March 9th 1891 - outside a tenement building in wizarding London

Zelda wasn't sure if they'd been sent into this off-street of Diagon Alley this evening because they were anticipating lots of catastrophes, because the buildings here were a little questionably reputable, or because the weather was so bad that the Ministry overlords were genuinely concerned that they might up and blow away with the wind. If she had to hazard a guess it would be the latter, because the snow was piling up in heaps, whiting out her view of the end of the street, and the temperatures had to be significantly below freezing.

Of course, this may have been exacerbated by the weather charm on the tenement building, which was shifting the building back and forth in front of them. Sometimes weather charms could get cranky in extreme weather - especially when they were very apparently cast by amateurs. They'd had to evict the building already but now it was just about saving it - undoing the poorly-done weather charm before the building came toppling down in front of them.

She didn't mind winter, but she hated the cold, and kept shifting where she stood illuminated in wandlight as they tried to figure out the best way to break the spell.

"What're the odds they keep us in London on call tonight?" Zelda said, willing to hazard they were high. It was already a little after regular working hours, and she wasn't going to risk apparating in this - and she was not even convinced that the floo network would be fully functional when they got back to the Ministry, even if the Department of Magical Transportation was on top of their shit for once. The wind was blowing the snow up around them and Zelda kept switching her wand around in her hands so she could blow warm air onto her gloved fingers. 

---

Being employed by the Ministry was good for many things: it allowed her a stable income, a reason to leave the house that didn't involve making social calls for the sake of it, and it gave her purpose. It gave her freedom, too—more than most women of her station were allowed. She could come and go as she pleased during work hours, and as long as she wore her Ministry badge no one questioned why she was unchaperoned.

On the other hand, the Ministry had control over her life in many ways, her schedule included. She and Zelda worked a regular shift, but they were also to expected to work overtime when disasters hit. However, this wasn't a magical disaster—this was a natural occurrence that magical folk had decided to turn into various mini-disasters, and after a long day of work it was safe to say that she was done with it. Her temple was bounding and her eyes were blurring from the exhaustion. Her wand arm had been lifted for most of the day and she struggled to keep it in the air as they worked through the charms. She wanted to go home.

"I'd say it's a given," she grumbled, cringing as yet another attempt to break the charm was met with failure. The building continued to violently sway, and every time it looked as though it was about to jumble her heart leapt in her chest. If her arm didn't give out first, her heart would. "But I don't know what they intend to do if it gets any worse out here." She could see her breath as she spoke, and the tip of her nose was already numb from the cold. The Ministry had been characteristically unprepared to deal with the smaller details of this, forcing Delight to have to work quick to charm her own robes into insulating better as the temperature dropped and the wind picked up.

---

"Maybe they'll have us hang around until the snowfall stops tomorrow," Zelda grouched, already hating the thought of it. She cast a charm to try and stabilize the building's wavering motions; Zelda was really worried that it would come down soon if they weren't successful, and even if the building probably should be condemned it was important to save it: people lived there.

"Do you want to try dual casting? Maybe we can overpower it." If they were going to be out on assignment together, they were going to have to take advantage of their combined abilities - and they had done so before, but doing so in a blizzard was a different matter entirely.

---

Every attempt to stop the charm from swaying in one direction caused it to sway more violently in the other. It didn't help that her concentration was muddled by her annoyance and the hyperawareness that she could barely feel her fingers as they gripped the handle of her wand. Her words were less eloquent, her movements less precise. She could visualize the effects she wanted, yet every attempt was met with... failure.

"Assuming it does," Delight grunted, casting another spell on the end of the building opposite of the one Zelda was working on. Nothing. Zelda was right: simultaneous spell-casting was going to be the only way they managed it, although it had the potential for danger.

"We'll need to make sure we do it at the same time," she said, more of a reminder than anything else. The consequences could be severe; the Ministry was not prepared to host a dozen families who'd been displaced from their homes because of their improper spell-casting. "But we focus on our own ends, we might be able to stop them from swaying." And like a Newton's Cradle whose balls had been stopped by a pair of skeptical hands, the building might lose all momentum—but only if they worked together.

---

”We’ve got it,” Zelda confirmed with a nod. If it hadn’t been so cold, she would have rolled up her sleeves - instead she switched her wand back to her right hand and took a few steps to the left, so that she had a better angle on her side of the building.

”Are you ready? Three, two -“

---

Delight found her own position to the right and lifted her wand slowly, painfully, carefully. If this didn't work she wasn't sure what they could do; calling someone to help didn't quite work when they were the help. She took a deep breath and cast a glance sideways at Zelda.

"- one," she finished, and cast her spell.

---

Zelda cast her spell, and held tight onto her wand as the building tilted - left, right, left again. The motions eased as they kept casting, the building moving left, right, left again - and finally settled. ”Finite incantatem,” Zelda said, ending both their spells and feeling satisfied with the work.

This would have been well and good if they didn’t still have a rogue weather charm to contend with - a blast of freezing wind tunneled down the front of the building and drove towards them, with force.

