12 Aug, '94 — A Cabin on the Frey Estate, Norfolk

Charley must have coughed out half her lungs on the dingy floor, still sprawled out from where she'd landed. Picking herself up took some effort, she discovered new sore spots with every motion as her eyes checked that all her body parts were still attached. It wasn't easy to tell with her clothes coated in the same dirt and dust layer that coated the floor, only disturbed in a very urchin-shaped pattern where she had lain. With a few shakes of her limbs, and wiggles of her fingers and toes, the urchin found herself more or less in one piece.

Which was a fair start when finding herself nowhere close to where she thought she'd be.

"'lo?" she tried, asking the question to the long shadows of the room. Turning to the light streaming through crusty windows was almost painful by contrast, making her squint to see through them. Charley definitely wasn't close to meant to end up. The trees loomed menacingly until she could track their long, spindly branches by the shadows they cast inside, and through the sheer silence of the space she could clearly make out birdsong. It struck her so suddenly that she made a face, scrunching her nose so much that her freckles started to join together.

Charley finished brushing herself off the best she could, and retrieved her cap from where it had tumbled away. The dirt didn't bother her so much, hair could be fixed and clothes washed, but anyone could have come across her while she was sprawled out. The urchin scratched her head before she put her cap back on, puzzling out how she'd managed to get here of all places. Wherever here was.

"I en't breakin' in, I swear it," she called out again to the bleak corners of the room, holding out her palms to make intent clear to anyone watching. Charley was more afraid that those shadows were real claws trying to snatch her, but that was a silly notion. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs cluttering it up. "I was jes tryna get to—"

The urchin blinked a few times, the lines of her frown pulling deeper. Now she didn't even remember what she'd said when tossing the floo powder into the fireplace a minute ago. She couldn't have hit her head that hard.

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Victor Frey

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gentleman in possession of a melancholy disposition must be in want of solitude.
Such was the case with Mr. Victor Frey, whose spirits had of late been exceedingly low, and whose present temperament bore the marks of most profound wretchedness.

In times of distress, it was the young mans custom to seclude himself in a forgotten hunting lodge, situated at the farthest reaches of his family's vast estate. Though his relations at Frey Manor believed him to be engaged in the pursuit of game, nothing could have been further from his intentions than to traipse through the underbrush in search of quarry.
The previous day had found him sprawled upon a threadbare rug before the hearth, partaking of an excessive quantity of wine. The day prior had passed in much the same manner, and the young Mr. Frey had resolved that the present day should follow a similar course.

One can scarcely imagine his astonishment when he was roused from his slumber on the floor of the adjoining chamber by a commotion happening by the fireplace. 'This fireplace,' thought he, 'ought not to produce such a clamour.'

Indeed, Victor had taken great pains to ensure that the floo connection to his abode remained in a state of disrepair.
As he emerged from the shadowy doorway—his appearance disshevveled, his complexion sallow, his eyes bearing the bloodshot redness of overindulgence, and his frame far too slight for a gentleman of his stature—it was not beyond the realm of possibility that he appeared as frightful spectre to the child who had unceremoniously fallen onto the cabin floor.

Mr. Frey let out a undignified shriek and recoiled, as though it were the urchin, rather than himself, who was a terrifying apparition.
"Merlin above!" he cried. "Who are you!?"
Agitated, he fumbled about in search of his wand, only to discover it absent.

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Charley Goode

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   Charley Goode

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Charley hadn't really meant to scream. It just came out, her body all at once so loose that she fell back to the cabin floor, and so tense that she couldn't scramble away. The monster who loomed out of the darkness was bellowing some unearthly shriek, and it made her scream again. That was altogether too ladylike and childlike for her part, the urchin did have a reputation to uphold, so she buttoned her lip to keep it.

Even if she wasn't around anyone who might know her well enough.

"I'm..." Charley frowned, squinting through the figure in the dark. The monster was rather man-shaped, and spoke like one too. She shouldn't have been so surprised, this was who she had asked to answer her anyway. Not him exactly, but someone who would know where the urchin had wound up. And, more importantly at the moment, how to get back. "...lost. Seems like."

There was a strange shape digging into the underside of her trousers, and the more Charley regained her senses, the more it bothered her. She lifted herself away with a disgusted sigh, fully expressing her annoyance at the objects littering the cabin's dirty floor. She found herself muttering as well, not caring if the man above her could hear the criticism, "Dontcha ever clean up 'round here?"

Reaching beneath her, the urchin pulled out the wand. She frowned at it with unfamiliar eyes. This wasn't hers, so it must belong to the shrieking man above her. Charley managed to pull herself up to her feet, no thanks to the cabin's only other occupant, and thrust what had to be his wand back at the man. Not like she had any use for another one. "Issat yers?" She blinked at the man, then past him to squint out windows that were doing a fairly poor job of it. "Where's 'here' s'posed ta be, anyway?"

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"That's not you, Hester, is it?"
Squinting against the light, it appeared to Mr. Frey now that the unexpected child was not one he was familiar with. Not one of the servants' brats and not his sister, although this one was about the same height; mother would never allow Hester to be so grubby.
His head was throbbing something fierce and he leaned against the doorframe to support himself.
"You're one to talk. When's the last time you were washed behind your ears, hm? Probably never," Victor snapped back.
"I like my filth here just how it is, thank you very much."

