Small Bar

Orion held Thaddeus' gaze for a few beats. He knew that look, he had seen it before, had lived under its weight for eight years, the same one that had helped carve him into something sharp enough to be useful. Thaddeus' approval had been a currency he'd spent years trying to earn without fully understanding why. Perhaps he got a sick thrill from being the 'golden child', perhaps it was because he had been fatherless since the age of seven, or perhaps it was because only Thaddeus had ever praised him for being a monster.

"We both know you don't have to ask for trouble to find it, Thaddeus, but I wasn't implying the boy doesn't look for trouble... He does." Unlike Aamon, so Orion assumed, who had trouble following him around merely because of his surname.

'Occasionally bright' and 'mostly stubborn', those words described Orion perfectly during his 20s. Merlin, perhaps he and Connor were more alike than he realized. "Are you asking me to babysit during my break?" Orion joked. It wasn't a rejection of his request. Both he and Thaddeus knew he would do it. He had been 'babysitting' for almost four years.

He did not find out about the job at Hogwarts by mistake. Halford Booth, Tuesday Irons, and Orion Lécuyer had all been hired as professors at the same time. All three had similar backgrounds; Tuesday, an Auror, Halford, a hit-wizard, and Orion who had been both. It was not a consequence. In truth, Orion did not know what Tuesday and Halford's dealings with Thaddeus were; you never asked your fellow damned what deal they had made with the devil.

Four years later and only Orion remained at Hogwarts. He missed Hal's permanent scowl and Mardi's insistence he eat healthy things that were green.

There were always threats braided into the man's orders. His lip twitched into a small smile before dropping just as quick. "I'll be as precise as you've made me." He promised. Beneath the professor's expressionless exterior there was a growing sense of unease, a fear that Thaddeus would try to mold Connor like he had once molded Orion. The alternative, however, might be far worse.

Through the midst of the chaos old training kicked in and Orion's body dodged an incoming smoke spell. He would have to speak to the student later to ask what their thought process behind casting such a spell was.

"Harlan," The Frenchman's voice dropped to the soothing one he often used when trying to comfort students, "Breathe. You have no idea what the hell you're doing."

He approached him, his stance lowered into a dueling pose. It was one he used countless times during his work as an Auror. He did not want to risk grabbing the child in this state. "Mobilicorpus." The professor cast. If the spell was successful, Harlan's body would be lifted midair, dangling above the fractured ground.

Action: Casting Mobilicorpus on Harlan
Mundane Action: Drinking

Hess really picked a bad time to invert his skill-set. He had a mind for things, but he lacked the constitution that would allow him the durability to make use of what he had gleaned from this scenario.

He had spent the last hour standing still, saying little, watching everything. The Gryffindor was the dutiful cousin, the lesser born groomsman, the quiet witness. But now? he had to say something. Not that he had not already, but he needed to be heard.

“Hey, Uncle Thad,” he said, voice low but clipped, his hand already lifting to point toward the ballroom. What had once been an opulent floor was now a broken scar across the church. A great fissure split the marble through the heart of the dance floor and buffet. The ceiling had collapsed in jagged chunks. The dining area was a massacre. And standing near the eye of the storm, arms bared and jaw clenched, was a part-giant, daring anyone to challenge him.

“Something is wrong.” Jurgen warned. He said it as clearly as he could. But the words disappeared in the rising crescendo of panic, of shouts and sparks and flung spells. His words being uttered to someone that did not see him, his uncle. So, no one was going to listen. People never did, not to Hess in any case.

And why would they?

He wasn’t the heir. He might be a Seer, but he did not have the same fame or claim. Drama did not follow him like an obsessive stalker. He was just a watcher, cursed to observe too much and be believed too little.

Still, the questions stacked fast in his mind, faster than even Thaddeus’s spells and wards could hold back the unease.

Why had the boy been chosen as the puppet? Not that he knew the teen's name, but he looked young. There were numerous powerful, capable wizards. Did they think this teenager had decided to attack one of the most powerful men in the wizarding world? If so, the boy was deeply troubled in need of psychological care. He had to be under someone's control. But why him?

Why send in an unarmed brute, a creature who could be easily killed by any one of the cousins if they really tried? The man did not appear to posses any kind of real magic, he just had brawn and he had walked alone into a den of wizards. He was utterly and completely outclassed. At best, he might take a few with him, but without a doubt, this man was going to be sent to Azkaban.

Why did the three women linger outside the fray like mourners at a funeral they’d already planned? They could cast magic. Together with the part giant, they had a chance, maybe.

Was August VanCleaf really that strong? Was he holding them at bay?

No, none of this made sense.

It was a show. A provocation. Something meant to draw out the Athanatoi. To set them moving down the wrong hallway while the real doors were opening elsewhere. But what was the actual intention? Hell if he knew.