---

Delight drew closer to Zelda as their charms were put to the test. The building continued to swayed, but before she realize it was happening it began to slow and slow until it halted completely—and Zelda was right there to finish the job. A smile briefly touched her lips, but was wiped off just as quickly; it seemed the weather charm was done putting the building's foundation to the test, but it seemed completely in-tact and determined to put their footing to the test.

A gasp left her throat and she blindly reached out to grap Zelda's arm with her left hand, her eyes caught on the blanket of wind as it barreled towards them. Surely Britain's most talented witch could absorb the force of the wind and redirect it with her wand, but Delight was not Britain's most talented witch, so she did the next best thing she could think of. She couldn't hear her own voice—the wind was far too loud to make out the sound of anything—but she shouted a shield charm, closed her eyes, and flinched towards Zelda.

---

She didn’t have the time to redouble the shield charm, just enough to curl her way towards Delight and close her eyes. In the scheme of things they’d faced, this wasn’t the most dangerous - but it was dangerous, and not for the first time Zelda wished they weren’t out here today, right now, in the elements.

The wind swept over the shield charm, little wisps of it poking through and chilling them; Zelda tucked her head against Delight’s shoulder as it roared over them and eventually stopped. ”Alright,” she said, ”We just need to - take it apart before it does that again.”

---

Save for the few wisps of wind that penetrated the shield, her charm seemed to work for the most part. But now the weather charm, made uncannily visible by the snow it had picked up, lingered behind them, blocking the road behind them.

"If we're not careful it could make the actual weather worse," she said. The actual snow was not too heavy, but it seemed heavier than it had been in the seconds before the gust of wind had passed right over them. "I say we try to contain it." The bigger question: with what?

---

Zelda nodded; the last thing they needed to do was worsen the blizzard when it was already dashing ships against the rocks in the English Channel.

Tying spells to objects and places was difficult, but it would at least let them try to break the charm later, when the regular blizzard was over.

”We need an abandoned building,” she said, standing on her toes to try and see the right option.

---

By virtue of working at the Ministry Delight was familiar enough with Magical London, but not so well that she knew the location of the perfect building to host the charm in. She looked to Zelda, who she assumed knew her way around the city better than her (she was older and more experienced, if only by a few years).

"It needs to be a standalone," she said, more unhelpfully than she'd wished. "We don't want to put anyone else in danger."

---

”Lumos,” Zelda cast. In the blizzard, the gas lamps of London weren’t nearly as helpful for illuminating their surroundings as they normally were. She was startled out of thought by her Ministry ID badge lighting up green on her chest for five seconds - Zelda glanced down at it and frowned.

”I think that means the floo’s down in this quadrant,” she said - usually they didn’t get Department of Magical Transportation updates and certainly not like this, but with the weather too dangerous for owls it was the only option that made sense. Hopefully it would come back up by the time they finished here; otherwise, Zelda wasn’t sure how they’d make it back to the Ministry safely.

But for that to be a problem they needed to finish here first; Zelda couldn’t bother thinking about the floo network until it was even an option for them.

She spun in a circle on the street, finally spotting the building she wanted. ”There,” Zelda said, pointing a gloved finger at a ramshackle row home. ”I think it used to be a tailor, but it’s nothing now.”

---

If the floo was down, it meant the weather was bad, probably even worse in other parts than it was here. Weather charms—even poorly-cast ones—affected weather in strange ways, and there was a change that the gust of wind was keeping the blizzard from affecting their small area. She glanced down at her own badge, gooseflesh rising up on the back of her neck. In two years she'd never seen that happen.

They'd have to unpack all that later. Zelda had spotted an empty tailor's building, which meant they had to move—quickly.

Delight glanced over at Zelda and motioned with her head for her to follow. With her wand raised she walked towards the gust of wind, closer and closer towards the building until she was across the street. "Are you ready?" she asked.

---

”I’m ready,” Zelda replied, raising her wand. The pair counted down again before they began to cast. Zelda chanted through the binding spell, hoping that they were keeping in tandem enough for it to work - this was a two part ordeal, with two objectives.

1) move the weather charm from the tenement building across the street;
2) bind the weather charm to the confines of the abandoned rowhome

They could not accomplish one without the other, at least not effectively. Zelda exhaled as the charm passed over them, bringing with it a rush of changing temperatures and dulled wind. The abandoned rowhome shook as the charm hit it.

She glanced at Delight, but didn’t dare interrupt either of their spell casting - now they needed to bind it.

---

In a low voice Delight worked through the charms, her heart jumping in her chest as the rowhome began to shake and rattle as the weather charm's effects on it became visible. She glanced at Zelda, the corner of her lips drawn up into a knowing half-smile. They needed to bind it, and that was the hardest part; rouge charms were notoriously reluctant to binding charms.

A nod indicated that she was ready to begin the binding process, and then, in a slow, monotonous rhythm, Delight began to cast. One, two, three, four—Delight counted the number of times she chanted the incantations as the rowhome thrashed back and forth and then, second by second, began to settle.

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