft incarcerous. She is not the subject of my search; I have no doubt she is involved on the side of chaos, a rather large male...
Yes, well. The flash of red and purple rends the night again, a sizeable portion of it making its way out through the chimney, and that would explain the public spectacle. God only knows what magic this is, but as I march up the path, I find I do not have to.
The battle spills out into the street, and instantly, it is chaos. Spells fly, drunkenly flung, and bodies fly as well. I am countering as well as I can, but it is now clear why the other officer on-scene -- regular magical law enforcement, not an auror -- has called me. As it so turns out, most residents are not asleep, they are brawling in the streets. Even as I stop one screaming male from smacking into the well in the village center, I hear another screaming about the Puckula game they were going to win, had it not been for the referees.
Wonderful. A sports brawl.
I feel the door has been blown off of Pandora's Box for all that's come streaming out. I restrain one man whose wand is raised, and as he flops to the ground, the fire that he tried to summon peters out in a pathetic puff of smoke. One woman is so drunk that her spell strikes a lamppost, knocks it caddy-cornered, rebounds and lights her hair aflame. I am a millisecond from putting the fire out when she runs headlong - literally - into the snow with a terrible hiss. I grit my teeth, and swing around to the door, where a man falls by the threshold, vomiting what appear to be slugs.
And, like any Pandora's Box must have somewhere within his depths, Guy Laurent steps out to breeze primly past the vomiting man and stroll in my direction as though taking an early morning jaunt.
"Guy!" It comes out gritted and lost under the din of scattered spells, angry shouts, and the heaving of slugs.
I intervene on a stupefy cast by a rather large man at a stick-thin gentleman who looks like it might break him in half, tossing a block in between, and as I body-swerve out from between them I catch Guy saluting in response. The large man stumbles and lands in the snow under my incarcerous, and I realize...
The stick thin man I had chosen to defend is the officer who has called me here.
He is young, somewhat gaunt, and clearly exhausted; I feel momentary guilt for misjudging him, before I'm hit by someone's - clearly weak - spell. It is still enough to knock me back and leave me feeling utterly stupid for not hearing it coming at me from behind, compounded by the fact that it could only have been drunkenly cast.
There's a rush of nothing but black, and as I shake off the stunner, I watch Guy Laurent walk through another weak stunner from the man's wand and slam him hard to the ground.
I huff a breath. Another, as I process that he has attacked that man in my defense.
The DMLE officer gapes at the realization that a vampire is among us, before I rally us both with a sharply ordered, "Move!" There are still knots of fighters; one flies through the air, and I can hear the sound of footsteps running. I spin, ready to apprehend the escapee, when I see...
...
My command to move goes unanswered, even by myself.
Corporal Chase leaps on my escaping suspect, coming out of the trees and slamming them both bodily into the ground.
The young officer I have come to back up recovers first, likely thinking that the corporal is an auror, and turns back into the fray. Guy raises an eyebrow. I stare gaping.
Oh. Oh, no. No.
Chase quickly cuffs the suspect, dragging the man to his feet, who is staring at him in drunken bemusement. Then I hear a thud and Guy is clutching his own crotch; the man he slammed to the ground had apparently rallied. I stare at him, and I hear Chase snort once in amusement, before I force myself to turn back to the battle. It is not the weak stunning spell that has me feeling as though I am sleep-walking.
I cannot force myself to cannonball Corporal Chase back into the woods, so I toss a defensive charm in Chase's direction and hope to heaven it lands. Ending this altercation and... and... ending this altercation is the best way to protect him.
I whirl, blocking someone's hex - by the color of it, I suspect the woman never made it out of high school, if it is what I think it is - and pulling her to the ground with flung ropes. A sharp expelliarmus disarms the man coming barreling at me apparently in the woman's defense, and I send him flying back, wincing as the man twice her size lands on her.
I toss far away the wand I have won. Guy is apparently not getting back up. The DMLE officer is shouting a carpe retractum to gather together three bruised up men in one lasso. Chase is at the outskirts of the battle. I am far too aware of him watching, gauging, God only knows for what. Perhaps he is as flabbergasted with this as I am with his presence.
Another man falls under one of my stunners when he shouts a war cry distinctive to reckless drunkards.