Jurgen could not win against the tide of family instinct and blood-wired aggression. But he could wager. “I’d like the special,” he said finally, extending his hand behind him toward the bar, eyes still locked on the chaos. There was a house elf back there, the only one still under Athanatos employ. The barkeep would know what he meant. The “special” was the trick shot.

Mundane Action: Ordering the special.

Once made, this one was not for him. He placed the glass on the palm of his off-hand and pointed his wand with his main. “Everte Statum,” Hess cast, wand flicking.

A toast. A challenge. A test.

Magical Action: Cast Everte Statum at the drink, aiming it at the part giant.

Fortune had made a fool of itself that night. But fortune had also smiled, inexplicably, on one @Mikey Forville, a boy too ordinary to be remembered, and too reckless to be forgotten. While glass had rained like jagged hail upon the crowd, while the earth itself had cracked open at the command of the wizard Thaddeus Athanatos, swallowing screaming guests whole, while roses and vows drowned in dust and ruin... Mikey had lived.

Unscathed mostly even. Of course Mikey should have stayed where safety had spread its thin veneer: behind the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor @Orion Lécuyer’s poised wand, in the shadow of the old wizard whose mere breath bent shadows and stilled fire. Safety, such as it was, had been offered to him. Stay here, the world had begged. Stay small. Stay unseen.

But Mikey Forville was not listening.

Against all reason, against every twitch of survival instinct that should have screamed in his marrow, Mikey turned his back on the sanctuary that was the small bar. His friends were out there. In the fissure. In the debris. Perhaps broken, perhaps dead. And perhaps, perhaps not.

So Mikey left. There was no call for them to come. No plea for the stronger to intervene and save them. Just a series of stubborn, staggering steps back into the teeth of the storm.

The ruined ballroom welcomed him like a grave filled to the brim with hungry undead. The fissure yawned wide, filled with dust and groans and broken chandeliers. The air stank of blood, plaster, and firewhisky spilled from shattered decanters. The screams of the unlucky muggle and wizard alike still echoed faintly in the dark pit where guests had fallen, their voices sharp against the backdrop of collapsing stone and tile.

And above it all, the part-giant’s roar, the snap of spells, the oppressive hum of magic still thick in the air like thunderclouds that would not break.

Mikey Forville walked back into all of it.

And for reasons none could name, neither luck, nor wit, nor courage, nor sense, Mikey Forville was still alive. For now.

_________

Thaddeus Athanatos was the apparent target of a rather haphazard attack. The powers that might-be if Thaddeus was usurped had decided to send a part giant and a child after him. It was like trying to dig a grave with a spoon. Perhaps eventually the absurdity of it all would bring Thaddeus Athanatos, head of the famed Athanatos Seer family to an early grave, just not today.

The part giant had fallen into the scar, only to climb back out. Undaunted in the face of a wizard's wrath, Brock seemed to welcome it with a crazed fervor that betrayed any sense of self-preservation. The bridesmaids were among the few in the next room to not fall into the fissure that new split the ballroom, wands drawn they would fight back. A house elf showed its true colors, targeting one of the bridesmaid's ineffectively. He should have picked his battles better. Brock would find himself rising above the shattered floor, not before he struck a support pillar, forcing the ceiling to crumble.

The catastrophe below was indiscriminate in its cruelty. Muggles and wizards, gilded diplomats and soot-handed laborers, wide-eyed schoolchildren and weary elders—all had fallen into the same abyss. The collapse of the ballroom was a truth without prejudice: marble and timber showed no favor, gravity bore no allegiance, and ruin was blind to station.

And yet, even as the world screamed in chaos, Thaddeus Athanatos raised his hand.

A cut bloomed across the old wizard's palm. This was no accident, it was an offering. A red line, sharp as unholy scripture, split his flesh and dripped into the waiting dark. The blood hissed as it touched the shadowed stone, vanishing as it struck the floor as though swallowed by something hungry.

And then, the shadows obeyed.

They gathered and rose. No longer passive silhouettes but living, dangerous things. The darkness became unnatural constructs that stretched into claws and fangs. Their edges were jagged, their forms shifting with a wrongness that defied the eye. They were not simply conjured darkness, but something older, something dragged from memory and marrow.

Those with recollections long enough might know this. Might remember. And no, the moderator would not remind an onlooker if they had forgotten. For this was not new. Many here had seen teeth like these before, in the ink of old wars and curses, in the places wizardkind and perhaps they had yearned to forget.

The shadows leaned forward, breathing, black maws yawning wide. Each movement carried the weight of will, tethered to the cut on Thaddeus’s hand, to the blood that fed them. And in that moment, amidst dust and ruin, the darkness lunged for the throat of the part giant that dared walk among wizards, that dared raised his voice and hand. The Athanatos line had never needed mercy, only sacrifice.

