June 8th, 1889 — Padmore Park, Afternoon

Herbologists have declared it a rare phenomenon: the appearance of several dozen bright red toadstools throughout the park. What is notable about them, however, is their unusual size: each is no smaller than a carriage wheel, and no larger, and a handful would give even an erumpant a run for their money!

Many have flocked to the village to take in this event, for they know time is fleeting: not long after the mushrooms appear, they will self-transfigure into various magical beasts. Though the Ministry has warned onlookers to stay away—and has members of the Department for the Regulation & Control of Magical Creatures, as well as two pairs of aurors, on site—curious minds have never been the best at heeding warnings.

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Emmeline was actually a little bit... terrified. She'd only been out of school for a week and she'd started working as soon as she could after returning home. It had been nothing but paperwork and the like to start though. Boring and dull. But now, well, now it wasn't so much of either of those two things. Thanks to a call in for an illness, the Beast division seemed to find themselves understaffed and Emmeline got sent to help deal with the situation in the park.

Unfortunately when she got there, she found herself standing along the perimeter of an area to keep the overly curious residents of Hogsmeade from trying to get further into the park for a look at what was going on. With a sigh, she found herself reciting the same spiel she'd been uttering for a few hours to a nosy Nancy that no, she could not make an exception no matter who said Nancy was. They finally gave up and turned on their way only for another to fill the same spot a few moments later.

This time, however, the young woman hardly had a chance to open her mouth when one of the toadstools not too far off from where she stood dissolved into a creature. A high pitched sound alerted Emmeline to the creature, leaving her staring and slack jawed at the sight of a rather large (and growing) occamy.

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#LovelyLadySet

Despite the abundance of employees under her command there were still certain things that Morwenna insisted upon overseeing herself - largely, it had to be said, the things that were what she deemed to be really bloody interesting. She had underlings to deal with smugglers who thought Britain was suffering for lack of colour-changing iguanas and it had been thirty-five years since she had personally dealt with something as basic as a Cornish pixie but when one was informed that an elephantine toadstool might turn into a dragon in the middle of a Saturday afternoon it did rather draw the attention.

It never did hurt to have another wand present either in her experience, especially given the ripple of tension that she watched spread through the assembled crowd from her vantage point. When one of the toadstools began to shudder and change she unconsciously flexed her fingers around her wand - she might be about to cast a conjuctivitus curse to save some idiotic onlookers, or she might be about to save a cat from being trampled by the same, there really was no way of knowing.

"Oh my."

Morwenna eye's went wide with delight as she watched the creature grow. It had been years since she had beheld anything quite as beautiful as the occamy before her and given half the chance she would have happily spent a day simply watching it's movements: unfortunately she might well have been the only one given the scream she heard from the crowd.

"It's a basilisk!" She rolled her eyes as she approached the onlookers, not even bothering to correct the fool who was looking at her like she was utterly insane for not running in the opposite direction, despite his own insistence on staying put and seeing what happened.

"If it was you would most certainly be dead by now." She snapped officiously. "Miss Woodcroft, what would you suggest?"

  

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MJ knows my soul rings to the rune of this iconic hat

The Park was one of Leif's hangouts. He always went there, when he wasn't busy or if he had the time to be. He wondered why all these people were there, considering not even entering the park, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he went in anyways. It seemed like people of all sorts were here, which wasn't odd, but what was odd was the simple number of it all. It seemed almost like a tourist attraction, and Leif knew where there was tourists, there was money. He wasn't a pickpocket. He just happened to notice when Knuts fell out of a coin purse, especially in large crowds.

His eyes widened as the toadstool began to shake and tremble, and he almost screamed when it turned out to be some sort of snake thing. He heard talk of a basilisk, and immediately covered his eyes. This claim was soon refuted by an authoritative-sounding woman. She seemed to know what was going on, so Leif thought he should get closer. Besides, he wanted to know how this would go. He wished he had a wand, that way he could protect all the ladies that were clutching their hats and running. Maybe he'd make the papers, and people would send him money.