Something from within the bar lets off a low, frightening note. Another sounds, as I am edging backwards, wand raised to cast... something, and before I can utter any manner of protective spell, another spray of sparks in a shift of green and gold color emits from the bar's chimney.
Something seems to gather at the top of the chimney, building at the exit before pressure gives way with a hollow pop. What I rapidly realize is a man is ejected like a cannonball into the sky, unfurling into a screaming mass of limbs, flailing all the way down. My aresto momentum is the only thing absent snow that prevents the fall from breaking the man into bits, and as the old man comes to rest on the snow, I see nothing but cinder, singed facial hair, and a really, really bad night.
"...my bar."
And now all is quiet, save panting.
And Guy's groans, interspersed with his entirely inappropriate laughter.
I cannot make myself turn around. Instead, I levitate some of the scattered drunks into the center of the village square, my hand trembling slightly. It is certainly not for the battle. But eventually, I cannot hold it off any longer and look back.
Chase looks wary. Ready for attack, though the attack is already over. He raises an eyebrow at me, then clears his throat and speaks up, breaking the silence and likely quite unaware that his words send a trickle of cold sweat down my back: "I think we're going to have a talk, Turnbull."
"Sir," I answer, and I am somewhat ashamed that my voice cracks from nerves.
Drunken wizards must be read the caution like any other Canadian under arrest, and I quite frankly pawn that duty off on Officer Nelson, who was kind enough to introduce himself once the metaphorical dust settled.
The bar owner had apparently attempted to transfigure a safe space within his own fireplace. Whilst it was still on fire. The resulting incendiary reaction from his own spell, thrown alcohol, and the spells of others had caused him to be shot out of his own premises like a lawn dart. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the man is innocent of the fight that has left his bar in colorful tatters.
There is, however, a larger problem.
Guy lurks on the bar's front step, standing in the door, watching the cleanup (and Corporal Chase, apparently, as well) until dawn will call him inside and away. Snowfall has turned to drizzle; the day to come will be wet and unpleasant, it seems, and the indecision of the weather matches my mood.
I have obliviated people before, but it has been rare.
A sinking feeling in my stomach wars with irritated defiance. And a wall I never realized was there.
I realize, then, that pawning the matter off isn't merely a convenience taken by an auror at the expense of DMLE. That I have been preparing to do this since it sunk in that my FTO happened upon a wizarding scene of undeniably explosive proportions.
I meet Guy's eye. His eyebrows raise at me.
I flash a silent warning in return, even if I think I'm about to do precisely what I think he's asking me incredulously if I will.
Some wizards can be so precise with an obliviation that they can pick out scant seconds to excise from a memory, leaving a finely tuned hole in a mind. Ministry Obliviators can do such precision work as to make a space where a muggle will make up his or her own memory to pull up the slack where exposure of our world had been. I am still learning. Memory charms are not my strong suit, and I am exhausted.
All the more reason...
As Nelson makes his rounds, I appear to survey the only partially conscious mass of brawlers, muttering quietly as I go.
A lot of these people will have been so drunk they don't remember committing a crime. Guy is watching me. I know not what Corporal Chase would think of my actions. He stands back, still watchful and wary, but does not hazard to speak. I am more than grateful for his quiet, and for the fact that he looks more a benevolent, ranking observer at the moment, than a muggle Mountie who is where he should not be.
Nelson checks over the wizard who impacted Guy Laurent's testicles, nudging the man with magic to wake up. I take my opportunity, then, most of my guilt centering around the fact that Nelson has done nothing to deserve what I am doing. I whisper my cast, wincing internally as I do so.
He stiffens in his crouch. I pat his shoulder, after a moment, and he stands, looking at me with utter bafflement. "A fine job you've done, Officer Nelson. Do you know what spell struck you?" I ask, praying his disorientation lasts long enough to allow me to get Corporal Chase out of the area. He looks dazed, no doubt helped along by his tiredness before this call.
"...what?" he asks.
I pat his shoulder another time, far more uncomfortable with being in contact with this man than my face shows.
"He couldn't have been very experienced. Still standing, hm?" It isn't a lie. I'm not very experienced beyond training with memory spells. "I trust you'll carry on from here. Thank you, Officer."
