February 19th, 1890 — Dempsey Estate near Galway, Ireland

This artifact nonsense...it presented as a mystery from the moment you first heard of it, a seductive one. Though your normal habit is to wander, you allowed your curiosity to get the better of you, to keep you in the country—at least for now.

It was an old school chum (a rather indiscreet one) at St Mungo's who revealed to you the case of Miss Porphyria Dempsey: an eccentric spinster who, after coming into contact with a comb later discovered to be Pictish in origin, was transfigured into a talking wren. None of the healers at the hospital had been able to put her to rights and, nearly a week later, she had since returned home. 

Though you've heard many rumours since the artifacts first started causing a ruckus, this proved to be the first concrete example you've had—too tempting to pass up.

And so you stand now at the threshold of the Dempsey estate, toying with your options. You know a strange man asking to speak to the transfigured lady of the house is unlikely to get particularly far.

WHAT DO YOU DO?
a. Knock on the front door like any decent fellow would.
b. Sneak in through the servants' entrance.
c. Sit out on the lawn and hope she comes to you.

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— Arven Fisk —

  

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Known side-effects include: chronic ridiculousness, immense satisfaction, itching, uncontrollable laughter, burning, deep regret, despair, shock, horror, incidental dismemberment, joy, and death. Use at your own risk!

Arven Fisk dusted down his greatcoat with some dim regret that he hadn't thought to dress with proprietary for this albeit peculiar occasion. He was quite as he appeared — a windswept adventurer with an eye for the unknown... but not so much for fashion.

It was for this reason among others that Arven hesitated before knocking on the door; he looked an intimidating sort, but was not about to force himself past a perturbed doorman, and he was far too unseemly to be invited in out of sheer courtesy. And so he decided to roam around the outside of the handsome Dempsey house before doing anything else, hands in his pockets, heading gradually towards the servant's entrance as if that were his intention — but also keeping a sharp eye out on every window he passed, hoping he might catch sight of a perching wren...

  

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To be honest, being a bird isn't the worst thing every—especially given that you can still talk. It brings with it a sense of freedom that you relish (though it does put you at risk of mauling by the estate's felines).

You're perched in a fir tree, still getting used to your new body, when you see him: someone who doesn't belong.

WHAT DO YOU DO?
a. Address the stranger
b. Observe the stranger
c. Defecate on the stranger

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— Porphyria Dempsey —

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   Porphyria Dempsey

---

Are your characters stuck in the smalltalk loop?
Does your imagination feel like it just can't perform as it used to?
Mid-thread crisis getting you down?
Unable to get that post up?
Is your relationship suffering because of your inability to satisfy your partner?
SUFFER NO MORE!
With a little intervention from The Suggestionizer your RP life could be back on track in no time!

--> Click here for more details <--

Known side-effects include: chronic ridiculousness, immense satisfaction, itching, uncontrollable laughter, burning, deep regret, despair, shock, horror, incidental dismemberment, joy, and death. Use at your own risk!

She had had to give up her room to her raven, in case the bloody thing ate her. Don Juan had delighted in pretending not to recognise her, either, so she had been dropping worms in his bed for the past few days. When she managed to catch them.

Better to be outdoors, then, and stretch her wings. Porphyria had never truly considered putting in the work to become an animagus - seemed like a lot of show for nothing - but one errant comb had done it all for her in one fell swoop, and here she was, a talking wren.

She’d have been better pleased if it were a hawk or a falcon or some other bird of prey, and not the tiniest, daintiest, stupidest bird in the lot. Her tail pricked up to hear someone pacing through the grass, skirting a little too close to the house to not seem suspicious. Well, she might be a wren, but she could certainly be her own deterrent -

Porphyria hopped to the next branch along to get a better angle from which to give the trespasser a particularly nasty greeting... but, in the process of alighting and landing, she realised that the blond was a man she’d met once before - and hadn’t loathed on sight! Mr. Fisk, wasn’t he? As such, shitting on him perhaps wasn’t the grand idea she’d thought it would be. (It might take some explaining later.)

