The Ballroom
Trigger warning: Events mentioned here and descriptions are not intended for under the age of 13.
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Interacting with: @Mikey Forville, @Dylan Astor
Mentioning: N/A
Date: Summer 2025Word Count: 304
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✽The world had broken around her and the only constant was Mikey. His concerned face and gentle words telling her to stay awake and not close her eyes kept her going. Even if the pain was too much to bear. She nodded slightly towards him as she winced. Pain racking her with even just the simple movement.
She watched as he climbed down into the pit to retrieve Dylan. To keep herself awake, she turned her head slightly as she winced again and horrors beyond what the twelve year old could have imagined unfolded before her. Dead bodies littered the ground and groans filled the air. The glass was shattered and very few were unscathed. A girl Avery had seen only a couple times was bleeding nearby, but Avery didn’t have the strength to get up and help. She couldn’t help the for anyway. She knew nothing about healing.
Eventually Mikey returned with Dylan. Avery couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She gasped even though it hurt her ribs. As Dylan wilted to the ground. Barely breathing as his blood stained his clothes. Tears fell from Avery’s eyes and she forced her weak body to sit up and crawl closer. She collapsed again next to his unconscious body. Sobs escaping her lips.
“No. Stay with me. You can’t leave me. Not yet.” Avery sobbed out as she lay there with him. Hoping for a miracle that would probably never come.
Then her tear stained eyes found Mikey’s. “We have to get him out of here. He needs help. And quickly. I-I can’t lose him.” Avery said weakly as the pain from her injuries and the pain of Dylan so close to death filled her. Rendering her oblivious to the world around her and only able to see the destruction that lay before her eyes.
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Credit: Mylo Atkins
Stats:
stamina ◦ 7 | evasion ◦ 6 | strength ◦ 7 | wisdom ◦ 7 | arcane power ◦ 6 | accuracy ◦ 7
Abilities:
’s Grace, FearlessMundane Action: Preparing to leave for St. Mungo’s with Mikey Forville and Dylan Astor.
Magical Action: None
Be the change you wish to see |
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in the world. |
The Ballroom
Banner made by Robin Marie
Mikey's arms were sore when he pulled Dylan out of the fissure, and he was breathing in short breaths. Each pull got heavier than the previous one, but he would still not let go of him. The gritty marble surface caused his palms to bleed, mixing blood with dust, before finaly the rapidly cooling body of Dylan slid beside Avery.
Mikey kneeled next to him and felt the pulse, just like his soccer coach had taught him last summer at camp. He did not think that he would need CPR training, pressure points, and staying calm at the time. Still, they were helping now. The pulse under his fingers was there, at least very faintly. “He’s breathing,” Mikey said with difficulty. “It’s weak, but he is alive.”
He ripped a piece off his t-shirt and used it to cover the bleeding side of Dylan, applying pressure on it. “You're fine.” His voice was shaky, a silent cry for help in the words. Avery looked so white, all covered with dust and tears, but she offered her hand. They lifted Dylan together, awkwardly, irregularly, but firmly. Mikey let out a grunt with the effort, but he forced himself to keep his mind on the task. “You have got his legs? Keep them straight.”
The room was full of smoke and littered with chaos, noise, broken glass. "There must be someone who will come to our help," he muttered as he looked for any Healer, teacher, or anyone who could help. When the light shone on Dylan's face, it looked too pallid and too stiff. "Yeah," he panted, his fingers clenching the boy's shoulders. "We've got to take him to St. Mungo's. Right away." Mikey's jaw set, determination replacing the fear that had been there. "Hang in there, Dylan. We are taking you out of here."
They started to walk through the debris as one. Two kids carrying a third to any hope they could find.
STATS
Stamina ◦ 6 | Evasion ◦ 7 | Strength ◦ 4 | Wisdom ◦ 9 | Arcane Power ◦ 6 | Accuracy ◦ 8
ABILITIES
Sixth Sense
Evasive Maneuvers
Mundane Action: Carry Dylan toward safety with Avery, searching for a clear path out of the Cloister or help.
