10th December, 1894 — A muggle’s back garden
The 12 Days of Christmas

Why, Evander asked himself today, would anyone do this? It was a rather futile question posed in his line of work, because he never understood what went through lawbreakers’ brains, if they had functioning brains at all. A prank, perhaps – an eminently ridiculous way to be breaking the Statue of Secrecy.

Before his eyes, another bird fluttered down from the branches of the pear tree, apparently materialised from nothing.

Magic, undoubtedly. This would have been less of a problem if: it had not been a muggle’s tree, in a muggle garden; if there had only been one potentially-conjured bird, and not a steady flow of them appearing in the branches; if they had yet found a way to end the bird-blossoming spell.

He was not the only Ministry employee who had been called out to deal with this Situation. The member of the muggle liaison office had escorted the bewildered muggle into the house, well away from the two-dozen birds already littering their garden. An obliviator was on hand with them, once a statement had been taken about all the muggle woman knew: but all she knew was that chickens and geese, among other birds, had been popping into existence in her tree for the past day.

Evander wasn’t sure yet whether they were conjurations, or whether they were being sent from somewhere else by magic, but he and the other departments here to deal with the situation had so far figured out that both trying Finite or banishing the already-present birds only made more birds appear in the tree. “Make sure the birds don’t leave the garden,” Evander instructed with a grimace – the last thing he wanted was for possibly-cursed birds to be let loose in muggle England, and wreak havoc anywhere else. Someone had just cast a spell around the perimeter of the garden, to stop them flying off – not that Evander was very keen sharing space with the French hens currently pecking around his ankles. “Do we think – oh, look out, this one’s a swan!” he called, as an even larger mass of white feathers sailed down from the tree towards them.

---

open to 1-3 other characters, including Ministry employees who could have reasonably been called out, or a wizarding neighbour in the area!
2/2 posts if multiple people join!

The following 2 users Like Evander Darrow's post:2 users Like Evander Darrow's post
   Aldous Crouch, Anthea Selwyn

---

Anthea had given up—or rather, she had decided to treat everyone exactly the same way unless some obvious clue about their identity forced her to re-evulate. That is to say, she was treating everyone as if she was in a perpetual bad mood and annoyed at their existence and it probably meant something that nobody seemed to have noticed anything particularly different about her or how she treated others however Anthea was choosing to not think too deeply about it

She had managed to keep chaos to a minimum and avoided interacting in person with as many people as possible and whilst the ever-present migraine certainly didn’t help her foul mood she had managed to spend most of her time at her desk handling paperwork and communicating via owl... a decision that possibly had been made by her coworkers a who were all too aware of her inability to suffer fools and and less than average people skills.

Unfortunately, today was one of those rare, unlucky days when she had been called out to the field. Why? To assist with what appeared to be a Charm gone rogue, a possibly Experimental Charm which was the justification for sending her out.

The spell in question was particularly infuriating. It involved birds—lots of birds—and every attempt to make them disappear had ended in failure which would've been annoying to begin with had not the whole thing not also been happening in some Muggles yard which meant that they needed to be contained and dealt with immediately.

On the bright side, Anthea could at least tell the different types of birds apart, though that wasn’t much of an accomplishment. After all, she didn’t need to recognize their faces or remember their names.She stood there, staring at the chaos before her, barely suppressing a sigh.

“If this turns out to be some love-struck fool’s way of sending a love note, I’m going home,” she said, ducking as yet another swan appeared out of nowhere.She hated swans. They always reminded her of her most annoying brother for some inexplicable reason. And, just her luck, she had the sinking feeling that by the end of this ordeal, there would be exactly seven of them. She had a low opinion of romance and romantic gestures on her best days and this was not one of her best days.

---

  

---

Anthea is with complete face blindness and unimpressed. If you've met her before don't expect her to be friendly....ier than normal.

Noah was not the first one to arrive on the scene and he was pretty sure that the the gent in charge was somehow related to his boss, but he was still trying to ascertain what exactly the problem was and if he was in fact, needed. It was a muggle garden, and a muggle tree, but did that inherently make it his department? He wasn't so sure. He highly suspected this might be Accidents and Catastrophes, but he'd stick around and find out anyway.

Not especially keen on getting attacked by a bird today, Noah stood within the created barrier, watching the birds pop into existence seeming out of nowhere. He eyed the swans warily remembering the hell spawn that used to plague Padmore Park. Nobody wanted to get mixed up with that. "Do you think it's the tree or something else?" He was amused, though knew he couldn't say anything about it. The whole thing was rather Christmasy, the hens, the swans, and the geese, like that one Christmas song, no?

---

  

---

“No one is going home until all these birds have been dealt with,” Evander said sharply, at Miss Selwyn of Experimental Charms’ remark. It may have been a joke (he understood the context) but he hoped they would forgive him if his nerves were getting a little frayed as the garden got ever more crowded, and everyone around him seemed spectacularly useless at making any progress with this problem whatsoever.

That included Farley, who was (naturally) one of Zelda’s office misfits, and about as unpromising as any help could seem. “Either the tree itself, or something lodged up in it,” Evander theorised, craning his neck to try and see past the chunky partridge still perching near where all hte birds seemed to be materialising from. “Perhaps someone ought to get up there and look?” He looked pointedly at Farley – he was the youngster here, after all, never mind the artifact man.

Next he turned to Miss Selwyn, for her opinion of the charms. “Are the birds mundane, do you suspect, or are they,” Evander shuddered as a turtle dove beat its wings a little too close to his head for comfort, “– conjurations?”

---

  

---