That sudden change of heart did not serve her well, practically, however, as Porphyria bungled the landing and her frail wren-feet (not talons by any blasted measure!) missed the branch. Instead, she lost her balance backwards and, unable to right herself in the midst of the fir tree, she went tumbling down, bouncing from bough to bough and hitting the ground with a soft, stupid flump. “Looking for something, are you?” She piped up to get his attention if that had not done it alone, grumbling in tone and quite mortified by that show of magnificence.

---

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   Amelia Evans

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Out-of-place though he seemed, Arven didn't want to be too conspicuous, so endeavored not to gaze too long at each window, glancing away every now and again to look vaguely at the estate. The well-tended path, the catches of blue sky through the tree branches, the sight (after a double-take) of a little wren, who had no more been spotted before she hopped out of the tree and onto the grass, like a girl from a sinking boat onto the bank.

He did not recognise Porphyria Dempsey in anything but the voice, and perhaps the sardonic nature of her tone. Arven had found this charming when they'd met on the Black Lake, but now he thought it insensitive to smile. So he remained impassive, though dropped lightly to a knee so he was no longer looming above her like some lone redwood tree.

"You, Miss Dempsey", replied the adventurer with honesty. "I've come to confirm for myself that you have a line of noble healers and curious warlocks queuing to rid you of your alleged predicament."

But there was no such line. Of this Arven did not approve.

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   Porphyria Dempsey

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She ruffled her feathers to restore them to not-sticking-out-at-all-directions, and then tilted her head to examine Mr. Fisk, perplexed by his presence. But he had been looking for her.

“Oh no,” Porphyria replied matter-of-factly, at her best play of being blasé about the sharp turn her life had taken out of nowhere, “The healers have all given up already.” She’d been a lost cause before, but being this sort of lost cause was rather new. She was finding it a great deal more difficult to hold a pen, which made writing far more of an ordeal - but she could always dictate her poetry, and things could decidedly be worse. “And the only curious warlock is apparently you.” Not that she could begrudge him his curiosity; he was an adventurer, after all. And he had already rescued (“rescued”, she hated that word) her once. Had he some prior experience of cursed combs and transfigured friends, or was it a stretch to imagine he might save her twice?

“So perhaps I shall just be stuck a wren,” Phyri added (and in spite of this, might have smirked as she added, tongue-in-cheek), “for evermore.” Like the raven, get it?

---

  

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

No sooner had he made evident his observation did he regret it slightly. Arven had not intended to bring to light the fact that Miss Dempsey appeared to have been... given up on, to some extent. But then he reminded himself that the Miss Dempsey he knew (albeit only a little) was not a proud, vain type likely to be aghast at a lack of extreme attention. After all, yes she'd been reduced to animal form, but she was hardly trembling in fear.

Sure enough, it took her about ten seconds to quip, without missing a beat, and Arven gave a crooked smile. "You sound positively inconsolable", he observed ironically. Then: "be that as it may..."

The rest of his sentence went unfinished, in a murmur, but it was obvious he meant he wanted to help her regardless of her relatively good spirits. When he'd met her by the Black Lake, she'd been precisely in her element. She didn't need a Wrenovation.

"I imagine you've already concluded that healers probably aren't your best bet after all?"

  

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She had said it tongue-in-cheek, but preferably - surprised as she was to say it, given the usual loathing she had of being a woman - she wouldn’t have to live out the rest of her days as a wren. Porphyria supposed Mr. Fisk had inferred as much.

“Have I, Merlin!” She exclaimed in an emphatic tone, shaking her head at the healers’ absolute uselessness. It was no normal transfiguration, apparently, not one that could be undone by so neat a spell. And there was the added danger of experimentation with an unknown curse, too... A pity she couldn’t wield a wand herself, in this state, or Porphyria might have said to hell with the risk, and given something new a try.

So... “But you have an idea up your sleeve, don’t you?” Phyri said cajolingly, hopping onto his higher knee before she spoke (because even kneeling he was far too tall for her, and she did not enjoy the sensation of being talked down to, even by a friendly face). “You’d better not have come just to gawk.” She was teasing, now. She didn’t know whether he knew someone or whether the traveller-writer-adventurer had collected some knowledge or uncanny skill for himself, but honestly, she would take whatever ideas she could get.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Psh, Arven didn't even have a ferret up his sleeve, let alone an idea. (It had struck him, after all, that Virgil the pointy-tooted ferret might not be the first thing a small bird wished to see.)

