29 July, 1895 — Daily Prophet Offices

While most of the Prophet offices were filled with reporter's desks and printing presses, their London location also sported a public-accessible front office with a small waiting room, a front desk behind which a secretary sat, and a drop-box for hand delivered mail. Diligent Grimshawe had no notion of why this was necessary — it seemed to him most quality reporting could not be accomplished by waiting around for mail drops to deliver it, but then he wasn't a reporter. In any case it was convenient for his purposes here today. He had walked in and dropped a letter in the box while the secretary was distracted with another visitor, paid for a paper so no one would wonder at his errand on having gone in, and headed straight back towards the door. He would have very soon been on his way, except that right before his hand gripped the handle Diligent Grimshawe, along with every other man in a thirty foot radius of the secretary's desk, was stricken blind.

It wouldn't have been obvious to everyone that this had been the effect, but given that Diligent had made the curse that had just been sprung he was quite well aware of its impacts. It wasn't supposed to have been sprung while he was still inside the building! The envelope was addressed to the chief editor, though evidently that hadn't stopped the welcome witch from opening it. And had she really had nothing at all to do after finishing with that one guest than to immediately open the mail that had arrived not three minutes before? The timing was wrong, but now the location was, too — it was supposed to have been opened further back and encompassed the entire Prophet building; now it was probably spilling out into the street ahead of them while missing the back offices entirely. It was a good thing he took payment upfront, and didn't have to report back to the angry feminist on how well her act of protest against discretionary ink had been acquitted.

"Fucking hell," he mumbled, trying to think how he would get himself out of this one. He didn't relish the idea of pawing his way down the street blind, but if he stayed and waited for intervention someone might ask what his business had been at the Prophet, and they were unlikely to accept whatever excuse he came up with.

At least he wasn't the only one in unfortunate circumstances; he heard someone else fall over a bit of furniture quite dramatically. For his part he had frozen where he was, determined to keep what he could of his dignity while he planned his escape.

---

Tamsin Skeeter Gregory Dhan

  

Doodling on the parchment upon which she was supposed to be writing up her impressions of Madamoiselle Violetta DeCroix and making predictions about her future, Tamsin’s mind was very far from where it ought to be when she was struck blind. She screamed, though her screams were rather lost amongst the cacophony all around her that told Tamsin she was probably not the only one.

Which didn’t make her feel better about her predicament one tiny bit – quite the contrary in fact!

“Help!” She shouted pointlessly, falling over a chair in her haste to find someone, anyone who could help. Reaching up she grabbed at the corner of someone’s coat and, using it as a guide, got to her feet clutching tightly to the man’s arm.

“Please help me,” she whimpered.

  

In his own shock and irritability of having been struck blind he had missed much of the initial noise around him, but now there was a voice at his side and a hand at his elbow. A decidedly feminine voice, and she sounded alarmed. God damn hell. The curse was only supposed to have struck the men blind — that was the whole point, it was some big symbolic thing for the sake of protesting discretionary ink — but it seemed that wasn't the case. Now he was doubly irritated, once at being caught up in it and twice for having made the mistake. Despite the upfront payment, this was enough of a deviation from the brief he'd been given that he might very well be in danger of a second visit from the disgruntled feminist, demanding a refund. He'd rather offer her a second curse than give the money back — that money was already earmarked for this week's rent — but if she had little enough confidence in his abilities, she might not go for it. Damn it all.

"I don't know that there's anything I can do to help," he said, but he didn't shake off her hand. This wasn't a time-bound thing, they'd need to get to a healer... or to an herbalist, maybe, for him. He had no desire to stay around and have his name written down in some kind of log when the Ministry (or whoever) responded to this, so if there was an opportunity for him to peel off and handle this himself, he'd likely take it. A few sprigs of mossy witches' fingers ground into a fine powder and diluted in water ought to clear it out, he thought. Not that he had mossy witches' fingers to hand.

It occurred to him, however, that if one thing had already gone wrong with the curse — the targeting mechanism being entirely too inclusive — it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for something else to have gone wrong. Maybe some adverse reaction to the incantations he'd mixed when creating it? If there was something else at play other than the blindness, that might complicate his plan for self-medicating his way out of this one. "I can't see," he muttered to the woman at his side. "Is that it with you, too? Or something else?"

---

  

“Isn’t that enough?!” She shrieked, keeping a firm grip on the man’s arm. He might not be the most helpful but he was solidly present and at the moment that was good enough for Tamsin. She looked around her as though she could identify someone, anyone who might have a grasp on the situation but, unsurprisingly, it was not to be. She also…no, that couldn’t be right. There were at least half a dozen other people in the Prophet office, or rather there had been, but they were being remarkably quiet.

“I can only hear you.”