He pulled the blanket around his shoulders tighter to his body and stalked across the room towards the girl, disturbing several empty bottles as he went.
Glowering at her, he snatched back his wand.
"How did you get here, anyway? I thought I made sure the fireplace was incapacitated."
He went to kneel down before it unsteadily and started poking around the old ashes with his wand.

"You find yourself in Norfolk," he informed her.
"In my refuge of solitude, or what used to be."
He sighed.

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   Charley Goode

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Hester?

Charley took a step back from the man, wondering if he was truly all about his wits. Not that she thought someone with any would be skulking in this dingy sort of place. She hardly wanted to be here herself, and if not for the floo going awry she wouldn't have. The urchin glanced back when her attention was directed at the fireplace, just before the man's hand rudely swatted at hers, taking the wand as he went. Her head snapped back with a glare for him, but she couldn't shake what he'd said about it.

The fireplace couldn't have brought her here, so what had?

"How'm I s'pose ta know, I en't a machinst! An' I wasn't trying to get here, neither!" She was grateful the man had decided to abandon his interest in her as soon as he had the wand, stalking to the very fireplace of ill repute. Charley could agree with that much, anyway. And since she hadn't been lying, the best she could do to help was to cross her arms and scowl at it while the man poked about. "An' for yer information, I wash 'em all the time. Put on summat nice an' everything, yeah? Wasn't gonna go out lookin' with crusty ears, too."

She wasn't sure if her scowl was really pointed toward the fireplace at that point, but Charley didn't much care. The man was rude and uncouth, even more so than her. As she dusted off the now-grey of her black dress, Charley almost wished he could come back with her to Hogsmeade, so the whole town could see there was someone more poorly mannered than a lowly street urchin. Come to think of it, really, the urchin thought he looked almost familiar, like she could place him in Hogsmeade already. As if he was—

"Shut yer bleedin' mouth!" she shouted, her mouth open in shock. Norfolk was nowhere near where she needed to be, and Charley had remembered it after all. It was London, she knew, London where the ministry witch had tipped her off on a lead. London, where she might find her parents and family after all. "How'm I gettin' to London now?!"

If the fireplace was working enough to get her here, it might take her back. Then again, Charley would sooner tame a fire-breathing dragon to take her than that dusty contraption.

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   Samuel Griffith

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It appeared to Mr. Frey that poking around the fireplace did not give him any more satisfaction and did not uncover any answers as to why it had spat out this dusty creature on his rug. All it did produce was a hissing cloud of smoke.

"Yes? Does not look it. Looks like poverty with a varnish of soot," he sneered.

One had to admit that he was behaving wretchedly right now.
Victor stood up and winced. Black dots danced around his field of vision.

"Alright, what are you going to London for anyway? Surely it can not be so important?" he deigned to ask. What could a little girl want in town on her own? Little girls ought to play with dolls.

"And stay off the fireplace, will you? It's broken."

Victor sighed again and scanned the gloomy hut for a drink that wasn't stale wine. Alas, it seemed he'd neglected water in his nightly indulgence. Now he resigned himself to thirst—he was certain a sip from the wine bottle would only make him retch.

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   Charley Goode

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Now that she was staring at him at this angle, Charley felt a spark of recognition. Something she really wouldn't rather have thought of, but it might have been only a week ago that the uncouth man had shed all but his most immodest of clothes to wade into the lake beside Hogsmeade. It would have earned a snigger from the urchin, until he decided to dress her down with words alone. "Yeah, an' what's yers called, 'Swill Chic'? En't be-argered 'nuff meself to go out wearin' summat like that."

She backed up when he stood, crossing arms over her chest. Had she thought better of it, the urchin might have pulled out her wand to defend herself. Surely she had her wand along, right? In this dusty retreat, it was clear that she didn't have any herself. "What's it yer business what I'm doing in London? Not like ya got a clue 'bout where my Ma an' Pa'd be."

There, she said it. He was bound to be satisfied now, enough to back off. If the man wasn't about to help her, Charley was about to have a long journey ahead. Patting the long pocket slipped between her skirts, she found her wand at last. By now, the spells she knew might be enough to get by, until she found another working floo anyway.

"Crawlin' through fireplaces has to be the daftest thing a wizard's ever came up with," Charley grumbled to herself, pining after circumstances she might have known better about. For all the mishaps that followed the search for her parents, she might have guessed someone had put a curse on them. Or her. That would explain the floo going bad, after all. "'Course it'd be a wizard, too, wouldna catch a lady thinking o' getting clever with a sooty flue."

If only she knew how to make a portkey, that would get her right to the city without going through a chimney first. Awful things.