Reducio
@Avery Gray
The Ballroom
Trigger warning: Events mentioned here and descriptions are not intended for under the age of 13.
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Interacting with: @Mikey Forville, @Dylan Astor
Mentioning: N/A
Date: Summer 2025Word Count: 222
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✽Avery was weak, but yet at the same time she refused to back down. Refused to let her pain envelope her. She had to get Dylan and Mikey to safety. Even if it meant her own downfall. She wouldn't be able to rest well at night knowing she could have done more to protect them.
She carried Dylan's legs. His body was heavy with dead weight. She struggled to get a good grip on him and nodded when Mikey asked if she had his legs. Her determination was taking over her pain and the feeling of dread that she was going to lose Dylan that day filled her.
Avery wasn't thinking clearly. She didn't know what else to do. Her panic grew by the minute as she couldn't find anyone to help. The ballroom had been destroyed. Debris littering the ground and making it difficult to walk through with the body of a limp boy between her and Mikey's arms.
They had to find Dylan help. And soon. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't live to see another beautiful sunrise or see his family again. That thought alone hurt Avery the more she thought about it and tears crept into her eyes again. How could such a beautiful wedding turn into a deadly disaster where everyone had to fight for the chance to live?
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Credit: Mylo Atkins
Stats:
stamina ◦ 7 | evasion ◦ 6 | strength ◦ 7 | wisdom ◦ 7 | arcane power ◦ 6 | accuracy ◦ 7
Abilities:
’s Grace, FearlessMundane Action: Finding a way to leave for St. Mungo's with Dylan Astor and Mikey Forville
Magical Action: None
Be the change you wish to see |
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in the world. |
The Ballroom
Mentions Aly, Thaddeus, Brock, Harlan, vaguely other people | Dress
In horror, Dee watched - everything. There was too much happening, all at once. Too many people to keep track of, friend or foe impossible to distinguish, casting and screaming and bleeding out on the ground. Hanging in the air, getting skewered by knives and crystals. Rising from the chasm, screaming. Kicking house-elves, shooting daggers, erecting stairs, bleeding out on the ground. There was only so much the mind could take in at the same time.
So Dee's mind honed in on a small subset of the chaos going on around her - the part-giant, currently under attack by both Dee's best friend and the old Athanatos. Their verbal exchange was hard to follow, although she could feel the hair on her arms rising when Athanatos declared that he was imbuing shadows with purpose. A metaphor, perhaps, but Dee had seen enough that her instinct wanted to take it literally. References to blood magic - this was bad news. More reason to disrupt this before someone, the giant stranger, most likely, died.
Dealla's panicked Orbis did exactly what it promised - and not at all what she had intended. Nauseated, she watched as the ground opened to embrace the part-giant, bleeding from multiple lacerations, and swallowed him whole. Not like last year at the ball, when the same spell had left Jack half-buried and incapacitated. Her victim was just - gone. "No," she hissed, horrified, then started sprinting before she knew what she was doing, feet skidding over broken rock as if physical proximity would have any effect at all on undoing what she'd just caused. Her thoughts were racing, frantic - was there a spell she knew to reverse this? A digging spell? Deprimo, Diffindo - too dangerous, she might end up doing more harm than good. She registered Harlan stumbling at the edge of her vision, unsteady and bloody, concerningly close to Athanatos and his shadows, but could not dedicate the time to stop. Queasiness was roiling in her stomach when she stopped right next to where the earth had eaten up the gigantic man. She didn't want to free him, but she didn't want him to die... maybe there was one thing she could do?
Blinking hurriedly to clear her vision, Dee pointed her wand at the ground, right where she thought his head must have ended up. "Aspira," she whispered.
Magical Action | Casting Aspira at the Part-Giant to create an air bubble for him
Sta 7 | Eva 16 | Str 4 | Wis 18 | Arc 10 | Acc 22
Evasive Maneuvers | Charmer | Perfectionist I + II | Spell Spread | Restricted Potions | Apparition
Inventory | Wand, 2 x Felix Felicis (1 used), 1 x Moonseed Poison, 1 x Antidote to Uncommon Poisons, 1 x Blood Replenishing Potion
"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."