Now that he knew the creature wasn't a basilisk, he took the time to look at it. It didn't seem too bad, but if he wasn't sure, he was ready to run. Leif would've bet the Galleon he'd gotten for his birthday that Liam would've run right up to the thing and pat it on the head, if he was here. But he wasn't. Though beautiful, Leif never trusted what he didn't know already.

"If it's not a basilisk, what is it?" he said, to no one in particular, running through his memory of the tattered textbooks his cousins would show him sometimes. Leif wasn't the best reader, though, and his mind faltered at this request. He sighed.

  

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Ben was here for business, not pleasure, as it turned out (although he would have come down just to look around at the spectacle of this whole event anyway). As the promoter for Jewell Distillery, he took his job very seriously (or at least as seriously as he had ever taken any job). He wasn't about to lose a good paying gig that involved copious amounts of free booze anytime soon. Their latest line of liquors were "monster themed," however, so this was... well, very thematic. Ben had headed out from Excalibur when he'd heard the news armed with a satchel full of various bottles of their new liquor line and a hoard of conjured shot glasses, and he had been spending the past twenty minutes wandering through the crowd and offering free tasters to the assembled masses. He'd made something of a game out of it, asking them to guess what beasts they thought the toadstools would turn in to.

When the first one transformed, he felt as though he'd hit the jackpot. "It's an occamy!" he declared cheerfully when the small child next to him asked. He was in a particularly pleasant mood because they had a liquor for that, and it was one of the ones he'd brought; silvery-blue liquid that gave the drinker the perception that they were growing, for a few minutes. It really just affected their vision; there were serious logistical problems with trying to make people actually grow if you wanted to be able to serve it in bars.

"Occamy Whiskey," he offered the crowd behind him, removing a bottle and holding it up to display the silvery liquid inside. "Free shots! Want one, kid?" he asked, offering a small splash in a cup to the little boy. Glancing over his shoulder at the creature, he remarked in the general direction of the Ministry employees, "You'd better get it contained, yeah? No telling how big it'd grow out here."

  

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The moment a small child had appeared in the vicinity Morwenna’s mood had gone from mildly irked that she had to contain this marvellous creature to immediately on edge and she took an unconscious step in front of him. Children were unknown entities, especially ones that were curious and she was about to answer him curtly before shooing him away when a vaguely familiar voice spoke and she frowned as she searched for its owner.

“I thank you for the advice Mr Crouch,” Morwenna replied, taking the cup out of the boy’s hand swiftly and pouring it onto the grass. She had grave misgivings over what any whiskey that was named after an occamy might do to the human body and she certainly wasn’t about to trust in a man who, whilst certainly charming, had once told her the tale of how he had accidentally smuggled a monkey into the country.

“We were just going to ask it nicely to vacate the park.”

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MJ knows my soul rings to the rune of this iconic hat

Emmeline liked to think she was a smart girl, quick on her feet, but being put on the spot by a woman she admired brought a whole different aspect of nerves to the girl. With a gulp, she looked from the gorgeous creature over to her boss.

"Well, I don't suppose it has any eggs so that should help," she started to say, pausing as the kid came up and who soon got answered by the gentleman that had pulled a flower from her hair at the Coming Out Ball.

"But that doesn't mean it won't still attack. They can still be quite aggressive,"she added, giving the little not a pointed look as a form of a earning should he not heed Mrs. Skeeter's warning. Gaze shifting to the cup, she gave a slight not to it, "But we may be able to contain it within a smaller space and then relocate it to a safer and more controlled environment." After that, she finally managed to actually look at her boss with a timid smile but with an obvious wariness in her eyes.