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"Bee argered?" Victor laughed, mockingly imitating her manner of speaking. "Is something wrong with my ears or are you hiding a potato in your mouth?"
Something about her looked vaguely familiar, but he could not place it. He was not in the habit of paying attention to the poor folks that lived in the slums at Hogsmeade and places like that.
He regarded the crossed arms on this scrappy little thing. He supposed the black dress she wore underneath all the dirt was not so terrible, but to Victor she looked lost and lorn and like her parents ought to give her a talking-to about how to behave as a lady—even as a lowly lady.
Just as he was gearing up to tell her just that, she revealed that apparently her parents she had misplaced.
"Oh? So you're all on your own?" he asked.
"How'd you manage to lose your parents? Ran away from them? You look like the type."
Apparently, Victor was not quite done being wretched, yet.

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   Charley Goode

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Charley flashed the man a fierce look, wishing she could silence him with that alone. If only looks could really kill, now that was magic that Hogwarts should have taught her. She could make enough use of it, even the threat would be enough to get more for herself than anyone was willing to offer. No urchin should ever have to put up with such stingy, fork-tongued men, and it didn't matter who owned the cabin anyway.

"Oh don't be foolish, I can speak as fancy as I please." The urchin's casual demeanor vanished along with her coarse patois, placing delicate fingers to her breast like a some flustered lady of real class. Her eyes looked past him, she was on the stage again, with a mocking performance for the audience and not him. "Does this dust enough of your feathers, or must I deliver you words as colorful as freshly-plucked flowers?"

She could imagine that the crowd had laughed then, bawdy and raucous like in her childhood. Charley didn't react, she didn't move until the scene, whatever it was here, had ended. Not until the curtains closed or the lights dimmed, or a new player had come on stage to draw the attention from her. Nothing like that took would place inside the empty cabin, of course. The urchin was alone here, no audience, no stage, and no help from its only other occupant, who would rather make fun of her than act like his genteel costume would suppose.

All she offered to the rest of his goading questions was a sniff, looking pointedly away from the unhelpful cad. Charley stalked to a window, rubbing at its musty surface and managing to clear just enough to see that it was dirty on the other side as well. That earned another huff, louder this time, just so the man could really hear how terrible the upkeep was of his Norfolk refuge.

"Reckon there's summat out there worth more than yer doin' in here?" The urchin was sick of being cooped up inside, and made her way toward what seemed to be a door. Provided it worked any better than the rest of the cabin's implements. She reached for the handle, ready for it to break off in her hand or something equally horrible. That seemed to be the manner of anything in this place, her own foul mood included by this point. "I en't stayin' nohow."

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   Victor Frey

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"Very well, I take it back," he said. "You can speak if you wish to, I hear it. Why you would choose to express yourself like that I do not understand. That is the custom of your kind of people, perhaps."
Her performance caused him some confusion. What was she about? Living in her head, no doubt. Girls were like that.
He looked around the dirty cabin and then he regarded the child. Had she been sent to him to mark the end of his period of rightful self-loathing and general indulgence in melancholy? The young gentleman kicked a bottle out of his way and approached the door of the hunting lodge and swung it open. Light fell in and he grimaced.
"Mighty bright outside," he complained. And he complained some more, before he turned around to the girl and said: "Right, my sooty friend. Let us go to London. And we take the Floo, but not this one, mind you. We need to get to the house. I'm going to apparate."
He gesticulated towards her with an air of impatience.
"Are you coming? Give me your hand."
He gave her a handkerchief from his pocket.
"Wipe it on this first, will you?"

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   Charley Goode

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He caught up just as she was about to turn the handle, muttering something sour about the light outside as he thrust it open ahead of her. Charley had to give the man a sidelong look, starting to wonder if she'd stumbled into a vampire's den rather than just a drunk's. Out the doors, the sunshine was warm and the air was fresh, unlike the dingy, musty quarters in the cabin. Her arms rose as she stepped out, feeling the rush of satisfaction to be out of that smelly hideaway at last.

"Ahh, no, I en't never goin' back into one of those pits," the urchin declared, with plenty of wistful glee. The sunlight was too freeing, why would anyone duck into a fireplace to travel. "Gimme a broom an' I'll jes fly on there."

Charley looked pointedly back inside the cabin, then to the figure of impatience standing by its door, beckoning as if she were a dog. She could have believed him if he did, the man looked mangy enough to think of dogs as his fellow packmates. Now that he was out in the sunlight, he looked much less like a dog —and much more like the man who had saved the tangled netting from the Black Lake in Hogsmeade.

"'Course, if you'd had a broom, I wouldn't've been the prettiest thing in that place." She grinned broadly at him, straightening the errant curls from her shoulder and replacing her cap. Her mood only dampened slightly at the obvious sight of scuffs and creases in the fabric of her nice dress. All Charley could do now was brush away the dust and scowl at the rest of it, wishing greatly she had never stepped foot in that awful fireplace in the first place.

Not like she could do anything about it now. And the man was offering help, at last. The urchin stepped up to take his kerchief, only blanching a little at the obvious stains of sweat —she hoped— on its fabric. She wiped it against his palm first before hers, making a note of it. "Don't want yer soot an' my soot mixing, now do we?"

She grasped his hand and held on, tightly enough that he might regret his mangy, ornery demeanor somehow, but mostly so the urchin wouldn't fly away from him in mid-air. Or however apparation worked. It had to be better than the floo.

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