The Ballroom
| —— |  𝄃𝄃𝄂𝄂𝄀𝄁𝄃𝄂𝄂 twisted all my limbs for you, two of them in knots & two of them in loops —— ——summary, this thread is happening on MAY 7TH, 2025, in the AFTERNOON with WEDDING GUESTS / wc: 1,032. The mind was the cruelest jail cell – to be an observer in crisis, watching as a body possessed moved in a way that felt both inhumane and tortuous cracked deeper into the recess of Harlan’s mind showing him that there was far worse things than being ostracized at school. The little tremors of a failed relationship, the ambition fueling him to move up the upper echelons felt like child’s play when faced with magic so potent and foreign to him that it was like he was pulling from a source text that he barely recognized. The show continued as the Harlan shoved inside his own body and continued to fight while feeling the anxiety surge through him like there wasn’t enough oxygen entering his body. Did this possession even know to breathe? Was it trying to snuff him out too and take over complete control? He had so much to live for, there was no giving up as he fought back with his restless indomitable spirit. " Incendio Duo. " Sure, it was his voice and his wand pointed at Mr. Athanatos but all the real Harlan could do was yank at his hand with all of his might, hoping that there would be a chink in this spell's defenses for him to break through. The flames roared from the tip as the magic surged and ate at Thaddeus' robe while the wards around him protected him from the rest. With eyes widened and hysteria palpable, Harlan hadn't known the man specifically, but if this was all his doing then his life very well might've been over if he did get his body back. He would surely perish now by the hand of the Athanatos', if not by the groom himself then the patriarch. Fuck, fuck, fuck. ' This is my body! ' Despite his collective failed attempts at breaking free, Harlan simply needed to persist. His dad and Harlow were still there, he had to pass his exam to return to Hogwarts in his fourth year, he had to make friends, and this wasn't going to stop him from doing that over his dead and possessed body. Lucky for him, his body was frozen in time by Professor Lécuyer, the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher who was now protecting the rest of them from Harlan, a pawn for the Dark Arts to do its bidding. What a cruel fate, but it was at least a silver lining. At least, that's what he thought until his body broke free from those chains first and continued towards Mr. Athanatos despite the falling debris, a nimbleness that exceeded what felt like Harlan's physical limits as it dodged spells and errant projectiles with ferocious agility. " Har, you need to stop! What is gotten into you? " His body moved and looked at where the voice was coming from and it was Harlow, his sister who had now been pointing her wand directly at her brother with tears streaming down her face. There had already been too much going on and when she spotted the boy as she found the exit, something instinctively told Harlow to get her brother to snap out of whatever the hell was going on with him. ' Harlow. ' Emotions swelling as he saw his sister standing there with scratches against the dress she fought so intensely with her parents to let her wear — it was their mother's when she was a student and looked so stunning on her. The fabric now ripped and stained from the events that took place, but she was alive and that's when Harlan spotted their Dad yards away from Harlan with mouth aghast and a tremble that he'd never seen his dad with before. " Harlan, we need to get out of here now! " Arnold's voice boomed for the first time and perhaps through the strict expectation came one of the first times that Harlan felt like his father was looking at him as something other than his path to the top. There was fear in his eyes, sadness, hurt, and the culmination of them both was enough to push Harlan to attempt another jail break. Through his consciousness, Harlan sought out his connective tissue within his body from end to end to end. He attempted to move his fingers, his toes, feel the crane in his neck, and force his way through the curse back into his own body. ' Let. Me. In. ' His mind thought loudly as he pushed further until he felt a crack that sent Harlan's psyche to jump back a little bit in absolute surprise and delight. The control slowly returned as Harlan's body went entirely slack as he collapsed onto himself on the floor into a kneeling state as his mind reconnected itself back to the controls and functions that was severed away. " Harlow. " His voice somewhat hoarse and fragmented as his head swiveled forward and he quickly took in the full scene that was in front of him — his sister, his dad, a collapsing ceiling, dighting breaking out, and others rushing their way outside of the building. He spotted a few older students dueling against adults and there was a moment that Harlan thought to help out but he felt fucking exhausted. His entire body ached, the cuts on his body and bruises forming felt far worse than he ever experienced and the adrenaline would wear off soon enough. Standing tall to his full height, the Gryffindor gave Professor Lécuyer and Mr. Athanatos one final look before he pushed off and ran with as much gusto that he could muster to his sister and father to get the hell out of the crumbling Augury Cloister. The teenager was hyper aware, the pit falls, the falling debris, he ran in tandem with Harlow and their father to get the hell out and figure out how they could help without being in the direct line of fire. It'd be another thing if Harlan didn't look like he was one spell hit away from being knocked out, but they all collectively had to ensure the Montgomery's would live to see another day.