"You're welcome?" He looks like he's trying to remember my name. I never gave it to begin with, so I don't feel quite so bad about that. "Sir."
I give him a smart nod. Meeting Guy's eyes again afterward is a dark affair, and I do not know how I feel about the smirk of approval. He apparates with a quiet pop, and I am left with my actions.
I apparate us back to where Chase had left his cruiser; any more proximity to the village and Nelson is asking for more trouble than I care to consider. Chase spends nearly five minutes after that throwing up. I am still trying to convince myself to obliviate him; he could well seamlessly think he has taken mildly ill, and then I would take him home to recuperate. He would be none the wiser about my other life, and I would not have to worry about him being in danger for knowledge he should not have.
My wand remains down. I give him space, until he manages to overcome the unpleasantness that is inexperienced apparation.
Chase groans, and I turn, wincing internally in sympathy. I had much the same reaction the first time I apparated, and I cannot imagine it is easier for a muggle.
"Let's not do that again," he says, and it is flat, as he leans against B414 and mops the sweat off of his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. "Turnbull, what was that?"
It would be easy. A flick of my wand, and perhaps a light stunning spell alongside the obliviation; something to add to the impression of illness.
Chase raises an eyebrow at me, waiting for an answer.
"I am a wizard. Sir." So much for that.
Somehow his eyebrow has precisely the same effect whether Corporal Chase is green or not. I get the tardy impression perhaps he was asking in the more localized sense, and Corporal Chase looks just a little too pale, and I gape for a moment, trying - honestly having to try - to remember what it was I was meant to be explaining just moments ago.
"We... it was-- I am... we apparated." Right. Yes. Apparating in was not ideal, given a limited idea of what I would find there when I arrived, but back out could have been nothing else. Better apparition-sick than-- than clutching to my back as we straddle cleaning equipment and get a look at the clouds from the opposite side he's used to. "--I left my broom."
Damn.
"You're a wizard," he says eventually. "And you forgot your broom."
"Yes." My hand settles over my wand to tick a thumb at its base, holstered at my belt now instead of slipped in a sleeve. There didn't seem to be any point. I shut my eyes, taking a breath to try and steady my flying thoughts. This has never been explained to a muggle who wasn't marrying a wizard or elected a world leader. This is not something we do as a matter of course.
"Who else?" Chase asks, still breathing off the sick. "Laurent? Your sister? Anybody I know?"
"Guy is a vampire." I say nothing of my sister. Guy is not especially secret about it, with those magically in the know. I cannot think after the display back there that he will be offended at my candor.
"You know, that explains so much," Chase says, mostly to himself, and I would think he's being facetious, but... no. Perhaps a little amused, though I am not sure of what, but it seems a genuine statement. Then he looks up at me again. "Anyone else?"
"Not... not that you know." I resist the urge to bundle him into the cruiser. The sudden surge of protectiveness is quite new; while I have always watched his back in the line of duty, as he has watched mine, I have never felt the urge to secret him away, hide him from danger, before. It is a strong urge, nearly overpowering. As though harm might whistle out of the sky to smite him as we stand here, merely because he knows the truth of what I am now. "I'm-- you were not--"
"Yeah, I gathered that." Chase leans back against the cruiser, closing his eyes and leaning his head forward. Still queasy, I am guessing. "So, there's a bunch of wizards fighting in the middle of the forest--"
"There is a village there."
Corporal Chase can say a great deal with his eyebrows. He does not even need to open his eyes to do it.
I rush on, "You cannot see it; it's charmed against muggles--"
"Muggles?"
"--seeing it, sir."
"And I'm a..."
"Muggle, yes."
"I'm not sure how I feel about that term." He opens his eyes, his face somewhat amused, slightly bemused, as though he is trying to figure out whether or not he should feel insulted. "Muggle."
"Yes, sir." My face is likely glowing more than any red sparks I might cast. I have never thought about the term, in defense or in indictment. It always simply was. "It was a bar fight. My reason for being there."
He eyes me, and the amusement takes precedent over the bemusement. "You were responding to a wizard bar fight?"
"Yes. Over our equivalent of hockey."
