Kieran had been at the debate, reporting — and quietly supporting Jude. (If Pengloss found out how biased he was, he was fucked.) And then the chaos had started. Kieran was convinced that he could get home on foot, rather than by floo — (he also... did not actually have a fireplace) — and he was hoping that if he left on foot he could find any friends who hadn't attended the debate and warn them.

But he was disoriented by smoke, and somehow Kieran ended up turned around on streets he'd known since he was a child. He had his wand in hand. He ought to just get back to the library, but the smoke was thick on this street — he'd tugged up his jacket to breathe through the fabric — and it was hard to tell where he should go.

Finally he stumbled out of the smoke and into — an alley. Relatively unharmed except for the smoke, Kieran let his jacket drop and twisted his wand in his hand as he tried to decide what to do — and then he saw his sister. "Fallon!"