Rolls for Thaddeus' attack will be displayed in the ballroom thread for the sake of consolidation.

_________

@Harlan Montgomery, the assassin who had no intention of bringing death or disaster, but brought both it would seem. The teen did not veil his intent in subtlety. There were no honeyed words, no dramatic soliloquy before the strike. He had only the raw sum of his skill, a sharpened will dictated by another, but still somehow honed into one simple act: to put an end to Thaddeus Athanatos, the man whose shadow stretched too far, whose name carried too much weight. he did not need to know why, nor did he likely care in such a cruel state.

But the strike never landed.

Allies intercepted. Were they true allies of the Athanatos line? That was doubtful. Few in this age pledged loyalty to blood or name; fewer still to power for its own sake. No, most bent the knee to galleons and prestige, to the promise of favor or protection. Mercy, then, not loyalty, guided their wands. If Harlan had drawn even a single line of blood across Thaddeus’s flesh, the retaliation against the boy would have been swift, absolute, and skinning him alive would have been the kindest beginning of his punishment. This act against the teen was one of the few kindnesses he would find in the wizarding world.

And now, Harlan struggled.

Not against chains of literal iron, but against the fetters of magic. He was ensnared by many, bound in transfigured irons and by a dark charm woven with strange beauty, the kind of spell only the hags could weave. The hags had whispered to him in voices sweet as honey and cold as gravewater, their glamour wrapping his thoughts in velvet bindings. He was compelled by their demands, but now also frozen. Not by fear, but by enchantment: limbs held in place, every nerve rebelling against the treachery of his own body and he fought to not only free himself by complete the assassination.

Escape attempts and attack will be rolled for in the ballroom thread.

_________

Orion Lécuyer tried to reason with Harlan, but Harlan was too far gone. Taken by the dark ladies charm. Now he was left vulnerable to the falling roof, the flailing giant, the wrath of the wizard in the small bar and the reckless choices of his dumber (sorry, not sorry) peers. Within Harlan, the mind still screamed. It demanded control. It demanded escape. But was there a strange part of him that might have also felt free by this. No longer burdened by the aspect of choice. No, that would be ludicrous! The will to be free thrashed inside him like a wild beast clawing against a too-small cage.

And in that cruel stasis, Harlan Montgomery became not an assassin at all, but a spectacle: a man shown to the crowd as an almost-tragedy, an almost-killer. A warning, bound in magical chains, his fury suspended for all to see.

Orion's attempt to cast Mobilicorpus deferred to the other thread.

________

It was easy to forget about Jurgen Hess, the least remarkable branch on the blackened tree of Athanatos. A young Gryffindor who had somehow dodged the dark limelight that scorched the rest of his kin. Neither infamous nor notably gifted, he existed in that curious shadow called obscurity. But obscurity has its uses, and in his brilliantly debilitated state Jurgen believed he had found one.

The revelation came with "the special." A concoction known to grace wizarding parties such as this, a brew made more amusement than alchemy, hardly mind-altering, never addictive. Its effects were unpredictable, balanced precariously between gain and loss. A risk, a gamble. No one ever truly knew what "the special" would grant until it was too late. Often used as an ice breaker, a topic of conversation, perhaps even a means of comparison. It is not all about potential, but what one does with potentiality.

The part-giant Brock was formidable, yes: a fortress of flesh and bone, muscle stacked on muscle, his constitution a wall few could breach. But wit? Magic? Arcane potential? Those were stones absent from Brock's foundation. Jurgen reasoned that if Brock’s strength or constitution were stripped away as thoroughly as Hess' own constitution had been by the potion’s roulette… well, then perhaps this battle would prove mercifully short.

The request itself was ludicrous. A drink, in the midst of a ballroom collapsing under blood magic and rage. And yet Jurgen’s outstretched hand spoke with one word etched into its tremor: trust.

The elven bartender, incredulous but obedient, complied. The special required no art to prepare, it had already been brewed in bulk, waiting in squat bottles sealed with glass stoppers. A party favor for a party now ruined. One bottle slid across the counter, its pale contents swirling with faint, iridescent motes.

Jurgen caught it.

The plan was as simple as it was desperate: throw the potion. Hope it struck true. His aim was steady enough, his strength moderate. But constitution? That had already been stolen from him once, and he knew its loss keenly.

If the same law of balance held, if Brock’s monstrous endurance proved vulnerable to the same tilt of the scales, then perhaps fate itself would level the battlefield. And if not… Jurgen Hess would be remembered not as the least of the Athanatos clan, but as the fool who threw a party drink at a giant.

Effectiveness of this attack will be rolled in the ballroom