18th June, 1891 — International Bazaar, Diagon Alley

Savino had come to the international bazaar in the interests of research, browsing the booths and tents in the hopes of finding – some clue as to where he had been seeing in his mind for the past fortnight.

This vision was a waking one. He had been getting flashes of it frequently, and every time he did it had happened at precisely the same moment. A quarter past three in the afternoon, to the minute; or 15:15 on his prized Italian pocketwatch, which had twenty-four-hour notation and ran exceptionally accurately. Savino checked it after most every dream, even in the middle of the night – but this one was especially hard to ignore.

Because, wherever Savino was stood, whatever he was doing, the daylight disappeared instantly into fog: now he was somewhere in the mountains, so high the air almost felt thin. The next day the flash had been closer, in some cavern or stone tunnel carved out of that same hillside, a new dank musty smell in his nose; as the flashes continued and he paced further in, he ran his hand along odd markings on the wall, turned to look at his companion with a grin blooming on his face; every day, he gestured in some direction – and then, every time without fail, there came a unnatural crack of noise or some close explosion, and the tunnel caved in.

It had stopped making him flinch, by this point, the jolt back to himself. It had happened enough, and the clockwork recurrence of this vision meant he was usually prepared for it, knew to stop himself in place, had stepped out of one of the tents in perfect time. What he wasn’t used to was blinking himself back from the dust and the dark and the rubble to the daylight and seeing one of the figures from that faraway place in the here and now, right in front of him, in the flesh. And it had to be her, the companion in the vision – she had the same hair and eyes and stature and was even dressed similarly, by which he meant more practically than almost every woman in London.

Accordingly (he had to say something to her, improvise an approach to this before he lost her in the crowd and missed his chance), Savino teetered where he was in the street, gaze caught on her for – just a beat too long to be normal.

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Angie Swan

  

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An International Bazaar was harmless on the surface. Angie knew better, as did her employers and presumably the ministry, which was why she was strolling through the bazaar trying to look disinterested.

Here on business, she was supposed to be casually wandering stalls looking for artifacts of a questionable nature. Ang had become a bit of an expert on the matter in her travels. Some of her coworkers were good with the places or the wards and the magic of their expeditions, but Angie had grown an unequivocal interest in the things that they found. Tampered artifacts gave off a magic all their own and she had gotten pretty good at detecting and diffusing them along the line.

So far she'd only come across a couple of minor things she was able to take care of with herself, but she took note of the seller and the commodities in her notebook just to be safe. She checked her own pocket watch, a magical item she had picked up somewhere in Eastern Europe, it charted the stars and served as a compass as well, pending which section of the compartments you opened, but she was thinking she could probably wrap it up for today. This would be over soon and she still had yet to come across anything suspicious.

Or so she'd thought. Of course it wasn't a magical item that caught her attention but a gentleman staring at her a little too intensely. Angie quirked an eyebrow in his direction, raising her chin just a little as if to say, Can I help you? It wasn't as if she was some waif that would be easy to harass in the streets with her bloom suit and visible scars on her forearms, hair pulled back into a tight chignon, nothing frilly or prissy about her. Still there was something odd about how he'd looked at her and Angie was both confrontational and curious.

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He was staring, he knew that – the quirk of her eyebrow and the tilt of her chin told him that she was aware, too – so he should stop, pretend to be cowed, carry on his way.

But how could he, when she was in the vision? So instead Savino let the grin vision-him had worn spread on his face again, though here at the market he lifted a hand in a wave rather than a pointing gesture, and bounded over as though he recognised her.

Recognised her in a normally acquainted way, that was. He caught up to her in a few quick strides, trying to seem cheerful and blank and not-paying-much-attention when he opened his mouth. “Luciana–!” Savino declared, breaking off there as if he had meant to say something else like there you are! or I’ve been looking for you for ages, where did you disappear to? “Oh, forgive me...” he offered instead, faltering obviously as if he had only just done a double-take and realised his mistake. Truthfully, as he looked over the stranger’s scarred forearms and blue eyes, it was for confirmation of his correctness rather than any error.

Because it was her. It was her, and he couldn’t just start with I saw you in a vision, because if her challenging look had told him anything, it was that he was already on the back foot and he didn’t need her to write him off as suspicious or strange. Not this fast, at least. Be normal for now, Savino. “Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew,” he said easily, a little apologetic and a little conversational, scanning the stalls around them as if he were still looking for someone other than her. Never mind that Luciana would never have been wearing a bloomer suit in public. Their mother would have crucified her first. “I’m looking for my sister,” he lied anyway.

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Angie would have thought that her obvious attention to his stares would have been the end of the interaction. She had thought that so thoroughly that she had started to go on her way again when the man suddenly came bounding up to her, having mistaken her for his sister.

Right, sure.

Angie quirked her eyebrow higher at him, wondering just what he was doing. She was not going to humor an ill-attempted flirting or whatever it was he had in mind for this conversation. She was technically working and that was a good enough excuse as any to save her from having to deal with him.

"Somehow I doubt that." Angie was fairly certain she could not possibly look like anyone's sister, with her tan, scars and apparel. Her hair wasn't even naturally this brown. "But good luck with your search." Her tone was dismissive as was her expression.

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Well, damn it, she hadn’t fallen for that for a second. He’d been hoping – well, what did it matter what he had hoped? She clearly didn’t have any patience for strangers peering at her oddly in crowded markets, and there was nothing Savino could have said to make this any less odd.

