Febraury 19th, 1888 — Dervish and Banges

While Hogsmeade was no longer her places of residence, it didn't mean she avoided it completely. She still had friends in the area — and that wasn't even mentioning Araminta and Julius — who she tried to visit every now and then. There was an odd sensation that accompanied her walks down High Street. Perhaps it was because Hogsmeade, unlike London, was not changing so rapidly; the members of the village were content with their seclusion and traditional ways they'd been raised. There was no muggle technology, save for the train that ran through the outskirts every now and then.

She wandered mindlessly as she walked through the streets of High Street, even managing to wander into one of the shops that had taken a long time to recover from the tragedies that had struck it: Dervish and Banges. Formerly ravished by the flames of the High Street fires, it had almost returned to its original state. Rumors had spread that the owners had suffered greatly from the loss of their shop the first time around, so the thought of something happening yet again was an awful thought.

However, it seemed that it was bound to happen once again.

She had been in the store for less than three minutes, her gaze gliding over the various tinkered objects, before a loud noise caused her to let out a high-pitched noise. One of the large display walls in the center of the store began to tip ... and it tipped fast. She only had a moment to move out of the way before the sound of shattering and crashing accompanied flying glass and rolling objects.

After the noise slowly began to fade, Bella finally peeked up from where she was standing. Across the room, was another person looking just as surprised as herself.

"Wha- Did you ..." she gasped, her eyes quickly flickering around the destroyed displays.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Ophelia's surprise at the crash was quickly replaced by indignation as she was addressed by a woman who was more or less a stranger. Well, she was a stranger, as they had never formally met, but Ophelia certainly knew her; it was her job as a socialite to know everyone, as she saw it, and particularly those who appeared on the pages of Witch Weekly. A woman of good repute, of course, had to know whom not to socialize with!

"Of course not," she insisted, as though scandalized at the mere suggestion that she might be the cause of some mischief. She crossed her arms over her chest, and realized immediately what the cause of the noise had been — she had ventured out of the house today with her pet niffler hidden away in an enlarged compartment of her bag, so that she could buy him a new toy from the pet store, and the little rascal was no longer there!

Not that she had any intention of admitting the cause of the destruction to a girl who had failed so miserably at finding a husband that she had had to resort to a career after less than one season!

  

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The dust cleared, and the face of the woman became apparent. It was that of Miss Ophelia Dippet, a socialite well-known in the magical community for her extravagant parties. Bella already had enough drama coming out of Witch Weekly, and she surely had no wish to get involved with drama with an influential socialite like Miss Dippet. More rumors would lead to more questioning by her parents, and the last thing she wanted was to be removed from the care of her Aunt.

"Well, do you have any idea what caused such a disturbance?" she asked, her brows raising. No one with good sense would blame Bella based on the direction the shelves had fallen; however, she didn't know whether the business owners—men who had seen destruction come to their shop more than once—would have any good sense left.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Perhaps there was something in the young woman's tone that implied fault, or perhaps Ophelia was only reading into it that way because she was at fault, but either way, she felt rather defensive. Miss Scrimgeour had a bit of a reputation for not being the most graceful belle at the ball (among the many other whispers about her!), while Ophelia had never had such a thing said about her. If anyone was going to be blamed for knocking over display cases, it certainly shouldn't be her.

"I'm sure I don't know," she said haughtily. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Bartholomew beating his way hastily towards the far corner of the store. Oh, dear — what had he set his sights on now? And how was Ophelia supposed to fetch him back without attracting attention to herself?

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   Bella Scrimgeour

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Just looking at the fallen shelves—and not to mention the various shattered items!—was making her chest tighter. Was there a way all of this could be fixed with magic, or would she and Miss Dippet have to resign to the fact that they were the only ones in the room when it collapsed? She took a step forward, the toe of her shoe hitting a piece of glass. As her gaze snapped down to whatever she'd knocked into, another clattering noise rustled in the background.

"Do you hear that?" she asked quietly, her head swinging back and forth to try and catch sight of the mysterious source of the sound. "You don't think that one of the pet shop's animals could have escaped? Or - Merlin! - You don't think some small child could be stuck under the display?" As unlikely as it was, she could only assume the worst.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

"I don't think it likely," she said in a measured tone, mind racing in the meantime. "A child would make far more noise than that, I would think. Are you sure that wasn't just something you hit with your foot?" Of course she knew it wasn't, because that noise had Bartholomew and his antics written all over it, but she hardly wanted Miss Scrimgeour to go investigate and discover the cause of the noise before she could find a way to extricate the creature from whatever he was up to. Besides, the collected pile of broken things was extensive enough that a nudge in one area quite possibly could have caused a collapse in another area. Maybe the other woman would buy the excuse. Either way, Ophelia had found her opening to cross the store inconspicuously, she felt. "I'll go see," she announced, giving Miss Scrimgeour and the chaos on the floor a wide berth as she cut through another aisle towards Bartholomew.