"Well yes, partly to gawk", he quipped, playfully squinting quizzically at the wren now perched on his knee. But then he was straight-faced and thoughtful. "My thinking is that if modern magic can't reverse your curse, it may be an idea to speak to historians or archeologists..."

But he didn't yet know enough about Miss Dempsey's situation to chase this theory. "Would you mind telling me your story? The Prophet wasn't exactly riddled with detail."

  

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It was a shame she couldn’t grin properly as a wren. She thought she might have, otherwise.

“I don’t suppose you know any?” She interjected, at his suggestion, wondering if he would be some help in chasing leads after all, even if he had no miraculous solution of his own.

In hope of that, perhaps, Porphyria let the question rest and instead tilted her head to acquiesce to telling him all the detail she could recall. “It was a comb that did it. I didn’t know it was Pictish at first -” she clicked her teeth in annoyance; although she’d heard about the dig and the theft of some of the cursed objects, she hadn’t expected to find them in an odd old comb, one that was interesting to look at, but largely underwhelming - or so she had supposed. “But it was about the size of a palm, made out of ivory or bone, I think, with some kind of swirling pattern at the top, and the thinnest teeth. Nothing happened until I ran it through my hair,” (out of curiosity, mostly, not because she had actually thought of using it; if anything, it had given her folkloric visions of banshees in Ireland, that sort of thing, “and the next thing I knew I was all feathers,” she added wryly. “Apparently it’s not the usual straightforward sort of transfiguration, this curse. It’s lucky I still have my own mind, I suppose. But the healers tried for a week and didn’t get any closer to knowing how to undo it.”

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

Irresistibly, Miss Dempsey's story reminded him of the genie and the lamp in One Thousand and One Nights, though she'd run a comb through her hair, not a lamp through her fingers. He wondered if she'd gotten three wishes out of it... but he wagered not.

"There's the curator of Magical Museum of Miscellany — young Charles Operine. I will write to him... though I haven't heard from him for a while", he warned so not to get her hopes up. Operine had been cursed himself, and Arven sadly would not have been surprised if he'd ultimately fled the glares and scowls and gasps his visage attracted. He couldn't help but think that if Operine was still around, he would've reached out to Miss Dempsey himself.

"Otherwise..." he ran a hand through his disheveled golden hair, then clicked his fingers in realisation; "there's my nephew, Somersby Fudge. He's an apprentice curse breaker at Gringotts. Seems a bit of a reach I know, but perhaps Somersby or his colleagues may have some idea — but I imagine they'd need to see the artifact. Was it... confiscated?"

  

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She tilted her head in interest as he brainstormed his candidates, hardly about to rule anyone out if Mr. Fisk was miraculously willing to help her despite owing her nothing. Indeed, if anyone owed anything, she suspected it was her to him, given the lake.

But he fell upon the primary flaw himself; she clicked her beak in annoyance. “Yes,” she said. “When the healers couldn’t make head or tail of it. I imagine it’s in the hands of the Ministry by now.” Perhaps it would be with the Department of Mysteries for the next hundred years, until it had, possibly, given up its mysteries. Who knew.

And willing as Mr. Fisk seemed, Phyri couldn’t expect him to work a miracle. “I have the sketches of it though, if that’s any use.” They’d let her have that much. Not that any amount of poring over the swirling pattern had made her any less wren-like. “And on the upside, I don’t think the drawings alone can turn anyone else into birds, at least,” she added wryly.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

It didn't take a great intellectual to notice that Miss Dempsey was not a fan of the Ministry and how they were dealing with this situation. Arven smiled slightly despite himself; it was too hard to resist being a tad amused by the sheer character and expression conveyed by a bird of all things. This experience would be seared on his memory as one of the more unusual adventures of his time.

"Sketches; yes, good idea." Privately, he felt he wouldn't mind being turned into a bird for a while, but that would've been a wholly tactless thing to share with his friend, given her circumstances. Not to mention a rather childish whim.

"Lead... the way...?" he suggested uncertainly, his hand half held-out should she wish to hop onto it and head indoors together. All he knew was that he couldn't follow her back in through the open window.

Boy, her servants were in for a fun surprise. Though now that they were serving a wren, Arven imagined most of their gasps and heart attacks had already been spoken for.