“Wait,” he said, dropping the act at once and letting the seriousness show in his expression again, in case his urgently-creased brow gave her pause. Somehow he doubted it – somehow he doubted that she would care what he had to say, whatever he had to say – but he planted himself at her side anyway, partly in apology and partly in protest. “You’re right, I’m sorry, that’s not true,” he admitted, in the hope that he would have time to say everything he needed to before she tried to move away, “and it’s just – I know this will sound crazy but – I’ve actually been looking for you. My name is Savino Zabini,” he added rapidly, in case she happened to be in society and had heard the name in passing before, or even better, to do with Divination.

Somehow, Savino thought darkly, he doubted that too.

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It wasn't really possible, but Angie's brow ticked up just a notch further when the man admitted to what he'd really been up to. Angie was mildly surprised, as far as she knew she had no previous dealings with Mr. Zabini and so therefore she couldn't imagine why he was possibly looking for her. Unless this had to do with a past dealing with the bank or something of that nature. She was not involved on that side of the business though.

"And what is it I could possibly do for you Mr. Zabini?" She inquired, her tone skeptical. Angie was not naturally a trusting person, not anymore, so she tended to keep her guard up in situations like this. Not that she thought anything was about to happen, not really, not to mentions he could handle herself if necessary. Her stance slowly changed to something a little more defensive, feet evenly planted on the ground and arms across her chest, nevertheless.

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Her arms were folded, her stance squared. Savino could read the signs in front of him just as well as in the tea leaves: she didn’t like this, she didn’t want to listen to him, she certainly wouldn’t trust him, maybe wouldn’t even believe it. She looked – well, tough. Like she could beat him up if she wanted to. (It was not hard to look capable of this, admittedly; fighting of any kind was not Savino’s forte.)

So he couldn’t possibly look a threat but he relaxed his shoulders, didn’t move any nearer, left himself open-faced and open-handed, undefended, anyway. “No, it’s –” He hated this part. He wished it hadn’t happened in his head, hadn’t always been left to him to express it: why couldn’t she have dreamt it for herself? It was no good from a stranger’s mouth. Steeling himself for the disbelief, he looked at her sincerely. “No, it’s something I can do for you. I’m a Seer, and I’ve been... Seeing you, again and again, something in your future. Will you – please give me just one moment to explain it?”

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The more Mr. Zabini spoke, the less Angie believed him. He had to be drunk or something. "You'll have to excuse me if I don't believe that." Ang had always thought divination to be an imprecise branch of magic, though she knew many civilizations had believed in its validity for centuries if not thousands of years.

"If I were you Mr. Zabini, I would find something else to do with your time." Clearly he was either some kind of lunatic or perhaps he'd indulged in some opium today. Either way, Angie was in no mood to humor whatever it was he was playing at. "Or perhaps head home." She hadn't the foggiest idea what exactly he hoped to accomplish here, but she was not interested. "Enjoy your afternoon." She dismissed him with a wave her of her hand as she turned to move on.

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Merda. She hadn’t given him a moment, she hadn’t even let him give her any advice before she’d offered some – decidedly unfriendly – advice of her own. She’d turned away, and his instinct was to reach out for her, but he didn’t need to be a Seer to know that wouldn’t end well. So he just did his best to keep pace with her, to stay alongside her, as he protested: “Believe me, I wouldn’t say anything if it wasn’t important –”

He exhaled, trying not to let the tension from the explosion in the dream creep back into his shoulders too clearly. “Someone’s going to get hurt if I don’t. You’re going to get hurt – and I know you’ve travelled before, and you’re going to travel again, but don’t. It’s South America, I think, the mountains –” he waved his hands as if he could impart the picture of it by sheer willpower, the fog and the tunnels and the strange markings in the mountains, “and I still need to do more research but,” and if she only trusted one thing, he hoped she would listen to this, “just – don’t leave the country this time. Please.”

And the terrible thing was that he could have done this sensibly or gradually or invited her to do a reading and explained it properly if she had let him be civil about this, but she hadn’t. So now she had to face the raving lunatic approach. Savino was sorry about it, but.

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Ang hadn't made it far into the crowd when his words hit her. She stutter-stepped, turning to cast a dubious look at Mr. Zabini over her shoulder. His words said more than what they meant to; he knew of her job somehow, or at least that she traveled for work. Either he really was a seer or he was some creepy. She highly suspected the latter.

She turned around quickly, marched right up to him and had the front of his jacket in her fist before she really thought about it. "Someone is going to get hurt if you don't leave me alone and it won't be me or one of my colleagues." She growled, voice low, thankful that he didn't have much on her in height.  Angie had never suffered serious injury, nor had any of her companions when she traveled for work. She was good at her job, better than most because she worked her ass off to be so and some feeble attempt to "warn" her otherwise was not going to get under her skin.

"Walk away Mr. Zabini before I make you." She may have been overreacting, but despite the urgency to his voice, she was not going to be fooled. She let go of his clothes roughly and stalked away.

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His last-ditch warning had struck a chord with her, then, made some impact: he could see the sudden change in her, from utter dismissal to...

Oh, to outright anger. She was all up in his face now; had grasped a fistful of his clothes like she really might punch him in the mouth if he said another word. Threats came easily to her, it seemed: she knew what she was doing in a confrontation. (It was more than a little intimidating.)

All the same, for a moment Savino earnestly considered whether getting himself punched in the face might be the way to get through to her – in letting her vent her frustrations physically and finally leaving room for her to listen to him – but, beyond the visions he’d had of her, she was a stranger to him, so truly he had no idea whether that would make the slightest difference.

So he stuck to the safest tactic and kept his mouth shut, nodding in something like compliance when she finally released him. He stepped back unsteadily, uncertainly, but what else was there he could say? She was already walking away.

Maybe – maybe – she would think about his words more calmly later, before she made any life-altering decisions to storm headlong into danger. He didn’t know her name or where she lived or worked or anything, so – Savino could only hope that he’d planted a seed in her mind that might save her.

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