  

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Miss Dippet's certainty was suspicious, but upon second thought Bella realized that she might just be paranoid. Would a child make more noise? What if he'd just been knocked out and was just now stirring? Well, a child would have a caretaker, right? Wait... but what if it had wandered into the shop and its mother was now looking for it? She couldn't be the one to explain her child had died because of her own irresponsibility? Lord help her.

While Bella stood frozen while she pondered the potential consequences of inaction, she watched Miss Dippet disappear behind some of the mess. She suddenly moved, her head craning around in an attempt to figure out where to even start. In the end, she decided to follow the direction Miss Dippet was heading in.

She stepped over various broken shelves and objects hurriedly in her attempt to figure out what was making noise. After stepping over a rather large piece of rubble, the fabric of her dress caught on a pointed tip and caused her to fall over. Glass shattering further, Bella flinched—both in pain and at the sound of more things breaking.

"Please tell me you found the source of the noise!" she called miserably.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Ophelia had reached the set of shelves which Bartholomew was unceremoniously scaling — he was rather nimble, for such a small and otherwise ungainly-looking creature — and reached out to catch him by the scruff of his neck, though the little devil dodged her hand and moved around to the back of the shelf, peering out at her with an inscrutable expression. Was he laughing at her, or were those deep breaths just exertion from his climb? Perhaps he didn't understand why Ophelia had come over at all, to try and ruin his fun. What a little scamp! She supposed left to his own devices he'd have the entire store turned upside down before he was finished. And where had her chaperone gotten off to? It was just a maid, of course, but the maids had plenty of experience grappling Bart down from various heights around the Dippet house, and might have made a cleaner job of it than Ophelia could.

And now it seemed that blasted woman had decided to wade her way through the wreckage and come over here, when Ophelia still had not succeeded in reclaiming her pet. Why did she have to do that? Couldn't she just mind her own business? Ophelia was almost grateful when she slipped and fell (and, truth be told, a little smug as well; Miss Scrimgeour did have a reputation for lacking a certain grace and ease on the dance floor, after all, and it seemed the rumors were well-founded if she couldn't manage to carry herself from one end of the aisle to the other without misadventure).

"Nothing over here," she lied, hoping she sounded confident enough to dissuade the girl from coming any closer. After glancing over her shoulder to ensure Miss Scrimgeour wasn't close enough (or, more appropriately, at the proper angle, now that she'd fallen) to see what Ophelia was doing, she nudged the items on the shelf aside and made another grab for her wayward pet. "You know, the shelves falling over might have had something to do with the merchandise. They sell all sorts of odd things here. It could have been — like a magical cookoo clock, that just went off at the wrong moment," she suggested. Of course it hadn't been, but this seemed relatively plausible to her ears, and she thought Miss Scrimgeour would probably want some sort of explanation sooner or later.

Her fingers brushed up against Bart's fur and Ophelia clamped down as hard as she could, dragging him forward across the shelf like a wayward child might be dragged back into the house by a governess. Now she just had to wrestle him back into his bag before Miss Scrimgeour recovered herself!

  

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She did manage to pick herself up, but in the seconds it took for her to start picking out glass from her hand before realizing magic existed, she could hear Miss Dippet — or at least what she hoped was Miss Dippet — wrestling with something from across the store floor. She waved her wand and muttered a quiet spell to clear any remnants of glass, blood, everything from her palms before finally reaching her feet.

"Miss Dippet, what's going on?" she called helplessly, trying to find her way around the rubble so she could at least catch a glance of what was causing so much noise. "You're not injured, are you?"

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —

Miss Scrimgeour's head popped up above the aisles just as Ophelia was closing the top on Black Bart's bag quite securely, much to her relief. The bag was enlarged to be more comfortable for him, but it also meant that even though he was still struggling (or at least, he had been struggling up until the last moment), he wasn't making any suspicious bulges in the outside of the bag.

"I'm quite alright," she said, turning to glance at the other woman and noticing the cuts on her hands. "Though it doesn't seem you can say the same. Perhaps you ought to go to the hospital?" she suggested. If Miss Scrimgeour was leaving, she could slip out as well, and leave whatever shopkeep discovered this mess to clean it up!

  

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Bella had no desire to go to the hospital, but she did want to get out of here.

Looking around at the damage done to the room, Bella supposed it would probably be the best course of action — and before the damage was tied to she or Miss Dippet's name. Nodding in agreement, Bella surveyed her path (so she wouldn't fall yet again) before motioning for Miss Dippet to follow.

"Yes. We should probably- um, report this, too. Yes."

And then, they left.

  

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— MJ is MAGICAL —