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The Ballroom
Her kick of the house-elf sent him flying backwards into the crevasse. Aly had thought that she wouldn't have cared, but there was something about the way her foot connected with his small, fragile body - even before she turned to cast at Brock, she rushed to the crevasse and looked down just in time to hear that horrible, gut-wrenching, bone-crunching, tell-tale thump of the body far, far below.
She had never seen anyone die before. There was something about it that took her heart and seized it in a cold, skeleton-fingered grip, squeezing blood and tears hard from the thumping in her chest that seemed to beat so alive now; moments later, her successful knives at the giant figure seemed so much more cruel than they had when she had first had the idea to turn the smoke into them. Her keen eyes glimpsed the fabric of his shirt split in two as they were gashed by her too-sharp blades, and the burned, scarred emblem underneath: some design, permanently emblazoned into his muscled chest. Again, her heart panged, though this time for the party crasher and not the servant who lay broken and wrongly-angled at the bottom of the pit behind her. This man might have been causing pain and destruction here, but was it only because he had been the victim of pain and destruction of someone else's before, in his past? He rasped out something about a legacy of cruelty, bleeding in several places from her hail of projectiles... but it was not to her. It was to Thaddeus Athanatos, the father of the groom and the man whose surname her friend Winnie now bore.
Something else was going on here, something to which Aly was clearly not privy.
The final nail in the coffin that was Aly's realization that something was wrong, that she was wrong, was the horror in her best mate's eyes when she turned to her. Dee, who just moments before had been slinging spells at the intruder and dodging falling pillars alongside her, had turned to Aly with nothing short of shock in her gaze; as the giant man dug into the ground via a well-placed spell from the ex-duellist, Aly's heart squeezed uncomfortably once more. There was just something about the fear in Dee's eyes - like nothing Aly had ever seen from her before.
It almost looked like Dee was scared of her.
Aly knew she was wrong. Knew the knives had been too much. Knew that though she had left behind her dream of being a Healer long ago, she was not an attacker but a helper. A healer, just without the capital H. She needed to be on support, on salvation, on assistance, not on offence. Without words, the agreement was made. No more bloodshed. It was time to protect the innocent, those they cared about, and everyone in between.
A peaceful end to this was the only way either of them were making it out alive.
"Go. You've got it up here," she said, breathlessly, nodding a head towards the submerged part-giant. "Scream if you need me. I'm going down there." Tears pricked hot at her eyes as she reached out and took Dee's hand, squeezing it in an only halfway-successful attempt to convey a million things all at once: I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I love you. Please be safe. Please don't die. Then she turned and fled towards the gaping hole in the floor.
As if Eve had read her mind, Aly arrived at the lip's edge to find the redhead emerging from the fissure, seemingly mostly unharmed; the Ravenclaw rushed to join the lioness, leaving Dee behind. Behind Evelynn was a staircase, formed of rock and rubble, leading down into the crevasse below; clearly the lioness had taken it upon herself to formulate a way out. In passing, Aly grasped her hand, a silent thank-you before she rushed past the ginger down the stairs.