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#LovelyLadySet

Leif had no idea what an occamy was, however, the drink that he was offered did look rather enticing, though he knew the word 'whiskey' usually didn't go with kids. He pondered over the decision before the authoritative woman called out the man -- Mr. Crouch -- and then dumped out the drink on the ground. Leif sighed a little. It looked a bit like the moon, he thought, still uncertain over the danger levels of an occamy. Maybe Mr. Crouch was just trying to give them some insight, or it was some type of potion!

"Ask it nicely?" he said briefly, wondrously, as if the creature would actually listen to them. The way the older woman spoke, it seemed like it might. If he was such a big creature, he would want to run. Leif wondered how many teeth it had. The younger woman, was talking about eggs. Leif didn't see any, which seemed to be a good thing. He decided he wanted to help the women. Surely they had some authority somewhere, and besides, if he made some type of daring save today, it would be good in future when he ran for Minister of Magic.

"It's pretty big," Leif noticed, "Do you have a box of some type, ma'am?" he used his best manners as he addressed the older woman, she seemed in charge, and then, turning to look at the man, "Or could we conjure one, sir?" The we, of course, was metaphorical. Leif hadn't a wand, even, so unless he planned on doing some wandless magic at the tender age of ten, it was unlikely he could do much. But he still wanted to.

The younger woman, he paid less attention to. He had decided that she thought him too childish when she gave him a warning look. It wasn't like he was going to run up and pet it, and besides, he was given to trusting men and people in charge easily.

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Ben watched with dismay as Mrs. Skeeter poured the shot out on the ground. Well. No Occamy Whiskey for her, then. Spoilsport.

His feelings about wasted alcohol aside, he did realize these Ministry ladies probably weren't too keen on having an intoxicated child around the scene of a developing disaster. Liability, and all. With a frown at the occamy (who may have already been starting to grow, or was that just his imagination?) Ben turned to the kid.

"Sure, we could conjure up a box," he agreed. "But the problem with conjuring things is that they don't last long. See that?" he said, pointing at one of the discarded shot glasses that was already dissolving back into air. "So what we really need is a normal box. A nice, sturdy one. Do you think you could help us find one? Somewhere in the park, or back at home?"

Anywhere but here, really, but Ben wouldn't out and say that. He knew how little boys were, since he was essentially an overgrown version himself. No one would leave for their own safety, or to be out of the way. If they thought they were being useful, on the other hand...

  

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Leif frowned as he watched the tiny glass disappear. He thought that maybe, when he was older, he would go and create a special type of conjuring that was more permanent. He figured it couldn't be that hard.

"There's no way I have a box that size!" he said, staring at the steadily growing Occamy, before adding on a "Sir," to the sentence, "At best, I might be able to find a littler one....maybe one of you could transfigure it bigger?" He thought that seemed possible, though he didn't know too much about specific spells other than ones his parents did sometimes.

He blinked, looking around the park. Surely someone must have some type of container that could be made bigger. Maybe someone coming back from shopping. Maybe someone who had brought a set of Gobstones to play in the park, or some set of carrying case. He had another question, too. "How big's it gonna get? Is it just because it was in the toadstool?"

Had he more sense about him, instead of thinking this was too much danger, he mostly saw the situation as a chance to prove himself. He thought that the adults would understand that.

  

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Marvolo had kept Morgana from being able to get too close to the rather interesting event going on in the park. The bright red toadstools were a sight to behold on their own but then they were also shifting into a variety of creatures. There were bossy people about and she supposed they were there to detain the situation. She had been gazing at the occamy when Marvolo tugged at her sleeve and she turned her head to see one of the toadstools becoming a unicorn. A pretty sizable one, at that.

  

Morwenna tilted the glass in her hand thoughtfully, not having considered it as a receptacle but it wasn’t a bad suggestion at all and she was moments from telling her most recent protégé just that when the glass dissolved in her hand as though it had never been there. Well, so much for that. Miss Woodcroft could not have known of course but it was irritating nevertheless.