  

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She tittered a laugh at his hesitation, and, even quite used to being conceived of as weird, it did not escape Phyri that this was a weirder situation than usual. For the both of them, perhaps.

Though Mr. Fisk, little that she knew him, did not seem like the sort to have his friendships at the mercy of fair weather all the time. The adventuring kind should be made of stronger stuff.

Calling him a friend was about all she could do to ease the indignity of it, but she hopped onto his hand, the better to give him directions as they went. “Shame I can’t spirit you in that way,” Porphyria remarked, tilting her head up at the window, though she was not in the least worried about anything so mundane as appearances. Rather, she was remembering his making that little boat skim through the air once, and wishing she might have been able to repay the favour. “It would be my turn to send you flying.”

Instead, it was round to the doorway, Phyri issuing directions and breezing past the confused looks of the Dempsey staff. She was not the only eccentric in the house. (Though they were not much used to her bringing in strange gentlemen, wren or otherwise.) When they reached the staircase, she fluttered off his palm impatiently and led the way to her room - because someone was going to have to go rifling through her drawers to secure the sketches and she had no hands. “Just here,” she said, with a flick of her beak.

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a sublime set by Lady! <3

The Dempsey house was a grand abode the likes of which Arven had only ever witnessed during classy social functions, at the insistence of a well-meaning sister. At such functions he had always wished he was surrounded by trees and wildflowers, not marble and lace, but on this rare occasion he was content; for said grand abode was a setting for quite the adventure.

He'd expected to be seated somewhere broad and public while Porphyria secured the sketches with help from a maid, but instead Arven found himself in the lady's rooms. From the disheveled longcoat to the dried mud caked onto his shoes, he was every inch out of place — but didn't let it stilt his confidence in the mission. And while, out of chivalry, he tried not to look around these private quarters too much, he noted with satisfaction that they were more suited to the poet in the lake than the rest of the house. He smiled, too, at her reminder of that afternoon they'd accidentally spent together; he'd cast a spell to send her skimming across the Black Lake in a sinking boat.

When they'd acquired the sketches, he laid them out on the writing desk and leaned over them, frowning. "A comb, of all things" he murmured half to himself. She'd described the artifact, but to see it drawn here so innocuous and ordinary was an odd sight indeed. "Would you mind if I made copies to send to Gringotts?" he asked Porphyria, drawing his wand.

"I'd like them to see the sketches as soon as possible. I'm not tremendously hopeful that they'll crack it, but those cursebreakers are used to dealing with transfiguration curses. So you never know."

  

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Mr. Fisk was proving himself something of a friend to her. She wasn’t sure whether this was a conclusion solely in her own mind, but she supposed that had always been her way - meet someone, decide she liked them, gathered them into a collection of ‘friends’, a little like a magpie’s nest of accumulated oddities - and she wasn’t sure she was sorry for it, either.

(If she didn’t like people, she wasn’t hesitant in expressing it; Phyri expected people would do the same to her.)

So she had had strange people traipsing into the house with her before, enough that people didn’t question it. To her face, anyway. Nothing was weird, anyway, while she was a wren. She perched on the desk while he scoured the drawings of the comb. His surprise was justified: after all, whoever thought a comb would do anything exceptional?

“Be my guest,” Porphyria affirmed, hopping out of the way. “I shouldn’t mind if you started asking strangers in the street, at this rate,” she joked - mostly - at his suggestion of the cursebreakers having a lead on this. “And I’d go myself, only everything is more of an... ordeal for me, right now,” she explained, half-rueful and half-grateful, with a little shake of her head. Some things were adventures, that was true, but... the outside was wider than it had ever been, and filled with a vast new host of fears - because wren-size and wren-shape had almost as many downsides as being a woman, out on the streets - and even at home, the home that had always been a sanctuary even then! Eating was weird; writing was exceptionally more effort; getting maids or family members to assist her with anything she had the slightest desire to accomplish was perhaps the worst side-effect of all.

But Arven Fisk had offered his help without her having to recruit him, so that made her feel a little better about it, if nothing else.

“Something to keep you busy if you’re bored, either way,” Phyri agreed, and would have smiled if she could. “If anything comes of it, I’ll be - here.”

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a sublime set by Lady! <3