His laughter eases something in the air between us. After a moment, I finally cannot resist a chuckle of my own. When it fades, the air is more easy. As though, when we find our humor again, we remember that we do know one another. It should not change things between us, his new understanding. I would not want it to, except selfishly to be seen more completely for myself. It is a longing I do not understand, but now that it seems possible to have it, I find myself exceedingly reluctant to let it go again.
"Okay. Well, I got hauled out of bed to answer a call to weird lights in the sky." Chase rubs over his eyes, then pushes himself to stand straight. Looking, at least, less ill. "Now, I'm going to go back to it. Do you want a ride, Turnbull?"
Panic scatters through me at the idea of him leaving, but I shake my head, mouth gaping for a moment. "I... I can... I will go and get my broom."
"All right. I'll see you later," he says, as though he has not just discovered an entire world living parallel to his own. He opens the door to 414, sliding into the driver's seat.
"All... all right, sir."
"Be safe, Turnbull," he says; his standard, thoughtful goodbye.
I return it, and am left standing on the side of the road long after his taillights vanish.
I take my broom into the skies, passing through drizzle that bounces off my impervius. It's cold, but it feels good for a few minutes before it becomes too bitter to stand. I ground myself again, only to apparate home, where home is my sister and not my rented room.
She's still sleeping. Dawn came and went, but it's still dark in here. It still feels odd for us to live apart, but we have done now since Depot. Her home smells like her and only faintly of me. I light the fireplace with a flick of my wand, uncertain of why she has not kept it going herself. She should take better care of herself. I should come here more.
I take my belt off, lay it over the armrest to her sofa, and then I sit down and watch the flames.
I haven't really felt my own bruises until now. I've had worse; a stunner can do quite a bit of damage if it's strong enough, or layered through several wizards. I count myself lucky that I am not Guy. At least I know now that vampires have some weaknesses like the rest of us.
I think about how simple my conversation with Corporal Chase was. How much more complicated it rightfully should have been. He is remarkable; I cannot understand what he must be going through. What it would be, to find my other world alien and strange, and I certainly cannot imagine experiencing culture shock of that magnitude and taking it as well as he has.
There are bigger concerns, of course. The crest of that anxiety is building for me when my sister wanders out of her bedroom, wild-haired and wrapped in a blanket. Yawning.
Myra is adorable, sometimes.
I cannot help smiling at her. She jumps, shrieking just once to the unexpected presence on her couch; I wince.
"I could have been nude," she says with a point, once she's breathed off the adrenaline. Thankfully she is duly dressed; I think topping a night off with that would have me obliviating myself and being done with it.
"My apologies, ma'am." I'm ribbing her. At a time like this. But it feels better. "Good morning, Myra."
Her pout twists into an unwilling grin, and she gives up playing offended to join me on her couch.
"Good morning, Renfield." She spots my bruising, now; one small hand finds its way out of the blanket to turn my head by the chin. "Bad night, dear?"
I don't quite know. I shrug faintly. She opens her blanket and leans back against the corner of the sofa and its armrest, and I am tugged to her shoulder and wrapped into the blanket slung across my back. She buries her fingers in my hair as she has done since I was a child. I think she means to let me decompress.
I am grateful for the place to face my anxiety, and I do so now. Corporal Chase knows I am a wizard. He knows we exist among them, he knows we conduct our own affairs in law enforcement, and he functioned as arresting officer to a wizard. He knows there are vampires, he knows I fly about on a broom, and he knows that he is a muggle.
He knows all of these things, and will continue to know them, because I know I am not just unable, but unwilling to obliviate him.
This puts us both in danger. If someone should look into my mind and find it there, I will have no career, and my FTO will be relieved of his memory no matter what I do. And Chase?
God help me, but I cannot think he would refrain from jumping into the magical fray just the same way he did this morning.
The anxiety spins out and is spaced with that strange relief, and an odd kind of desire to find the man and tell him more. Tell him everything. Apologize for some things. And perhaps show him a few more.
"You're thinking," Myra says, raking my hair into disarray.
I am silent for a few breaths, before I simply let it go.
"Corporal Chase knows what I am, and I won't modify his memory." It's almost defiant. It sounds as though it's against her, though I can't imagine why my own voice has decided to frame it that way.
Myra's hand stops.
I open my eyes to find her smiling.