“A good thought Miss Woofcroft but perhaps not,” Morwenna replied with a brief, but tight smile, hoping the girl understood she wasn’t in trouble and that Morwenna’s mood was directed at the world in general today and not at her. The boy was eager though, she would give him that, and it gave her some hope for the future of their kind.

“An occamy will generally grow as large as it likes,” she said to the boy, knowing one of the adults present certainly knew that already and not wishing to offend the other on the off-chance he might have a spare bottle of whiskey after all this was over she could sample. She glanced around for something useful and spotted a nearby bench occupied by only one malingering young woman. Eyebrow arched Morwenna shot a surreptitious charm that made the woman immediately get up, convinced she was late for an appointment, and the delicate feet of the confounded girl had barely taken three steps before Morwenna transfigured the bench into a trunk.

“There. One problem solved-”

And just like that Morwenna experienced the rare moment of satisfaction for getting somewhere with work being immediately blown away by another fucking problem.

“Oh for f-” She took a deep breath. “Sake.”

  

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MJ knows my soul rings to the rune of this iconic hat

An occamy could certainly be a problem; while not inherently violent (at least, not to Ben's understanding), a crowd as large as this was bound to have at least a few asshats who could find a way to annoy one enough to become violent. But it seemed that the occamy problem was being solved, by the people who were actually paid to be here to solve it, so Ben wasn't going to concern himself too much over the still-at-large-and-growing creature.

The second creature to burst forth from a toadstool didn't seem like a problem at all, as far as he was concerned. Who had ever heard of an angry unicorn? They were essentially the mascot of people who didn't get angry. He was confused, then, to hear the Woman In Charge express her exasperation.

"What? The unicorn? What could be wrong with a unicorn?" Ben asked, puzzled, as he glanced over at it. Maybe there were very specific regulations regarding the release or resettling of unicorns? The Ministry did love its paperwork, as he remembered from his few brief stints of employment there, and paperwork was a very good reason for Mrs. Skeeter to seem exasperated. Meanwhile, Ben's biggest problem at the moment was that they hadn't pioneered any unicorn-themed liquors. Yet, anyway.

  

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Morwenna sucked in a deep breath, let it settle and exhaled slowly. She felt absolutely no better but it did give her the time she needed to regulate her thoughts. On the one hand Mr Crouch's response was probably the correct one - unicorns were, after all, quite a different prospect to the occamy and in all her years she had never heard of one intentionally harming a wizard, nor did she expect to.

On the other hand...

Quite without warning four more toadstalls changed rapidly, one after the other, and Morwenna quickly assessed two creatures she could have contained as a student, one that she was confident her team and the aurors would manage well enough and a Hebridean Black that turned her insides to ice.

"If we're lucky the unicorn will look tastier than we do."

  

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MJ knows my soul rings to the rune of this iconic hat

That, Ben had to admit, was definitely a problem. A problem that he was standing decidedly too close to.

"Good luck with that," he said hurriedly, turning to make his way through the crowd to the edge of the park.

  

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Leif was getting nervous. He wasn't sure about if he should stay, because then he'd be impressing the Ministry people, the Ministry people! He really wanted to show them what he was made of, even if he was just a kid. Beasts and beings seemed pretty interesting, though they'd be just one step on his journey to becoming Minister of Magic, his ultimate goal. Really, he knew it was lofty. He had to make it to OWLs to even be considered for being an employee, from what his oldest cousins and their friends had said. He doubted that his family had enough money for that.

He was grateful, at least, for the information on occamys. They seemed pretty interesting.

Still, he couldn't keep the quaking from his voice as he saw the beast's eyes, the large dragon standing so close, "C-can I do anything to help?" he thought maybe he could be like one of those people who pushed other people away from the crowd, but that wouldn't work. He was much too young, he thought. Curse his age! He frowned, if only he was a little older, maybe if he knew more things, he would be useful to them. They would think he was such an amazing kid.

  

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