Second Cousin Once Restored

Dawn would be breaking through Diagon Alley in a couple hours. There were still some lingering dark arts practioners slithering about the lamplit streets and some other shadowy things that Brian had come largely to ignore.  In a magical world there were always things better left alone.  And if they didn't bother him, that was all well and good. 

He needed coffee.  He'd been up two nights in a row, doing security duty at the hospital, taking the night shift for a guard who was on holiday with his wife and kids.  And then there was all the recent madness at home. Who the hell dared sleep through that? 

He just had one errand to do before heading home. Some acquaintance of Robert's that he needed to meet.  He was about to turn into Knockturn to meet the man, when he heard a sharp cry of either fear or pain, coming from the alley.  He drew his wand and went into the alley quickly, hearing the crack of someone's wand as they apparated out.  And in the shadows, he saw a form on the brick street. 

He went over to investigate.  Great. Just great.  The dead wizard was the exact description of the man he was supposed to meet. He attempted to search the man's pockets for the item Robert had purchased.  This was going sideways quickly. Contact--dead.  Strike one. Item--gone. Strike two.  Pockets completely empty, and so was the alley.  And that sure looked like Strike three to Brian.  Nothing more to do here but summon the aurors to take it from here.  He sent the signal for them and went back out into Diagon Alley.

He leaned up against the outside wall of Eli's club, which was almost closed for the night--not quite, though.  He didn't honestly want to tell Robert they'd reached another impass.  He drew his cigarette case out of his jacket pocket and his lighter and lit a cigarette. He rarely very rarely smoked, but he wasn't going to go into Eli's and drink alone--despite how good a firewhiskey sounded now rather than the coffee.  Settling for a smoke sounded like the next best thing.  He took the first sweet draw on the cigarette and paused before exhaling, trying to unwind just a little.

The clubbing scene in Britain was definitely not as heartily wild as the prowl that Irish teenagers branding fake-Ids went on; no, there was something a little more out of control. Vodka replaced the jugs of stout, certainly. It was for that reason that it was clear Cordella Quinn was drunk. Deliriously, she hadn’t really noticed. She was more caught up with chasing the skirts of the girls that had decked themselves out like the dolls they were to get plastered and find themselves a lay or two. Della was more than capable, she boasted to the incredulous barkeep as she lifted another shot of Ogden’s and Mead which tasted a little bit like Polyjuice potion if you squinted.

The barkeep smirked and filled up her tankard with Firewhisky once more and she flipped him a few coins before pushing away towards the exit, groping in the pocket of her jacket for her cigarettes.

The heat was oppressive and the mix of bodies was a little bit frantic, as though somehow they were going to lose each other amongst the chaos. Eli’s had many different faces; all of the namesake’s favourite vices: women, food and booze. The pub area was quieter, deathly so as silencing charms had been cast up around the doors to the club. Somehow, Della felt as though she was interrupting but meandered through on unsteady feet as she lit a cigarette, ignoring the glares that were thrown her way by the patrons. Once out in the air, she’d be no bother to them, and Della couldn’t wait until the clipped and broken silence of Diagon Alley enveloped her.

Once it did, however, the girl felt a tad lonely.

Taking a long swill from her tankard, Della brought the cigarette to her lips and set the tankard down on a windowsill that framed a bay window. She strode confidently up to one of the lamps shining bright through the night’s darkness and curled her hands around it, her fingers revelling in the chill of the metal. Then, only then did she begin to climb, not stopping until she straddled the light and was absurdly happy with the heat it was projecting for her.

She removed her cigarette from her lips and flicked some ash towards the floor, resting her arm on the top of the lamp. She smiled a little to herself as she looked up over the roofs and the chimney stacks; idly wondering what it was that London held in store for her once she’d begin her wander back to her friend’s home. Trouble, most probably.

Brian saw a string of drunks leaving Eli's, barely taking notice. They went in semi-sober and staggered out some time later in little strands of sloshed up witches and wizards.  He was used to hearing the slurred speech and smelling the foul, stank odor that sometimes seemed to leak out their pores.  Just another weekend night in Diagon Alley that was not so unlike a weekend in a muggle pub.

And then there was this new little bit of oddness.  He watched her come out, not staggering yet that he noticed. But then again, he hadn't paid attention to her much at first.  Not until she'd shinnied up the lamp post to take roost there.  Whatever she'd been drinking, he hoped she didn't do much more of that.  Unless she was just generally weird, but there was all sorts of quirkiness in his family, so he wasn't particularly bothered by it. For Brian, this was just a whole new weird, and in its own way, it interested him.

He looked around. No one seemed to be paying much attention to her up there. Oh well, what the hell, he thought. He went to the lamp post beside hers, put the cigarette in his mouth and climbed up the post and similarly wound himself around it.  