The bottom of the pit was like something out of a Muggle apocalypse movie: smoke, rubble, rock, and blood all mixed together into a most dangerous soup. The first figure the eaglet rushed to was the house-elf she had kicked, whose limbs now bent at uncomfortable angles, including at places they shouldn't have; complete with the blood on its pink suit and the lack of pulse in its neck when Aly's frantic fingers attempted to find one, it was most certainly dead. Aly felt sick to her stomach, and it wasn't just because of the strange odor down this low beneath the floor: something about sweat and the salty tang of blood, mixed with a foul stench she couldn't quite identify, lingering in her nose like the most unpleasant of houseguests. There were also several younger students nearby in various states of brokenness - one who looked very much on the brink of death, his chest caving in, surrounded by another young man and a blonde woman probably about Aly's age or a bit older... and another on the other side, a blonde girl with an equally yellow-haired boy by her side. A dark-haired girl, ignored on the floor. Merlin, they were all so young. Aly's heart ached for them all, but she was no Dee or Eve or Manu; she couldn't spread out a spell among the three of them, or among anyone else injured nearby.
In that split second, Aly donned a very different hat - not the standard pointed wizard one of a Hogwarts student, not even a fluffy flowery pink cap of a bridesmaid or the military helmet of a soldier in a war, but rather the white bonnet of a triage nurse. Split seconds meant everything here.
The dark-haired girl (Sakaya) was unconscious and bleeding, but looked less on death's brink than the other two; she could be stable for now, a lesser priority. The dark-haired boy (Dylan) had two people with him, one of whom was older, able to cast a spell or feed him a potion; the blonde girl (Taylor), however, had no such elder person, just that younger blond boy beside her. As such, she jumped to the top of Aly's list, priority-wise. The Ravenclaw rushed to her side, taking a knee by the blond boy (Gideon) and waving her wand upwards to show him that she was not there to cause harm, but to aid. "Here - let me help," she panted, slightly out of breath from the sprint down Eve's rubble-made steps, to him. "What's your name? What's hers?" The girl, silver hair sprawled around her unconcious head like a halo of a dying angel, looked to have fallen into the fissure and been hit by pieces of the roof; she was bleeding from several different locations (including her mouth) and seemed paler than a ghost. Her wrist at an impossible angle. Her body twisted. The least Aly could do was refer to her by her name as she tried to keep her from dying.
Internal bleeding, probably, in addition to external. Broken bones. Lear's beard, which to address first?
She had no dittany on her - hadn't thought she would have needed it at a bloody wedding that was now putting more literal emphasis on the word "bloody" - but a deep healing charm seemed to be the need at the moment. Vulnera Sanentur, then, was the only option. Hopefully the girl would forgive some scarring, seeing as the former healer intern had not been properly prepared for this moment. Aly began to trace the youngster's deepest wound with her wandtip. "Vulnera Sanentur," she whispered, her voice cracking, a plea rather than a spell. Tracing the other way, then pointing at the wound: "Vulnera Sanentur. Vulnera Sanentur."
Unspoken: Please, please, please work.
Aly had caused enough death today. She had never intended to wield fear as a weapon as easily as she had the knives, and to know that she was capable of such horrible actions, of putting such terror into her best mate's eyes, struck fear into her own heart just as well. Now, what she really needed was to save someone instead, to cleanse some part of her sin. To make her feel more like herself again. To help, rather than to hurt.
Mundane Action: Going down into the fissure
Magical Action: Casting Vulnera Sanentur on Taylor
@Dealla Prince, @Taylor Athanatos, @Gideon Athanatos, @Evelynn Decipio
July 5th, 2025 | (sleeveless) bridesmaid dress | #C47DDB
paragon allies: dee, winnie | lovely creature & charmer affect everyone | keen eye on
| Aly Salinger's ency |
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STA 10 | EVA 14 | STR 5 | WIS 19 | ARC 7 | ACC 18 Charmer • Keeper’s Catch • Paragon of Health • Lovely Creature • Foulplay • Keen Eye who's afraid of little old me? |
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