He paused, taking a drag off his cigarette and looking around. He did rather like the looks of the glow of the lights in the streets and the dim night lighting in the Diagon Alley shops.  Now that--that was something that Brian thought was magical all on its own, without any spells behind it.  The plain rooftops and chimneys, well, not so much.  

"Crappy view," he said.  "If its a night time view of Diagon Alley, I can find you a different one."  There were some great views of London from the Owlery in St. Mungos, from the top floor of the Ministry, and, there were much better views from the newly reconstructed Sparks--from the roof where Lizzie was now growing her cooking herbs in a rooftop garden.  

He heard several wands crackling as people arrived.  Some of the aurors arrived to his page. They walked down the street with a determined stride, like a military platoon, and one of them caught sight of him perched beside the brunette on the lamp post.  

And of course the one that saw him first was an arrogant piece of work named Delmont. Brian hadn't gotten along with Delmont since some other auror at a training exercise had made a horses' arse out of Delmont, quite deservingly or so Brian thought, but
Delmont had always believed Brian had been the culprit.  The only disappointing piece in the whole affair had been that Brian hadn't thought of the prank first.  Had he actually thought of it, he might have actually followed through. But he wasn't disappointed that Delmont had a permanent dislike for Brian. The feeling was mutual.

"Quinn,"  Delmont rolled his eyes and sighed with distaste, calling out sarcastically, "I don't care who your family is. You still need to show some respect."  Brian saluted.  "Smartass," he said. "Where's the dead guy?"

"In the alley," Brian gestured behind him.

"You kill him?"

"Oh, you betcha," Brian was highly annoyed. "I did it with a candlestick in the library, Inspector Lestrade, and then just called you so you could have the pleasure."

"No need to be snide," Delmont said, glaring.

"My mistake. I didn't think I started it. Why don't you go interview the victim?" Brian gestured towards the death scene.  He was quite sure the dead guy wouldn't enjoy spending any more time with Delmont than Brian did.  

"And, Quinn, do get the kid off the lamp post before she embarrasses us," Delmont said, gesturing to the brunette as if Brian didn't know who Delmont could possibly be referring to. Rude buggar.

"Heaven forbid," Brian mumbled, tempted to rather strategically drop the cigarette butt into the brim of Delmon's pretentious looking leather fedora with the odd looking handpainted hippogriff feather in the band, as he passed. He poised the cigarette over the hat, calculated it carefully, and then at the last moment, sighed and changed his mind, flicking the butt down into the brick street.  It wasn't the hat's fault that its owner was a prick. Brian watched Delmont and the others walk past into the alley out of sight.

"Idiot," Brian sighed. He glanced at the brunette. "Ignore him. I do. He eventually goes away."

London had a certain charm to it in the midst of the smog and the cockney rhyming slang. Somewhere, along the Paddington Line, it got interesting and though arguably the Muggle district had more life to it due to its sprawling expanse, there was still fun to be found in the Wizarding sector. Of course, if one wanted to go clubbing then Eli’s - while a means to an end - wasn’t quite like Satan’s which rose up out of Knockturn Alley as formidable as it always had done but with a renewed vigour that brought people blindly flocking to it as though they were moths and the establishment a flickering flame in the midst of otherwise impenetrable darkness.

Certainly, London had its charms. Sat atop a lamp post, however, those charms were hard to discern. Wizards never really did have a flavour for the nightlife and burrowed away early into their warren-like residences until daybreak when they’d rise awash with the brightness that a good night’s sleep brought. Then they’d rabbit around for a measly twelve or so hours and the cycle would continue until they dropped but would live through their children that would learn a reasonably mundane existence but revel in it because, truly, it was all they dared to know. Even in the more liberal of houses, children that were strange, a little too free, were far too Muggle for Wizarding tastes.

It was probably why Cordella’s mother despised her so when she was readying herself to go out; the clothes, certainly, were bad enough.

Emerging from her thoughts, Della grinned doggedly at the sight of a man who was vaguely familiar to her in her mind’s eye climbing up the lamp post opposite hers.

“Allo!” She crooned; impressed with the way she managed to turn her Irish drawl into some semblance of a cockney accent. “Wot’s all this then?” That time, it was poor and she could only do but laugh at herself.

The man was conversational enough but before Della could open her mouth to retort, two gentlemen stepped into the glare of the lamplight and questioned the other man in a way that Della’s mind, addled with alcohol, couldn’t really discern the importance of.

“You killed a man!” Della shrieked, without any obvious fear. “Why only one?” She demanded after a moment. “Bad form. Twenty points for each one.” She grinned again before letting herself fall backwards, her legs keeping her steady on the lamp but leaving her suspended upside down. “I’m a bat! I am a bat! Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmm a bat! Wheee!”